Saying goodbye to Gisele

My longtime friend since childhood, Gisele, passed away yesterday. She was sixty-six years old and had suffered with a degenerative neurological disease called multiple system atrophy for the past nine years. She was hospitalized this past weekend for Covid but in her weakened state due to her illness, was not able to recover from it. Since her diagnosis in 2014, we have tried to talk every Sunday, and for the most part, have managed to do so. We talked a lot about her situation and her feelings, my feelings and the feelings of friends and family. We talked about life, work, retirement, and traveling. She loved to travel and probably would have bought an apartment in Paris if she hadn't become ill. Her father was born in France and she had a special affinity for the country. 

Before she became ill, we traveled together and had fun together, with trips to Paris and Dublin among some of the more memorable trips. When her illness reached the point where it impaired her ability to drive, I would drive her around Westchester and we would revisit the haunts of our youth. She was an incredibly honest and open person and I learned a lot from her. Candid is the word I would use to describe her. She did not waste time, either hers or other's; her life and the lives of others mattered. She valued others. She chose her words and her advice carefully, but if something needed to be said, she could say it. I've known her for most of my life. We grew up together in the same neighborhood; she lived right around the corner. When we were teenagers, we hung out at her house after dinner during the summer months, talking and laughing and listening to WPLJ, the radio station with all the major pop and rock hits of the day. Her parents were welcoming and hospitable, much like mine. Her grandmother (father's mother) lived with them and had a black dog named Fluffy, who would go crazy with happiness when he met you at the door. Her father had a great sense of humor, which sometimes annoyed Gisele if his joking got too close for comfort. When I moved to Norway, he would sometimes greet me with 'How is it up there in Iceland'? He knew perfectly well where I lived, but he made me laugh, and she did too. How many times we talked about boyfriends, how many times we met in Manhattan to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, after which we would go to the museum restaurant to eat dessert and drink coffee. She and I had differing views about going to discos; I loved to go and dance, she did not. I know I dragged her to some discos a few times before she decided she didn't want to go anymore. As we got older, we talked about work problems (she was an elementary school teacher, I was a researcher). It was interesting that despite different work environments, many of the problems were the same--idiotic bosses, backbiting, gossiping colleagues. She never married or had children, mostly because she never met the right man with whom to have a family. We had our differences, but during a friendship that spanned over fifty years, one might expect that. She was honest about her own failings, even though it took some time to admit to them, as it does for us all. At her core she was a seeker of spiritual things, and I have some wonderful books that she gave me through the years that attest to that. I will miss her for always.  

My eulogy for Gisele: 

It’s been a long journey for Gisele, a journey into the mostly unknown. We who loved her joined her on that journey, offering support as best we could. Multiple system atrophy. MSA. No one had ever heard about it before or knew anything about it. But Gisele dealt with this new event in her life the way she dealt with most things—with courage and strength. She was brave and honest with herself and others. She was not afraid to talk about her illness, to research it, or to try different ways of tackling it. She knew that no ready cure for it existed, but she discovered that she could slow its progression if she made certain dietary adjustments, and she did and it worked for some time.

Today we have come to the end of one journey and the beginning of another. Gisele had faith, she prayed, and she believed in a heaven that existed for the faithful. During the past year, she told me that she was ready to meet God, and I know that she is with God and her parents now. There is so much I could say about her, about her love and loyalty and caring for others, about her sense of humor (inherited from her father) and her laugh. She was not her illness and she was adamant about that. She didn’t want to focus on what the illness had taken away from her, even though she grieved each loss while trying to accept them. But she lived in the present and chose not to focus on the past. She has a forever place in my heart.

Remembering Frank

I found out yesterday that one of my former bosses at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where I worked in the 1980s, passed away this past August. Frank was one of the cytometry triumvirate at the Laboratory for Investigative Cytology together with Zbigniew and Myron. Myron passed away in 2013 after battling pancreatic cancer for six years. I remember when I interviewed for the job of daily manager of the flow cytometry core facility, I ended up interviewing with Myron and Frank, as well as with Don, who was another senior scientist in the lab. I had experience in biophysical techniques from my first job, and I guess that contributed to my getting the job. 

