It was a sad day today: the lovely Nina and I drove to Philadelphia to attend a memorial service for the twenty-eight-year-old son of some dear friends. The young man, who died suddenly and unexpectedly, had made a very deep and very positive impression on a great many people’s lives, and hundreds were in attendance.
Things like this are a shocking reminder of the evanescence and uncertainty of life, and the permanence of what lies beyond life. You would think that by my age I’d need no reminders of this, but the fact of our brevity, and of our insignificance in the immensity of time, is not an easy thing to bear — and so we do whatever we can to distract ourselves, to deny, to turn away, to forget, to hurry back to the waking sleep that we call ordinary consciousness.
From Marcus Aurelius:
Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.
At the very end of Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, Beelzebub is asked by his beloved grandson Hassein what would be necessary for the awakening and salvation of humanity, if indeed such a thing is possible at all. Beelzebub replied:
That every one of these unfortunates, during the process of existence, should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death, as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rest.
Aurelius again:
Come back now to your true senses; recall your true self; awake from slumber, and recognize that they were only dreams that troubled you; and as you looked on them, so look now upon what meets your waking eyes.
Goodbye, Daniel.
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
8 Comments
Condolences to Daniel’s family. Peace and blessings.
A beautiful post.
Bobby Kennedy quoted those lines from Romeo and Juliet when he eulogized his brother John.
As you know, in January I lost my college roommate and best friend of 42 years. Although I was told that he died of a heart attack, I subsequently learned that he hanged himself.
If there is any silver lining to all of this cloudiness, it is that death serves to focus the minds of the living on the things you want to do, should do, and haven’t done. I scheduled a trip with my daughter to my ancestral homeland of New Jersey, figuring that this will be our last chance for a father-daughter trip until she goes to college. I started on one of my life’s goals: the multi-year project of reading all of Proust, from the first page of Swann’s Way to the last page of Time Regained. And, of course, I look at my daughter differently.
As sad as Clive’s death was, I am sure that nothing can possibly compare with burying a child. I hope that your friends find a way to heal over time from this monstrous and horrible event.
I would add that of all the things I have read about grief and remembrance, the most comforting one comes (not surprisingly) from Proust, paraphrased below:
“When you still had Clive you often thought of the days when you would have him no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had him. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel him revive, returning to take his place, his entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power … that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.”
I believe that the Binding of Isaac defines the limit of human suffering — a parent’s loss of a child.
There are no words.
Your eulogies always make me cry. Such compassion, and a faith, that I would love to share. My beloved, big brother and his lovely wife, lost their son a couple of years ago. He was also twenty eight years old. I think I may ask him to look at this blog post, and find some comfort, because you have a rare way of saying things.
Thanks, Amused.
They kind of make me cry, too.
Don’t know why but I disagree with that sentiment. Or maybe I do know — I prefer the Jewish saying against murder, that when you take someone’s life you have destroyed the entire universe. Or in the words of Thomas Eliot, “All time is eternally present.” Still, there is something inexpressibly sad about the death of the young, for their closest loved ones especially. Perhaps it is they more than the dying who deserve out pity. For, if there is a God, death itself cannot be that bad, at least for the innocent. Just my two cents.