Dear ol'cs,

I just read your "I've often wondered" post for the first time. It stops me in my tracks, such as they are...

I would say that my heart goes out to you, and it does. I would say that you deserve better, and you do. I would say that things will get better, and they will, if for no other reason than the nature of life--as you well know--is change.

Yet all of those words sound so cliche and naive and patronizing and, well, just plain dumb. So let me see if I can say anything novel and respectful and, well, let's hope for the best. You decide.

You began with, "How does cancer, or the death of a child, or profound mental illness feel?" Like a blindsiding divorce, like a betrayal of Judas-Jesus proportions, like a train wreck with just one comatose survivor, like PD's relentless etching away. If we are lucky, each of these burns. It stabs, aches, haunts, terrorizes. It stalks, devours, colonizes, emaciates, darkens. It maddens; it levels. It relents; it returns, again and again. To ease our suffering, we tell ourselves that it also teaches, seasons, clarifies, softens, humbles. Sometimes this is true. But did we want those lessons? Did we want that development, that gentleness, that humility? Did we ask for it?

What we want--with every cell of our being--is for the gluttonous cancer to surrender instead of our 5'4", grammar-perfect, PhD'd sister who read to us when we were preschoolers. We want the dark men with bright eyes and sharp knives to un-stab our 23-year-old husband, leaving him unscathed. We want the father of our children to overcome his brilliant, tortured mind's not insubstantial challenges and step up as a dad.

We want what we had (or dreamed that we had), what we know, what we thought we could count on. We want the faith of a child that everything will be all right. We want to avoid pain, which is really avoiding life. We want to stay the puer aeternus, or perpetual child, as a way of delaying our awareness of our own mortality. How do we do this? We believe that it is all about us.

I can't speak about your marriage, cs, nor pretend to understand. I can barely understand my life. Yet here are the mistakes I have perfected:

(1) Thinking the loved one's seemingly or actually unacceptable behavior negates their love for you or yours for them.

(2) Confusing intention with ability.

(3) Seeing our loved one's better angels as their only angels.

(4) Underestimating the loved one's weaknesses/fragility.

(5) Needing our loved one's to conform to our expectations in order to shore up our own behavior, values, world view, sense of security, etc.

What I am clumsily getting at is, well, I'm not precisely sure. Don't take her actions personally? Yeah, that's it. I guess. Good thing I didn't come up with anything cliche, naive, condescending or dumb. Sigh.

My heart doesn't go out to you. It is WITH you.
-Rose