Myron, Zbigniew and Frank were wonderful men to work for, and I treasure my time in their lab. I've written about this lab several times before in this blog. I had most to do with Frank on a daily basis. He was my immediate boss and he taught me everything I know about flow cytometry. There was almost no scientific question he couldn't answer, and he was generous with his time and help. He was also very protective of his employees and stood firmly on our side whenever conflicts arose with external labs. He seemed to be unflappable, but when he did get mad, which happened once or twice in the seven years I worked with him, it was best not to be on the receiving end of his anger. I pitied the scientists who ended up having any sorts of conflicts with him. They knew that without his help, their projects would become stranded. If he thought something was stupid, he said so, complete with sarcastic comments and a roll of his eyes. And he was usually right. He didn't waste his own time or others' time, and he didn't allow anyone else to waste his employees' time. He put his foot down firmly and simply stopped the nonsense in its tracks. I learned a lot from him about how to protect my own employees through the years. I could wish that some of my other leaders in recent times were as good a leader as he was.  

I have fond memories of my time in the lab--we worked hard together and traveled together to conferences. In August 1987, our lab went to a Society for Analytical Cytology meeting that was held in Cambridge, England. It was my first trip abroad, and I was so looking forward to having a proper British tea experience. I am quite sure that I never shut up about it, and probably drove most people around me crazy. But when we got to Cambridge, I wandered around the city together with Frank and Jola, a postdoc in the lab, trying to find just the right tea shop. It had to be just the right one. Frank was very patient while I hunted around and settled on just the right one. And then we enjoyed great tea, good scones, raspberry jam and clotted cream. I was in heaven. I'm sure Frank humored me, but that was the kind of man he was--he had infinite patience with people he liked, and I was one of them. 

I also remember that all of us (there must have been at least six or seven of us from the lab who traveled to Cambridge) decided to go punting on the river Cam. Frank and another senior scientist Jan took turns trying to punt, which turned out to be not at all easy. Steering a large boat without banging into the other boats and without losing your balance were quite challenging. Frank managed it, but just barely, and I remember thinking that it would be terrible if he fell into the river. There were a couple of times when he and Jan very nearly fell into the water. The fact that Frank was the consummate New Yorker--well-dressed, with nice shoes and leather jacket--would have made falling in even worse as it would have ruined his clothing and shoes. But that was Frank; I don't think he considered the possibility that he could fall into the water or that he couldn't learn to punt. They didn't fall in, and they did learn to punt. Other things I remember about him--he smoked too much, and we were always trying to get him to quit cigarette smoking. One of his technicians would bring him a big bowl of sliced carrots, celery and cucumbers so that he wouldn't smoke on Great American Smokeout Day in November of each year. But he never quit as far as I know. I also remember that at one of our lab parties at his Manhattan apartment, he played Roxy Music's Avalon album for us. To this day, I cannot hear the song More than This without thinking of him. 

As fate would have it, I met my husband Trond at the same conference in Cambridge when he came to sit with our lab group one evening at one of the local pubs. That was the kind of lab group we were--welcoming to others from all countries. You could sit down with us and just start chatting. Our lab in New York was multinational, with scientists from many different countries--among them Poland, Italy, Sweden, and Germany. Scientists visited the lab while traveling through on their way to other meetings in the USA. My husband did just that; he said that he remembers seeing me in the lab when he came to visit Frank and the others. I don't remember that. But we did end up meeting again in Cambridge. Even though I moved to Norway, I stayed in touch with the Memorial lab. Working there was one of the best experiences of my life. 

Remembering Debby

I sometimes go through old photos, looking at the life that was, thirty or forty years ago. I did that a few months ago and found a photo of myself and my friend Debby from the early 1980s, taken in the lab at PHRI where I worked at that time--my first full-time job in Manhattan. She had just gotten married and had moved to Manhattan with her husband; he was starting his medical residency and she was starting her doctoral work in the same lab where I worked as a research assistant. We hit it off almost immediately, and spent our free periods in the lab talking about life, careers, and relationships. I had just finished my master's degree and was interested in doing doctoral work, but as it turned out, that opportunity came much later in my life. I worked in that lab for three years and met some interesting people working at all sorts of jobs--technicians, academics, computer experts, cleaning ladies, and secretaries. I stayed in touch with Debby after I left the lab for a new position at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Our life paths diverged quite a bit after that, but we always stayed in touch. She called me on my birthday every year and we would spend an hour or two catching up on our lives. She had two children to take care of, a house to run, and in her later years she helped her husband with the business side of his medical practice and took care of her elderly mother.

