On Grief and Enlightenment

Yesterday, coming from a team-building activity at a log cabin on the outskirts of Seoul, I passed by my favorite bookstore and was uncharacteristically drawn to the Biography section. I read through the first two chapters of Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking.

Change happens fast. So fast, that one minute he's there, and then he's gone, and life as you know it has died. It's not her words, it's my approximation, from my blurry memory, of her startling recognition of the way we are snatched from what we know of as life. The book is essentially her memory of the grief and her slow recovery from her loss.

I was reading it with empathy, with the memory of my own losses these past months, which while painful and back then was sometimes as black and as inescapable as the abyss, how they are pitifully nothing compared to hers. I imagined that while losing your lover or boyfriend is hard, there must be nothing harder than losing that one person you've sworn allegiance to. How the reality of that vow she made long time ago boomerangs and embeds into her core, how it matters now, how it makes sense now, that truly truly to even to those who are lucky like Joan Didion who found happiness for so long in her marriage, how there is a painful underbelly to the vows "Till death do us part."

After an hour or so in the bookstore, I dropped Joan Didion's book and instead bought stuffs that were more in sync with my need to nurture an optimism. I did not want to go back into the sadness I once had. So I bought instead the renowned Buddhist scholar Thich Naht Hanh's reflections and practice for awakening the heart, a slim volume called True Love. And because I wanted to go rekindle my passion for cooking and I have read brilliant reviews of her magazine, and more importantly because they were 50% off, I bought a set of Donna Hay's magazine on cooking and baking.


Today, Sunday, having attended a one day, totally uplifting evangelical seminar at my church, I arrived home a bit tired at quarter past eight. Happy, buoyant, and as hopeful that I have another week of chance to be a better person, a better servant of the Lord. And then the message came and I just felt cold, like how it feels when you get banged in the head, for a moment you're just expressionless. The message said that my soul brother's daughter has died unexpectedly due to dengue.

It seems so histrionic and overly dramatic of me to get affected. But there is something to be said about how it is between J, one of my bestfriends and my soul brother, and me. J and I, we share a bond that can be described only as a kinship. Like we were born siblings. When his sister, who was my namesake, died two years ago. We often joked that I've taken her place. That now I'll be his sister. And so that's how it's always been between the two of us. For the past months, especially, during my dark days, he was the one person who I know I could run to and who would help me without any strings attached. He'd come to my flat on a weekday just because I called him and needed someone to cry to. He was there, and he repeatedly advised me to stop what I was doing, even if he knew I was stubborn and was buoyed by hope and blind love. And when everything crashed, he was there to tell me, not I told you so's (which he could have said, because I think he'd advised me 100x but I kept doing the opposite!), but instead told me to let go of the past. I was always the one reaping the benefits of our kinship, I guess, just like a younger sister.

A week ago, he YMed me to tell me that he was going home to Pinas that afternoon because his daughter was being transferred to ICU, she has contacted dengue. Despite the dire situation,we still managed a laugh or two. I asked him if I could do anything for him but he said that he's okay and that he'll just text me if he needs extra help. He tells me that actually Arielle, his daughter, was now conscious and semi-stable and that she even requested a Mickey Mouse mp3 player from him as pasalubong. Nevertheless, she'll still be sent to ICU so that her signs could be monitored better. We laughed and I told him it's his child's way of lambing, and that at least they'll have a week of bonding time together.

Last friday, I texted him to say that I hope his daughter's okay already. And now, just as I arrived from a spiritually uplifting event, the crashing news of his daughter's death made me stop. It's like a reality was snatched, and something surreal and terrible have taken it's place. I could only imagine his loss, a father's loss. I remember Joan Didion, and her loss when her husband died. But is there anything heavier than to lose your own daughter, your angel, still innocent and pure at 10?

I talked to him just a few hours ago and he was trying to be calm and seemed collected. And we talked about it being a part of God's Plan. That though the whole thing is still too close by and muddled, that he has to believe that there is a reason why his angel was taken away so soon.

He tells me it seems that he's lost his purpose for working hard abroad. And maybe all he needs is time. I tell him he can choose to work in Pinas, or take an extended leave, but that he allow himself to grieve and find his balance in his own time. That there's no rush, he has no need to pretend that all is well again.

And that is my prayer. That in life, we go through grief and we gleam enlightenment from them, sometimes from our own, sometimes when we are open, we could even learn from other people's loss and pain. And that much as I have seen how we are made stronger by the experience of loss, that a big part of our strength came not from us but from people who have taken the time to share, and carry a part of our burden just by being there.

And so that is how life is. Grief and Enlightenment. And how it will be, I pray, for my brother who is now in the eye of the raging storm.