When Reason Does Not Help

January 6, 1992

When I returned from Auburndale, Christmas night, Barbara, whose home is only one removed from mine, brought over a plate of cookies and fruit cake. Yesterday morning, Barbara was found shot to death. Eddie, her husband, found her when he returned from shopping. The police verdict was suicide. When I went to see Eddie this morning to express my sorrow, he was still in shock. As I hugged him and said, “I’m so sorry,” I was keenly aware of how inadequate words are; how futile is the attempt to explain causes of tragedy. This has been my experience many times in the ebb and flow of my life.

There is a sense of undefinable awe because in such a situation “reasonable” answers or “comforting” words serve little or no purpose; and are better left unsaid. In the final scene of King Lear, Edgar mourns over the bodies of Lear and Cordelia,

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

There is mystery in ourselves and the Universe which eludes the most thoughtful of philosophers and theologians. This sense of awe, in one dictionary definition, can be a mixed feeling of rage and fear. Forty years ago, I remember Vincent Ferrini, responding to a local tragedy, saying, “God damn the Universe.” In the Scripture, Job’s wife says to him bitterly, “Curse God and die.” The Scripture also advises, “The fear of Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Neither of these extremes is much help when terrible blows are struck.

Consider the awe-full feelings which must have prevailed in 17th century Europe when about sixty-million people died of smallpox. Or in East Pakistan in 1970 when a tropical cyclone caused the death of upwards of half-a-million people. (Source: Isaac Asimov).

Being human, we remember more clearly tragedies that impinged upon us personally. It seems true that as we age, we recall events of our childhood. Today, my thoughts drifted back about seventy years and remembered Billy Lake, a 4th grade classmate. Billy was killed when hitching a ride on the back of a street-car on Ferry Street, somehow getting entangled with the wheels while getting on or falling off.

The Lakes lived in a house adjacent to Horace Mann School. The teacher (I think) suggested that the class visit the home where Billy's body was laid out in the parlor. We went over in small groups.

The Lake family was Roman Catholic. We entered the parlor where the shades were drawn. The only light came from two large free-standing candelabra, one at the head, one at the foot of the casket. The candles seemed as thick as baseball bats. In the dim light, family members were seated. Billy was dressed in his navy-blue First Communion suit. Classmates who were Roman Catholic knelt at the prie-dieu to pray. Not wanting to seem awkward, I too knelt, although I couldn’t say their prayers. If anything went through my MIND, it was awareness that a few days before, Billy ran and jumped on the school playground at recess with the rest of us and never would again. But my FEELINGS were awe and an elusive but strong sense of mystery

Through the years, when confronting sudden tragedy happening to persons known to me, this sense of awe has jarred my usual stance of seeking reasons and causes. But life does not always make sense. In Greek mythology, the Fates, (Moirae) were either believed as divinities or as allegories: Clotho, the spinning fate; Lachesis who assigns each person his/her fate; and Atropos, the fate that cannot be avoided. In the ancient beliefs, neither gods nor persons could alter or avoid the Fates. Whether accepting such mythological “givens” compounds or eases the anguished “why?” cannot be answered.

But often enough when the UNKNOWABLE shakes my sensibilities, Hamlet could be speaking to me:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

But whatever there is undreamed or unknown, the touch of hands, the clasp of arms, the shared sorrow are human resources more immediately real than contrived, professed or supposed answers to the Mystery of Being. In J.B., Archibald MacLeish’s modernized drama of the Job tragedy, Sarah says to J.B. in the last scene,

“Blow on the coal of the heart.
The candles in churches are out.
The lights have gone out in the sky.
Blow on the coal of the heart
And we’ll see by and by.”