Debby passed away this past Tuesday. She was sixty-four years old and had been sick for about four years with a rare disease called progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). PSP is a degenerative disease involving the gradual deterioration and death of specific volumes of the brain that control balance, movement, eye movement, and cognition. Loss of balance, falling, the inability to focus the eyes, and dementia are often the outcomes. There is no cure for PSP. Her condition progressed very quickly; I understood that the last time I saw her. Even though we did not see each other much during the past thirty years, I count her as one of my close friends. She was one of the kindest people I've ever known. I don't think I ever heard a mean word come out of her mouth. She gave up her research career to focus on her family. In her later years, she admitted to me that she missed the lab, and I think had she not gotten sick, that she would have gone back to work in the lab in some capacity. But she never got the chance. I am glad that I sent her the photo of the two of us a few months ago. I wrote that it reminded me of our good times together. We look happy and carefree in that photo, and that's how I want to remember her. 

Cries of despair

Yesterday as I was walking to the garden down the road I usually take, I became aware of two seagulls flying overhead, quite agitated, swooping down and circling and then rising again. Their calls were piercing and intense, and I began to wonder what was going on. As I continued to walk, I noticed something that looked like a small fur ball a short distance in front of me, on the sidewalk. As I got closer, I saw that it was a baby seagull, folded into a ball, dead on the pavement. My heart sank when I saw him; I knew there was nothing I could do for him. I am not sure how he died, but his parents were panicked and in despair over the death of their baby. It did not appear to have been hit by a car or bitten to death by a dog (which I have seen several times in the past few months). The mother especially kept swooping down and ‘talking’ to the baby gull, perhaps in the hope that he would respond. I think she was also letting the world know that she had lost her baby, and she wanted us to pay attention, to give her the attention she so desperately wanted. The incident brought tears to my eyes. I spoke to the mother and told her that I could feel and hear her despair, because it was despair she was feeling. I acknowledged her despair. It occurred to me that we don’t always understand the animal and bird world; they are sentient beings and they understand death, especially the deaths of their young. It’s not often we are witness to such death, but it made me cry to see it.

Since the pandemic lockdown started, there are more birds that have found their way into the city and into the garden, seagulls especially. Perhaps this is due to the fact that there is very little ship and cruise traffic, such that there is not much food for them at sea. Seagulls are scavengers and eat a lot of the refuse and leftovers that ships leave in their wake. The reason for the increase in bird numbers remains unclear, but I know that I am sharing my daily life with more birds, which makes me happy. But I also know that they are at risk of being injured or killed in their interactions with humans, dogs, cats, and cars, and that there will probably be more deaths.

I thought about how I have been unable to really cry since my brother died five years ago. I cried a lot when I first got the news of his untimely and unexpected death. But in the months and years afterward, it’s been hard for me to cry. It’s not that I am not touched by what goes on around me, it’s just that I have not really been able to cry. It as though something in me wants to, but a numbing lid gets put on those feelings. I guess some of it is a protective reaction to being deeply hurt. But this past week, there was a news story about a five year old boy in England named Tony Hudgell, a double amputee (he has prosthetic legs) who was inspired by Captain Tom Moore, the 100-year-old veteran who raised thousands for the NHS by walking around his garden. Tony decided to challenge himself to walk a little each day to raise money for the NHS, and as of yesterday he had raised over £700,000 target. I watched the video of this brave little boy, and my heart went out to him. His pluckiness and persistence in the face of his odds made me cry. It took a little boy who has suffered incredibly, already at his young age, to make me cry. He lost his legs due to abuse suffered at the hands of his birth parents; he has since been adopted by good people. I despair at times at the injustice of life, that allows parents to do this to a child. I wanted to scoop him up into my arms and hug him, he is so cheerful and sweet. You can read more about him here:   https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-53066749

