February 1: Saddest Thing, Mythology, Why

Santiago remembers a sad moment . . . 

He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy's aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.

That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly.

The story of this pair of marlins is sad.  No getting around it.  In some ways, it's a love story, the male refusing to leave the female's side, even as she is dying.  Then, after the old man and boy haul her into the boat, that one final leap of the male, high above the waves, into the sky, as he tries to see what has happened to his mate.  

This passage lends itself to reflecting on grief and loss.  I returned to work today after my train wreck of a weekend.  I can honestly say that I wasn't sure I would last the entire day.  My body is sore, and I still feel a kind of exhaustion in my bones that, if I were a Russian consumptive, only three weeks of sleep and trip to a health spa in Badenweiler, Germany, would help.  However, I did last.  I count that as a victory.

There is something healing about doing mental or physical labor that takes your mind off what's troubling you.  For several hours today, I focused on library programming, a letter of recommendation for a student, more library programming, an afternoon meeting, and, at the end of the day, a virtual astronomy event.  Yesterday, I taught two classes, went home, and slept for several hours.  Today, it was good being around other people, not focusing on low blood sugars, car accidents, or my sister's death.  It was a day of planning.  Looking forward instead of back.

At the beginning of every semester when I teach mythology, I tell my students--especially the most jaded, cynical ones--that mythology/religion aren't antonyms.  They just attempt to answer different questions.  For scientists, the question they seek to answer is "how."  How did the universe form?  How do cancer cells work?  How long does it take for a meteor to circle the galaxy and return to our solar system?  

Mythology asks the question "why."  Why does suffering exist in the world?  Why are we here?  Why do fools fall in love?  Different mindset and approach.

I have been focusing a whole lot on "why" these last couple weeks.  Searching for meaning in seemingly meaningless situations.  Of course, I'm not really receiving many adequate answers.  And then anger and frustration and sadness and self-pity step in.

I'm a little like that male marlin in the passage above.  Jumping out of the ocean, scraping heaven, trying to find answers to my unanswerable questions.  I don't know what the rest of this week has in store for me.  Saturday morning, I will be sitting in church, honoring the life of my sister.  We will say a rosary, greet friends and relatives, sing songs, and celebrate a Mass.  In between now and then, I'm just going to take it slowly, moment by moment.

That's the best Saint Marty can do.

April 27: Every Point in the Universe, Coincidence, Rose

Zaphod and Trillian, in the Heart of Gold spaceship, are dealing with their two new passengers . . .

 "Listen," she said, "we picked up those couple of guys . . ."

"What couple of guys?"

"The couple of guys we picked up."

"Oh, yeah," said Zaphod, "those couple of guys."

"We picked them up in Sector ZZ, Plural Z Alpha."

"Yeah?" said Zaphod, and blinked.

Trillian said quietly.  "Does that mean anything to you?"

"Mmmm," said Zaphod, "ZZ, Plural Z. Alpha ZZ, Plural Z Alpha?"

"Well?" said Trillian.

"Er . . . what does the Z mean?" said Zaphod.

"Which one?"

"Any one."

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so--but not all the time, which obviously worried him hence the act.  He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about it.

She sighed and punched up a star map on the visiscreen so she could make it simple for him, whatever his reasons for wanting it to be that way.

"There," she pointed, "right there."

"Hey . . . yeah!" said Zaphod.

"Well," she said.

"Well what?"

Parts of the inside of her head screamed at other parts of the inside of her head.  She said, very calmly, "It's the same sector you originally picked me up in."

He looked at her and then looked back at the screen.

"Hey, yeah," he said, "now that is wild.  We should have zapped straight into the middle of the Horsehead Nebula.  How did we come to be there?  I mean, that's nowhere."

She ignored this.

"Improbability Drive," she said patiently.  "You explained it to me yourself.  We pass through every point in the Universe, you know that."

