Kirkepiscatoid

From all oppression, conspiracy, and rebellion; from
violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and
unprepared,
Good Lord, deliver us.

Well, if you get right down to it, the whole stanza is about “dying before your time,” whatever the reason. It’s about those situations where the people you’ve left behind feel you’ve been “taken from them.”

I thought about that eleven months that my cousin J.B. was in Iraq. I bet at least two dozen people would try to comfort my unease by saying, “Oh, you know, the odds of him coming back fine are SO much in his favor.” Even the Vietnam vets would try to assure me “That they have far less casualties over there than in Nam, and hey, you had a cousin in Nam, and he came back to you.” But it was no comfort at all, in fact it was a bit of an irritation to me. I know as well as anyone that “things just happen because they happen, and statistics mean nothing when N=1.”

I worried when he was over there, not just that he might be killed, but that he might NOT be killed, and come home missing multiple limbs. The thought of my lively, masculine firefighter/paramedic motorcycle owning cousin being able to do none of those things distressed me worse than him possibly coming home in a steel casket draped with a flag. Knowing my relatives, they would have handled that much better. They could handle a dead hero better than a live profoundly disabled person. That side of the family (me included) places so much stock in our “physical survival skills”. We like fixing and making and doing and like to brag that others are weenies. That would have been so much harder.

I am living this one all over again. JML’s son J.A. is now over there for four months with the Marines. J.A. has wanted to be a Marine since at least junior high. I am sure a lot of it is pure testosterone overload from having an absent, distant, mentally ill father and being reared by “peaceful people.” I am sure some of it is his sense to strike out own his own, to do, to be, with a sense of duty to something bigger than himself. But I can’t fight with his need to be a part of something bigger, because I know what that need feels like, and we all have to find our way through that somehow, and it means taking risks for the thing that is bigger than you, in order to find yourself in the middle of it. I’ve lived that need, and continue to do so, just over time, in different ways.

I have often worried in a personal sense about that “dying suddenly and unprepared” thing. Growing up in the shadow of my uncle R. being killed in a hunting accident taught me “children die.” Our neighbor’s nephew dying in Vietnam taught me “People die in conflict; sometimes it is for something; sometimes it seems it is for nothing.” My grandfather dropped dead fixing a sandwich when no one but the dog was home. It taught me, “People drop dead, and die alone, without the comfort of those they love.” People have car wrecks and are immediately decapitated; the thought of one’s last conscious moment being possibly looking at your own severed body as the brain lights flicker out seems so overwhelmingly macabre to me. Recently, another friend's cousin killed himself. It reminded me, “People check themselves out of this world b/c they become so overwhelmed with a sad form of despair that feels so selfish to those who are left behind, but it is really just this huge despair.” Last week, BT’s son BTIII called and told him his 28 year old office manager was found dead in her home, the victim of a brutal murder. People die as victims, their last moments being filled with fear, and the love of God must seem so far away for those people.

We probably all have this vision of what constitutes “a good death for ourselves.” For some, it is being surrounded by loving family. For some, this includes clergy. For some, it IS to be alone.

I know for me, mine would be in my home, and “semi-alone.” There is that part of me that is so incredibly private, and I think it would kick in. I would want people around me but not terribly near me; like being “in the house” but “not right up next to me.” I would not want my mom anywhere near me, nor any other of my more “dramatic relatives”. Too much drama. I would not want the last thing on my mind to be dealing with someone else’s drama. There are people I would want near, “for a little bit.” I would let my clergy near me; oddly enough it is not so much because of the "clergy hat". It's just that I think the "clergy hat part" is more sensitive to the private inner psychological parts of me, so I could handle the "human part" that close to me at such a private time.

But the fact remains, we don’t choose our own death scene for the most part. Even those who take themselves out of this world, even though they choose the place and method, don’t always “really choose” if you get my drift. Things in their life gravitated to that place, and they “choices” they made are pretty piddly, compared to the torrent that swept them to those choices.

Somehow, God has to be in all of it, but it is really hard for me to see HOW. I can only take everything else that I know God is in, that I take strictly on faith, and assume it works for this, too. But that is still not horribly comforting.