A young woman who used to work for me was diagnosed with lung cancer about five years ago. In the space of those five years, she has undergone surgery to remove the lung tumor, chemotherapy that weakened her permanently, radiotherapy, brain surgery to remove the few metastases that found their way to her brain, immunotherapy, and now radiotherapy again because the brain metastases have returned in large numbers. Following her initial brain surgery, she had to undergo physical therapy to help her learn to walk again. The immunotherapy has made her very sensitive to sound and to light. She does not have many months left on this earth, and this too makes me want to cry out in despair. She has been so brave through everything she has experienced; she has suffered quietly and has always had a positive and encouraging word for others when we have visited her. She and others I know who have terminal cancer, have shown me that it is possible to co-exist with the unfairness of their illnesses, but I still feel like screaming when I think of all that they go through and have gone through. I know there is little I can do for them, and that is perhaps also what bothers me. There has been and will continue to be, loss of loved ones due to illness or old age. I know this, and that is perhaps one of the reasons I have not been able to cry. I am steeling myself for these eventualities. But it is impossible to really do that. There is no way to shut out the feelings. I think I have been afraid of drowning in those feelings if I let them get the upper hand. So I have kept them under lock and key until this past week. They are no longer under lock and key.

Cemetery Road--my new poetry collection

I recently published my fifth collection of poetry, entitled Cemetery Road. It was written following my brother's death in 2015. As the book description reads:

How do we deal with the death of a loved one? These poems were written following the untimely death of the author's brother, and touch on our ever-present awareness of mortality as well as on our feelings of loss and grief in connection with death. They also touch on the losses that all of us experience as we age, be they letting go of our past or of our identities in society, and the grief attached to both.

It is available on Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/y4ww8xh4

Saying goodbye to a wonderful teacher and a dear friend

Some people come into your life and stay there for a lifetime. They are sent to you by God, for a reason. They are generous people--with their time, their patience, their kindness, and their encouragement. They touch your life and change it forever, settling as they do into your heart. If you are so lucky to know such a person, you know that you have been blessed. I honor such a person today--my high school English teacher Brendan (born in Ireland) who noticed the quiet reserved student, and who encouraged her to write poetry. He died yesterday, after a long illness. We had corresponded on and off during the past forty years, mostly during the past decade after our high school reunion in 2009. And of course we connected on Facebook along with everyone else. But gradually there were less and less emails as his illness robbed him of the abilities to walk and to use his hands to write. But the desire to share a poem with me, or vice versa, was always there. Our mutual interest in all things poetic was in itself, poetic. It's not everyday you find someone with whom you can discuss poetry. I will miss that about him, and so much more. He made room for people in his life, and I see from the condolences on his Facebook wall that those many people remember him now. Many of them feel the same way about him as I do, for different reasons. He brought out the best in everyone. He left this world on the same day, January 17th, as the well-known American poet, Mary Oliver, whose poems we both liked. I am sure he has found his home in heaven now. I'd like to think that he and my father, who also loved all things literary, will find a moment together to share and discuss a favorite poem or two should they meet. I hope they do.

There is a poem I wrote when I returned from my first visit to Ireland in 2011, a poem that he really liked. He was thrilled to hear at that time that I had finally gotten to Ireland. I include the poem here. Rest in peace, my dear friend. Fear, dread, and death no longer have any power over you.

In the Shadows of Giants

I walk in the shadows of giants
Stand in the splendor of kings
Mute in the presence of tyrants
Lost in the halls that sing

I roam the passage that beckons
Ancient the call that keens
Lithe is the fairy that reckons
Spirit remains unseen

I fly in the temple of sinners
Eat at the tables of saints
Join with the forces of winners
Scarce are the jabs and the feints

I reel in the smoke of the fire
That burns in the halls of the kings
Fly in the face of ire
Sail with the lords of the rings

I forage the future of time
Divine with the rod of the druids
All things about me sublime
All things about me are fluid

I stand in the shadows of giants
Walk in the presence of lights
Far out upon the horizon
Dancing about me like sprites

I speak in the tongues of the ancients
Keen with the songs of the dead
Free my soul from the dungeons
Of fear, of death, and of dread

Copyright 2011 Paula Mary De Angelis

Remembering my brother

It is three years ago today that my brother Raymond passed away. He is always in my thoughts. I hope his children remember what a great dad he was to them. I remember how close he and I were as teenagers and young adults, and how Manhattan was 'our' place where we met for lunch and dinner when I was in town. When we were in our twenties, we would get together with friends and all go dancing. Those were fun times and great memories. I will always remember his uncanny ability for imitating Mel Blanc, who did the voices of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Ray could do their voices as good as Mel Blanc. And I will remember the triathlons and interest in biking (my interest as well) that kept him fit and happy in his twenties. Our lives took separate paths once we both married, but we remained close and shared our thoughts on life, love and work. Whenever I see him in my mind's eye, it is as the vibrant and positive person he always was. So this poem is for him today.........

