“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” ― C.S. Lewis
A parent’s relationship to pain cannot help but be passed on to their children. Like many of you, my mother’s complicated relationship with pain was passed on to me.
Here is one my early stories of pain that might be familiar to some of you.
One evening Mom and Dad took us five kids out to eat (a rare occasion) at a place called Ida and Gene’s. I was pretty unschooled in the ways of the world so when Dad left money on the table (for a tip) I picked up the money and ran to the car to tell Dad he had left money behind. Well, as he went back to the restaurant to return the tip money Mom was wrestling one of the kids into the car. What happened then was an event I would never forget.
The car door was slammed hard on my mother’s right hand. I mean slammed, with a force that shattered the bones leaving her hand broken, bloody and bruised. We all were petrified to see Mom in anguishing pain.
When Dad came back we thought for certain mother would go to the hospital, but there would be no hospital.
- not then,
- nor the next day,
- nor the day following.
Mother wrapped her broken hand in a towel and remained in agony for days.
I was stunned, as were my brothers and sisters, at Mom’s obstinate refusal to have her broken hand treated but she would not be persuaded. Dad, as usual, left the next day on a business trip and Mom was left alone to deal with her injury. As would be the story of her life, Mom would bear her cross stoically, and always alone.
After almost a week she did go to the hospital but by this time her bones had incorrectly set and her hand was left with only limited use. This was a confusing lesson for me and my brothers and sisters.
- We couldn’t understand why Mother resisted treatment,
- Why she insisted on always going it ALONE,
- Why she chose to agonize alone ~ always alone ~ always in silence ~ away in her room.
“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.” ― Søren Kierkegaard
To this day I’ve wondered about Mom’s early years and how she came to this accommodation of pain. Toward the end of her life, we would go on long drives and she would, on occasion, share a revealing thought. I came to see some of the forces that had engineered her psychological hard-wiring. Mother was a silent cross bearer.
She had no guidance other than her Catholic faith. Her own parents were unaccustomed and inarticulate in reflecting upon their personal lives.
- Hers was a world where deep reflective conversations were rare.
- Parents did not share their feelings with their children.
- Emotions were private and kept under lock and key.
Mother’s life had always been a struggle – poverty, the depression, the war, five kids, widowhood. Mom knew the cross part of her Christian faith. But nobody seemed to have shared with her about the resurrection part.
“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?” ― John Keats
But I suspect my mother was not alone in this regard. How many of us really use our pain and suffering to signal in a new day, a new understanding, a new life? How many of us live only to remount our ever present cross?
Sobriety has taught me to:
- Reach out to friends when I’m in pain
- Feel my pain long enough to get through it
- Avoid the cause of the pain (if I can)
And most of all, to put the pain to good use. To let it teach me what it will and then share what I’ve learned with others.
Oh yea, and one other thing: To hang out more by the empty tomb than the empty cross.
The truth is, we are not alone ~ someone is always an outreach away!
Just a thought…
Pat
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