I remember...

... when Ben borrowed our Sprinter van
about 4 years ago in Tucumán.

Then one of those torrential downpours
hit. The sort that the local boys anticipate
by filling the storm water drains with
empty plastic bottles, just so the roads
will flood and they will earn a peso or two
pushing stalled cars out of the flood.

Ben thought the Sprinter would go
through almost a metre of water. It
didn't. Water went into the engine
and this bent connecting rod was
the result. It took a number of local
boys and more than a peso to push the
car all the way home.

More thoughts about the paradox of being and not-being and time

Unlike the future, the past is so fixed. There is no changing it. It's
set in stone for good, or for ill. Yes, it can be reinterpreted,
forgotten, forgiven or misremembered. But not changed in its 'having
happenedness'.

As for the future, we mostly believe in the future; in its openness
and possibilities. We believe, perhaps naively, that we can forge our
future. And for those of us who do believe that, then the future is
mostly not a threat. For Christians too the future holds hope and
confidence.

The past also has an ambiguous presence in the here and now. It is
presence because all that we are today is rooted in the past. Without
our past we are nothing now. So the past is overwhelmingly present
today. But at the same time the past is so thoroughly past and passed:
in a second it is gone and I cannot change it, go back to it, erase
it. And I cannot hold onto it, which of course is what we want to do
with Ben. Just to touch him again and to hear his voice. To have him
alive in the present and not have him as a past presence.

Yes we walk by faith. But we admit that our eternal hope of reuniting
with Ben is of a different order and only understood dimly from this
side of the veil. And right now - to confuse a metaphor - we'd rather
have the devil we knew in his tangible earthly body. We don't want him
as only past and future, we want him present too. Is that
faithlessness? I hope not. Just human anguish speaking out.

In the present he is not here. He is so gone. Untouchable. Yet so
present in all that we are and think and do. I still get confused
about how many people should be around the table when we are "all" at
home. This must be part of the offense of death - the paradox of the
presence/absence of the dead one. The unfathomable paradox that makes
us wrinkle our faces in pained perplexity and cry out "No, it can't
be!"

Chris

PS If you are a student of Heidegger or Augustine or Gadamer or just
the school of hard knocks, and you take offense at my theology or
philosophy, feel free to comment on these rambling thoughts as I try
and make sense of this part of the journey. Of course the blog owner
reserves the right to only publish comments that seem useful and
edifying!

From my reading today: Gadamer says, "That a proposition is more than
the representation of a given objective content means, above all, that
it belongs to the whole of a historical existence and that it is
contemporaneous with everything that makes its presence felt in it."

If that sounds complicated, try reading it slowly in the light of any
proposition that matters (like, "Ben died four months ago." or "God so
loved the world...") and you feel the weight of history and personal
experience coming into the present to fill out the enormous meaning of
propositions such as those.

Excuse me God

Excuse me God?

Oh hi. It's Lindy here.

I'm sorry to interrupt you but I was wondering...

It's a bit awkward...

The thing is, um... I think there's been a mistake.

I know it's a bit rude of me but I thought well, maybe you were a bit busy
half way through last year and you got Ben mixed up with someone else.

No. Of course that doesn't mean I think someone else instead of Ben should
have gone through it.

I've been thinking about it a lot and I really think that there was a
blooper somewhere.

An administrative error perhaps? New PA or something?

I'm running out of credit so I'm going to have to call back but would you
have a spare second or two to look up your records and see whether there was
a mistake and that Ben is after all supposed to live to be a father and
grandfather?

I know that you are ok at reversing things so I thought it was worth asking
you on the off chance that there has been a giant mistake, and you hadn't
realised it, but you'd fix it up straight away now that you knew.

Please please please don't forget to check for me :-)

When better is worse and worse is better

It's over four months now since Ben died and less than ten months
since he was first diagnosed.

I'm a bit confused really. My problem is that when I feel a bit
better about Ben's death I feel worse and when I feel worse I feel
better. Mmm... sounds like I am confused doesn't it? But perhaps it
all makes sense. I think it goes like this:

As time goes by, my experience (and I only speak for myself) is that
my moments of anguish and tears are getting more spaced out. So on
that score, I'm feeling a bit better. But as I reflect on that, I feel
the pain of letting go of Ben and not feeling the intenisity of pain
that losing him deserves. If I don't feel that intensity then it seems
he's further away and I am not valuing the relationship as I should.
And for that, I feel worse. So when I feel better I also feel worse.

And when I feel worse I feel better because the most painful moments
are also the moments of feeling closest to Ben: remembering his voice
and life together and moments in hospital, particularly the last few
days.

So grief has its stages and ambiguities doesn't it? And for the
counsellors amongst this blog's readers: don't worry, I'm not racked
with guilt for not feeling worse... but thank you for caring!

May this Easter be a time of thinking about resurrection and the One
in whom Ben trusted for his own resurrection.

Chris