Do not stand at my grave and weep    by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

Second anniversary

The second anniversary of my brother’s death is approaching, and I have been aware of its approach for well over a month now. My anxiety levels are heightened; the memory of that day at work when I received the news that he had passed away will live forever in my mind and heart. I have no idea how parents who lose their children feel, just that I know it is probably an indescribable feeling, one that stays with you for the rest of your life. It does not feel right or normal (in the natural way of things) to lose your sibling at the age of fifty-four. Nevertheless, when I look around me and talk to others, I see that it is far more frequent than one would like to admit. I have friends who have lost their siblings to cancer and to other illnesses.

But the anxiety is also connected to my own heightened awareness of time passing. There is no question in my mind now that I will spend the rest of my life writing. Each day, each week, each month is the continual quest to find time, more time, and even more time—to write. And the more I want the time and the more I want to write, the less time is given me. Work duties pile up, there are suddenly more students to guide, a new technician to plan work together with, and a new article to write about a very interesting topic—DNA repair in inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer. Do I mind? No. But the little voice inside of me is always talking to me, telling me to write and to find the time to write. It doesn’t help that getting older involves getting tired much earlier in the evening than before. I used to guard the three or four hours after dinner and before I went to bed very carefully; I was selfish with my time. Now those hours have been reduced to maybe two good writing hours, because I am more tired. And so it goes.

Do I regret choosing a research career over a literary one? It may seem that way to you, my readers, at times. But no, I don’t. I’ve realized that my creative energy went into something really amazing—the opportunity to hypothesize and to test my hypotheses, and some few times the results led to some really good publications, articles that I’m proud of. Research science in its purest form is a truly creative endeavor. So I am glad that I was able to engage in this type of work activity for so long. But that hasn’t stopped me from wanting to write and from actually writing--poetry, short stories, novels and other types of literature. I’ve been writing since I was fourteen years old. But it is poetry that is closest to my heart, closest to describing the person I really am. I have published four volumes of poetry, and am currently working on a fifth, which will be a volume of poems having to do with death, mortality, and grief. It derives its inspiration from my brother’s death, and some of the poems are about him and about coming to terms with the loss of a man I truly loved, despite what life threw at us over the years. His life was far from easy; I know that now. He shared very little of what really transpired in his life during the last five years of his life. I don’t know why, and that reality will haunt me forever. I think he wanted me to read between the lines, and I just wasn’t on that page together with him. So his death has taught me to be more silent, to listen more, and to try to understand the road that each individual person I know is on. Each person’s journey toward the end of life is a different one, even though we all end at the same place. 

I've also had the unique pleasure of discovering a new young writer, the daughter of a friend here in Norway. My friend had told her daughter that I write poetry and that I have published some books. Her daughter, who is nineteen years old, has just written her first book about her teenage struggle with anorexia, and wondered if I would like to read it and comment on it. I have read it, and it is an impressive first book. While the topic will not appeal to all readers, I can truthfully say that she has written a gripping and realistic book about an illness that is nearly impossible to cure, and has done so using notes and journals that she has kept since she was fifteen. When I talk to her, I remember my own teenage years, some of the influences that started me writing, and the need to write. Unless you have experienced that need, you will not understand it. It is a psychological need that spills over into the physical realm; the need to write is something that rides you, doesn’t leave you alone, causes anxiety, spurs you on, needles you, taunts you when you are lazy, and criticizes you when you let yourself be distracted. It keeps you on target, keeps you focused on the goal. If you don’t pay attention to it, it will lead to sleepless nights, distracted unfocused days, irritability, depression and anxiety. My friend’s daughter understands this already at nineteen years of age. So that is why I cannot say that my current anxiety is coupled only to the second anniversary of my brother’s death. It is coupled to the need to write and to the barriers that stand in the way of doing so. Because my brother’s death, like the need to write, are reminders that time is passing, that life is short, and that time is not be wasted. Time is a gift that is given to us, and we have to use it wisely.