I am not a believer in coincidence.  I don't think seemingly random extraordinary things occur without reason.  For example, several years ago, B. C. (that's Before Children), my wife and I were at Walt Disney World on vacation.  We were shopping in a place called Disney Village, which was a collection of stores and restaurants.  We ran into cousins from Wisconsin who were in the same store, and we had a little family reunion.  On that same vacation, a week or so before, my wife and I were at an attraction at one of the parks, and there was a child at the same attraction whom my wife had as a student when she was doing her student teaching.  Those kinds of things happened through that whole vacation.  I started to believe that we had fallen into some kind of weird wormhole in the universe.

Looking back at that vacation now, I have this feeling that all that was meant to be for some reason.  It was one of the last vacations when almost all of my family (siblings and parents) were together.  The Wisconsin cousins hadn't seen my parents in years.  We took a family picture with them, just to prove that it happened.

So, in my mind, there's no such thing as coincidence.  There's order in the universe.  Just because something is improbable doesn't mean that it's random.  I'm sure my science friends would argue with me on this point, but it would simply be a battle of beliefs or philosophies.  I'm a Christian, and I believe in a Higher Power.  A guiding force.  Everything has a reason.

Now, at this point in this rather long discussion of coincidence versus order, you're probably thinking, "What is his point?  What's he getting at?"

I do have a point.  Or maybe it's a question.  I spend a lot of time wondering why things happen in my life.  Recently, it's been the closure of the surgery center where I've worked for over 20 years, and all that change that has accompanied this event.  At this point, I don't understand the reason for this, aside from a healthcare system that is inherently broken and places more value on money over people.  I'm waiting for the dust to settle on that one so that I can see the larger picture.

The thing that is preoccupying my thoughts at the moment involves my sister, Rose, who has Down syndrome.  In the last few days, she has started having episodes that resemble seizures.  Five or six in a day.  She's fallen and injured herself.  Now, Rose is suffering from Alzheimer's.  It happens to a majority of people with Down syndrome when they get older.  My sister is 53 years old now.  She asks the same questions over and over.  Spends a good deal of her day running to the bathroom.  And she sleeps.  A lot.

What is happening with my sister is not unusual.  In fact, it's to be expected.  The episodes/seizures could be related to medications she's taking, or they could simply be a part of her progressing illness and aging.  She will be checked by doctors.  But I am truly questioning the reasons behind Rose's struggles.  My medical friends would probably say that there isn't really a metaphysical reason behind her condition.  It's physiological.  Changes in her brain due to age and her Down syndrome.  I understand that.  Really, I do.

Yet, I see meaningless suffering, and I try to make meaning out of it.  Since the onset of her dementia, Rose's personality has changed.  She's become argumentative and stubborn and obsessive.  Gone is the sister who spent most of her days writing long, discursive, handwritten letters to aunts and uncles and cousins and friends.  Gone is the sister who would jump on her three-wheeled bike and go for long rides around the neighborhood.  Gone is the sister that I remember.

And I'm left wondering why.  I don't know if I'll ever answer that question satisfactorily.  It's sort of an ageless question:  why does God allow suffering in the world?  The answer to that question, I guess, would be that God doesn't allow suffering.  The suffering is part of living in a broken world.  What God does is give us the strength and wisdom and love to deal with the brokenness.

My sister, Rose, has Down syndrome.  My sister, Rose, has Alzheimer's.  My sister, Rose, is having seizures.  Nothing in that is random coincidence.  Perhaps I just need to stop asking "Why?"  I'll probably never understand the answer to that question.

Perhaps the question Saint Marty needs to ask is "How do I deal with this with compassion and love?"

February 18: Question upon Question, W. Todd Kaneko, "That Night the Big Boss Man Was Hanged"

It's amazing, when I read W. Todd Kaneko's The Dead Wrestler Elegies, how many of the wrestlers committed suicide, like Big Bubba Rogers.  There's something about the sport or the pressure of the sport (or the performance enhancing drugs that some take) that doom a lot of the wrestlers.

Suicide is terrible for the people left behind.  Rarely are all the answers available for the survivors.  Things like "Could I have done more?" and "Why?"  Instead, there's just question upon question.  Families who have been touched by suicide live with uncertainty.

