A Contemplative Moment

I have been surrounded by death in my life. I don’t sit and think about “the sum of it” a lot, or it would negatively affect me. The primary trips my family made together as I grew up was to funerals. When someone close to me died, I grieved at the time and focused on the good that the person left with me. I sometimes still sense the presence and guidance of my mother in particular, (Don’t get weirded out on me, here.) and sometimes another that has been dear to me.
The experiences of death in my family, near and extended, have varied a great deal – some a gradual aging or “disease” thing, some very sudden and tragic. They have helped me listen and observe in a deeper way to the deaths that others have experienced. It would be easy to say that’s because I’m a minister and counselor. But I’ve known too many other ministers & counselors who needed to be throttled for their approach to someone in the throes of grief. It does have everything to do with my faith, however. Though I will cry and grieve with the best of ‘em, I have a deep trust that God loves me and all those that have gone before. And I believe that life in general is trustworthy, despite the happenings of tragedy and loss that we all experience as a part of life.
About a year before my mom died, I was visiting her in the Tennessee nursing home in which she was living. I must have referred to something from the time I was growing up. Mom suddenly looked at me with tearful eyes and said, “Those days are over, aren’t they?” It wrenched my heart. She and I had known both good times and bad in “those days”, but it was the good times she was certainly remembering as she said this.
I shook my head no, pointed to my heart and then hers as I said, “Those days will always be with me right here, and they will always be with you right here. I take them with me wherever I go, and I know I’ll always take you with me wherever I go.” And I gently touched her cheek and hugged her.
It was difficult to watch my mother lose her physical and mental capabilities. She was a quiet, yet emotional rock for me. I found myself being that for her, insofar as I was able. Her moments of clarity became the ones that wrenched my heart, like this one. Those moments with her were among many that led me to a lot of grief counseling, and strangely, not always planned.
I discovered that a lack of accepting and grieving losses had a tight connection with most of my former clients’ lives – especially the addicts with whom I worked. Getting past their tough fronts was a necessary and rarely easy step. When I experience a “tough front” now, I know there’s a story – usually of abandonment, sometimes abuse, always neglect. Control (actually a false sense of it) becomes the safeguard, wherever it can be found – drugs or alcohol, gambling, workaholism, eating disorders, the list goes on. The chosen escape – conscious or unconscious -- always proves damaging to others as well. The Addictive Organization reveals to readers how much of what we do and think can become an unhealthy tangle, and how it takes an outside person to coach people through it. It’s a good read to contemplate.

Fairy L. Caroland currently lives and serves at Koinonia Farm in Americus Georgia

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