compassion

june 23 2011. today a mother and father lost their son. did you feel it?

bodies lose souls, souls depart bodies every day. i guess we won't know until we die ourselves what that can feel like, but i'm convinced we can still feel the loss, the departure...we have a sense. part of us was designed to bond. we connect to each other. we lose each other.

or perhaps more appropriately we misplace each other. living separated by tinted glass. only with the right lighting will we see beyond.

because the shift of life from one place to another is happening constantly, maybe we don't always recognize each loss each moment. until it happens closer. until our connection is directly tied.

i believe my favorite human capacity is compassion. when one human’s heart can ache in sync with another’s, when one can provide skeletal support for another whose skin is the only thing keeping their insides in. insides dissolving in grief, pressing into tears, quaking from a shattered core, echoed in hollow sobs.

the man i saw who held his collapsing wife was father. his courage…to be strong enough for mother to mourn; one strong so two wouldn’t crumble. the woman who held her face in trembling hands was mother. Her sobs…her soul was torn and life bled from her heart. her youngest son. his body still; hers curling around her wounds, seeking safety, as an embryo.

her youngest son.

had time off from work and went out on the river with some buddies. they went out after and had a few drinks. when they got home he laid down, slept. friends went to work. came home, tried waking him up. he was gone. there, but gone. he was twenty-eight years. son, brother, uncle.

i have no sons but i have a 30 year old brother and a 30 year old uncle. i have a close connection to the situation through my love for these two men who could represent an equivalent loss in my life. i love my mother and father and would feel pain to see them mourn as this couple for their son. same if it were my grandparents mourning for my uncle. compassion struck me through imagining their reality as my own. my heart dropped to the bottom of my lungs and for a moment both forgot what they were any good for.

Truth is, reality is, even when a child escapes the womb and grows for 28 years, the mother keeps an embryonic connection to the precious human, in her heart, a love always developing and moving inside her. It is a love she hopes to die with, never to survive its early disconnection…of course the love remains and is not lessened, but its earthly connection, manifestation, mind and body pair, physical interaction cease. it's loss of life. a mother's life is her children. she loses life when a child is lost. two lives lost though only one heart stops...

a healthy heart experiences new births daily, new persons arrive to be loved, new ideas to cradle, new feelings and thoughts to nurture, new sights and sounds to be gathered and held dear. a normal heart experiences frequent deaths. the familiar flow of life, of things, is interrupted. we bleed.

all the bumps and scratches and bruises and cuts get bandaged and kissed better. eventually. we have to allow the compassion of others to carry us when we cannot continue.

blood carries life. mother carries child. life carries problems. love carries solutions. love carries life.

when your love is bleeding, accept transfusions of compassion. love is a universal donor. the heart is a universal recipient. open it. sure, blood and life are designed to replenish themselves, but it can take a while after major loss.

carry love in your heart always. be a love donor.

love does not end in death. no, death isn't even really an end because of love.

what i felt in one moment, a frame of vision, proves to me there is enough love in this universe to fill every person.

compassion. compass. passion.

the possible range of all emotion: suffering, mourning, grief; of love, kindness, mercy, joy; the north and south of mortality, this was encompassed in the passion of Jesus Christ. His life, his blood, given in sacrifice for the healing of all mortal frailties, provides transfusion for compassion. for life when it is lost. no life is lost because of Him. because He carries life. because of love.

compassion is nobility in humanity.