Crazy People

I used to think if I were God, I wouldn’t let anyone or anything die. I used to think that what I’d do – if I were God – is have people and animals and, in some cases, plants, get nourishment simply from the air they breathed. I would have no slaughter houses, no killer whales eating seals. And above all, I’d have no people die. Not ever. Not ever ever ever.

That’s what I used to think.

And my sister Anne and I talked about that once, in the way that sisters do – sisters who were raised Catholic and still had at some deep, fundamental level, a faith in something bigger than we are, maybe not a sentient God like most religions teach but most definitely a belief in something greater than ourselves.

Anne’s faith in a hands-on God seems not to have wavered throughout the years. Anne’s God answers prayers, hears the pleas of all His people (at least, I think that’s how Anne’s faith goes. I could be wrong).

However, I’m not wrong about the discussion she and I had about being God. It was over a year ago, and I told her I’d do away with death. For everyone. Including the baby birds, the seals, the deer, the manatee. (I wasn’t completely sure about some of the spiders down in Australia. Honestly, they just seem like a mistake and should never been around in the first place.)

Anne and I were on the phone talking about what we’d do – if we were God – and even as we were coming up with these grandiose plans, we were laughing. Because 1) we aren’t God, and no one in their right mind would want either of us in that role. Hell, I don’t think anyone in their right mind would even want us to be saints. (Maybe highly placed religious leaders. Maybe.), and 2) If we somehow managed to be God and somehow managed to do away with death, the whole frigging world would be over run with people, animals, plants – old life – and there would be no room for new life.

I knew that then. I know that now.

And maybe it’s not death that I would eradicate, maybe it’s the not knowing. Those of the more fundamental faiths, who are able to place all belief, all hope on the Bible or the Koran or the Book of Mormon, may claim to “know” what happens when we die, but I don’t believe that.

First, I don’t believe they really believe they “know,” as in the same way we know that if we touch a hot stove, we’re going to get burned, or in how we know that if a car going 60 miles per hour runs into us while we’re riding a bike, our chances of survival are pretty slim.

I think people of those more fundamental faiths tell themselves they do indeed “know” what happens once we die because it is comforting. And who doesn’t long for comfort?

And I think scientists who will claim to “know” what happens when we die, who will bring out their reports and studies and will point to the cessation of brain waves, the stopping of the heart, and  will explain death in clinical terms – I don’t think they know either. And I suspect they may claim that science can indeed enable us to “know” what happens, because science, in its own way, is also reassuring. It provides the illusion of truth.

I call it the illusion of truth because scientific “belief” changes. As Stephen Jay Gould argued in The Mismeasure of Man, scientific fact can – and is – frequently interpreted by very flawed individuals, resulting in such claims that African-Americans are less intelligent than European-Americans, and further claims that science can “prove” it.

Or as Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in For Her Own Good, much too often, scientists – these ones doctors – have turned too many female experiences, including childbirth and breast feeding, into medical conditions that needed a doctor’s intervention, which frequently resulted in the unnecessary deaths of women and infants.

So scientific “fact” doesn’t always impress me. My stepdad was a chemist, a brilliant man, who – if memory serves – knew Francis Crick, who with Maurice Wilkins, were academically credited for discovering the double helix, the structure of DNA. In 1968, when James Watson’s The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA was published, my stepdad used to talk to me about Crick and Watson and the rivalry between the two.

Those talks demystified science for me. Science wasn’t something beyond me that always contained the “absolute truth” of the universe. Science was filled with scientists – humans – who could, and probably were, just as flawed and fallible as the rest of us.

“Absolute truth” depends on historical context.

For both religion and science.

So where does that leave me? A woman raised by a devout, Catholic mother and an atheistic and scientific stepfather? And most important, how does that contribute in any way to the discussion Anne and I had about being God and eradicating death (and also doing away with mosquitoes and those scary spiders down in Australia)?

Well, for whatever reason, I woke up this morning thinking about death. Blame it on my untreated Hashimoto’s Disease or my Irish Catholic upbringing, but lately I’ve been battling mood fluctuations that invariably lead to some level of depression. And issues of mortality.

