The Fabric Of Sadness

I have a friend — we’ll call her Lydia — whom I haven’t seen in several months. The last time we met, Lydia told me about her brother, Jake, who had recently had a massive, debilitating stroke. At the time of the event, Jake had been caring for his girlfriend, who had suffered a similar stroke some months prior.

While describing their sad plight, Lydia said, “They’re all each other have. They pretty much just lay in bed and comfort each other by talking to each other.” I promised to pray regularly for all of them.

Yesterday, I saw Lydia again, and the first thing I asked her was how Jake and his girlfriend were getting along. Lydia’s eyes filled and spilled tears down onto her pale cheeks.

“Well, Jake died about a month ago.”

I expressed my sadness at the news and then asked about Jake’s girlfriend.

“She’s tried to kill herself. Twice. They moved her in with her daddy, so’s he could keep an eye on her. And he’s in his eighties, so it’s not what you’d call a good situation.”

I questioned Lydia further, and she told me that Jake’s girlfriend had overdosed on pills initially, and after she was discharged from the hospital, she tried cutting her own throat. Her stroke has impaired her gross motor skills on her right side, so she didn’t do a clean job of the attempt and was discovered within minutes of when she laid blade to skin. Someone advised her father, who offered to take her in. According to Lydia, the old man is almost an invalid himself, and can do little for his daughter except watch her for signs of suicidal behavior. Family and neighbors check in on the pair at least daily.

The fabric of my heart is woven through with sadness over this news. I keep thinking of Jake, his lonesome vigils with his girlfriend in the long afternoons and evenings, unable to move and thrive as he would have liked. I think of his girlfriend, and her watching helplessly as he breathed his last while lying next to her, imagining her begging him to wake up, please wake up…and the silence of their shabby little room while she tried to think of a way to call for help. I think of her making that cold, clinical decision that her life was no longer worth the effort, and the hoping for release as she up-ended the pill bottle or took up the knife, and of the humiliation and despair when she was prevented from accomplishing her own death, and her seeing the pity in the eyes of those around her now, eyes that never stop assessing her, monitoring her, wondering about her.

And I think of her father, confused and hurt and frightened, feeling impotent to help his own flesh and blood, frustrated and maddened by his own limitations, all the questions about why this had to happen and happen now. I think of him making his painful way through his little house, calling for his daughter to make sure she’s all right, and of him trying to manage the daily needful activities while he watches his offspring wither from the inside out, just waiting to be gone, and him probably wanting to make the same journey himself. And Lydia sits on the sidelines, watching, waiting for another phone call.

On mornings like this, when the cares of these good people weigh on me, I can understand how Nietzsche went mad at the sight of a man beating a helpless cart-horse, and how he flung himself on the poor creature in an attempt to rescue it. Our inability to help everyone we’d like to help is a relentless burden, and it never gets lighter.

How do we do this? How do we endure, we sons and daughters of Adam and Eve? This is all so full of mystery to me. It impels me to hold my loved ones closer, to savor the quiet routine of the long evenings and the crisp wonder of the misty mornings.

~ S.K. Orr