For anybody reading this post who's lost a loved one to suicide, I offer the hope that things get better over time.  Pain recedes, and what's left are, hopefully, happier memories. 

On this sunny, warm February day, Saint Marty wishes everybody joy and laughter.

That Night the Big Boss Man Was Hanged

by:  W. Todd Kaneko

That night in Philadelphia, Big Bubba Rogers
was done battling outlaws on the road.
He locked himself in a cell to wrestle
the devil sheathed in leather, the blood angels
in the rafters with several yards of rope.
The Big Boss Man chained the Undertaker
to the cage, rattled handcuffs and nightstick
across skull and wishbone until the dark
prince's eyes rolled back in his head.

After that match, my father called me,
a road trip planned for the two of us--
two men and a station wagon on a quest
for stars, a campfire, a tavern where a man
can meet a woman and not worry about her
whereabouts in the morning.  After he died,
I found his notebook, dog-eared, wine-stains
describing the Cow Palace, the Omni,
the Sportatorium--the old arenas
where he and my mother fought for love.

Everything that is dead lies still
before it can return as a phantom.
When evil spirits offer a man a length
of rope, when a man finds a rope looped
about his collar, when panic forms
in the body like Big Bubba Rogers
with that noose tight around his neck,
everything stops.  Sometimes a man
finds a way to save himself, sometimes
he just kicks his legs in vain as he rises.

August 20: Supernatural Event, Why, Maggie Nelson, Adventures of Stickman

What did it feel like?  He felt the way that young girl whom he and Annie had once seen falling through the air had felt.  Expression tormented, he spent a long time before the mirror, reading into his own face great foolishness.  He did not like to look back and recall the last days of that other Ives.  He wanted to be drunk.  He had nothing to say.  Getting two weeks' sympathy leave from the agency, he spent much of the time pacing up and down the hall and standing by the windows.  It meant despairing about the supernatural and yet waiting every night for a supernatural event.

That is Ives' way of grieving.  He's angry, confused, and heartbroken.  A devout Catholic all his life, Ives, for the first time in his life, questions God's wisdom and goodness.  I think, in his pacing and staring out windows, Ives is waiting for some sign, anything at all, to provide some sense to a seemingly senseless situation.  He's dealing with the big question that plagues anyone who loses a loved one, especially someone very young.  That question is simply "Why?"

I have been asking myself that question a lot today.  I returned to work this morning.  It was difficult walking into the medical center.  Everywhere I looked, I saw my sister.  Walking through the parking lot.  On the stairs.  In the hallways.  Once, as I was looking out a window on the third floor, I swear I saw her in the rain, in her blue scrubs, carrying her ever-present mug of ice water.

I don't understand why my sister had to suffer so much the final year of her life.  Or why she had to die.  She was a good person.  Selfless, for the most part.  On more than one occasion, when I was strapped for cash to get my car fixed or buy Christmas presents for my kids, money would suddenly appear in my checking account.  Sure, she could be stubborn to the point of exasperation.  In the end, however, if I asked, she gave, no questions asked.

I don't see any divine plan in this big pile of cow shit.  I just see shit.  During the course of the day, I would get hit by a tsunami of grief.  I would sit in my chair or stop dead in my tracks, choked with great liquid sobs.  It felt like I was drowning.  Literally.  Then I would float to the surface again and be able to move.

I know I will never understand the "why" of my sister's death.  It will never make sense to me, and I will have to learn to accept that.  I know God doesn't make mistakes, but, in this case, I think He had better options.  For example, there's a certain billionaire running for President of the United States right now who would have been an excellent alternative, stupid hair and all.

Not that Saint Marty is telling God how to run the universe.

90 from Bluets

by:  Maggie Nelson

Last night I wept in a way I haven't wept for some time.  I wept until I aged myself.  I watched it happen in the mirror.  I watched the lines arrive around my eyes like engraved sunbursts; it was like watching flowers open in time-lapse on a windowsill.  The tears not only aged my face, they also changed its texture, turned the skin of my cheeks into putty.  I recognized this as a rite of decadence, but I did not know how to stop it.

Adventures of STICKMAN