Cheery, eh?

But then this morning – even before coffee – I was thinking it’s not so much death that bothers me, it’s the grief.

Nobody knows what happens, where people – even animals – go when they die. I watched Temple Grandin, and there’s a wonderful scene where she has her arms around a cow that is about to be slaughtered, I believe through electrocution. And she has her arms around the animal and as it dies, she asks: “Where did it go? It was just here. Where did it go?”

And that’s the question. Where do we go? What happens? And the not knowing results in grief that no one ever “gets over.” What happens with grief is it just keeps seeping deeper and deeper into your psyche, meaning the grief, the loss, simply becomes a part of you. Not a gaping, bleeding wound and not even a scab, it’s almost as if the grief courses through your veins.

My mother died in 1966. I was 14 years old. I never “got over” her death. Instead, her death shaped me, became a part of me, left me much more sensitive to loss. When my stepdad died in 1990, it didn’t affect me as much because I was already 38. I’d already experienced significant loss.

The loss of a spouse, to me, is going to leave that same kind of reaction that I had to the loss of my mother. There is that absence, and when that absence is combined with not knowing what happens when we die, I think the grief can be overwhelming. I saw that with my stepdad when my mom died.

She died August 26, 1966. By that Labor Day – a week? maybe two later? – my dad wouldn’t come home at nights. He’d go out drinking. He had 7 kids, ranging in age from 17 down to 3. For a long time, I thought my dad was refusing to come home; now I think he couldn’t. My mom died at home. Her spirit infused that house. There were too many memories, and kids, when parents are upset, act out. It was simply impossible for him, given who he was, to come home to that house with those memories and seven kids who needed him.

He was in a terrible place. A place that no one could comfort. No one could reach.

So what I would do if I were God? I’d let people – even scientists – know with certainty what happens when we die, where we go. I wouldn’t ask that they rely on faith. I’d show them exactly what happens.

I’d alleviate their grief.

And I fully admit that showing people what death is, what happens, where we go might be a very bad idea. If we all knew we were going to heaven or paradise, maybe we wouldn’t push through all the hard stuff here on Earth.

Yet, unabated grief pulls families apart. It pulled my family apart. Instead of turning to one another for comfort, we went outside the family. Or we shut down. Or like my stepdad, we drank.

None of that worked. At least not for me. I had to re-experience the grief I felt at losing my mom until I could somehow incorporate it into my being, so I could somehow accept being the ‘motherless child’ I was.

And now I see – and this is only my perspective – grief threatening to pull apart my own family and that of Jonathan’s.

Mental illness brings with it grief. Parents grieve for what their child could have been, could have become had it not been for the illness. Spouses and partners grieve for what they’ll never have – a partnership. Children – no matter the age – grieve for the parent who is mentally ill and for the parent opting to stay, to provide care, support, and love.

The problem then arises – just as it did when my mother died – is that people don’t want to deal with that level of grief. Grief is an uncomfortable emotion; it leaves people feeling much too vulnerable. Easier to be angry.

However, mental illness is a tragedy, and anger won’t make it go away. Nothing will make it ‘go away.’ Mental illness can never be cured. It can be treated and managed but not cured, and it has a tremendous emotional impact on everyone affected by it.

It’s not fun.

So if I could revisit what I’d do if I were God for just a minute, I’d remind everyone of the inevitability of death. (I don’t believe scientists will ever figure out how to make any of us live forever. I don’t believe that for a second.)

And, if I were God, as I’m reminding people of the inevitability of death, I’d maybe hit them over the head with a hammer, or maybe a brick, and let them know that death can actually be a blessing – and not only because is causes the cessation of pain – but because it reminds us – if we let it – that we are mortal beings. We have only a very limited time on this earth. And since we have such a limited time, we need to make each moment count.

We need to pick our battles.

We need to forgive.

We need to recognize that people are fragile; they make mistakes. Sometimes they make huge, hurtful mistakes, but we still need to accept what they did, forgive what they did, and move on.

So that’s what I would do if I were God:

I’d make people get along.

 

Thank you to Heaven Help Us for the clipart.