Probably my favorite song by Prince

"Some say a man ain't happy, Unless a man truly dies, Oh why, Time, time".

Rest in peace, Prince.

I remembered yesterday that my brother Ray, who died last year at the age of 54, loved Prince's music. So my heart got ripped open yet again (like after David Bowie died), because these artists remind me of my brother. I realized yesterday that this is how the rest of life will be defined--dealing with loss and letting go. The challenge will be to find joy in the midst of all the sorrow.


"Sign O' The Times"

Oh yeah
In France a skinny man
Died of a big disease with a little name
By chance his girlfriend came across a needle
And soon she did the same
At home there are seventeen-year-old boys
And their idea of fun
Is being in a gang called The Disciples
High on crack, totin' a machine gun

Time, time

Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling off a church
And killed everyone inside
U turn on the telly and every other story
Is tellin' U somebody died
Sister killed her baby cuz she couldn't afford 2 feed it
And we're sending people 2 the moon
In September my cousin tried reefer 4 for the very first time
Now he's doing horse, it's June

Times, times

It's silly, no?
When a rocket ship explodes
And everybody still wants 2 fly
Some say a man ain't happy
Unless a man truly dies
Oh why
Time, time

Baby make a speech, Star Wars fly
Neighbors just shine it on
But if a night falls and a bomb falls
Will anybody see the dawn
Time, times

It's silly, no?
When a rocket blows
And everybody still wants 2 fly
Some say a man ain't happy, truly
Until a man truly dies
Oh why, oh why, Sign O the Times

Time, time

Sign O the Times mess with your mind
Hurry before it's 2 late
Let's fall in love, get married, have a baby
We'll call him Nate... if it's a boy

Time, time

Time, time

December reflections

We are midway through December and nearly at the end of another year. We are also more than halfway through Advent—a time before Christmas in the Christian church that lends itself to reflection. I haven’t written much on this blog lately; I’ve been very busy, but also unsure of what to write about. This year passed by rather quickly, and the tone of the year was influenced in many ways by my brother’s death from cardiac disease in February. When I received the news of his death, I realized yet again that there is no escape from life’s sadness and suffering. I knew that already when I was twelve years old and my father had his first of several heart attacks. He survived the first one, and was progressively weaker by the time he had his second one. I felt then that life was unpredictable, unsafe, and often dark. I struggled to find meaning in life. Was it only about suffering and death? I was a churchgoer but was at a loss to know what it was I really believed in or sometimes even why I went to church. It was not until a good friend of mine helped me to find what I could personally relate to in my faith that I began to understand what it was I professed to believe in. When I understood and believed that God cares about me personally—that is when my relationship to my faith changed. Many years later, my conclusion is that it is love, and love alone, that transforms people, changes lives, allows for forgiveness and acceptance, offers hope and gives us a safe haven during life’s storms. It gives us something to believe in and to act on. I am not talking about romantic love, although that is definitely a part of love. I am talking about the love described in 1 Corinthians 13, the passage about love that is read at countless weddings:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.        

These words were first uttered/written many centuries ago, and speak for themselves. They have shown themselves to be quite prescient in my life. It is clear to me after many years in academia, that higher education does not always enlighten its recipients or make them better people. Unfortunately, there are a number of self-centered people with PhDs and MDs who are mostly concerned with titles, incomes, amount of grant support, and the number of high impact-factor publications a person has. There is no direct correlation between higher education and good behavior, unfortunately for the world. It doesn’t matter much in our current world that a person treats his or her students well, gets along with his or her colleagues, or finds happiness in playing a supportive role for others. These characteristics are simply not valued in the same way as is being a cash cow for your organization. As long as a person brings in research money, bad behavior, bullying and envy are tolerated. So yes, knowledge will pass away, as will titles and honors. Aging takes care of that--the top person of the moment in any profession will lose that status, replaced by someone younger and smarter—and the cycle continues, as well it should. If all a person has had is his or her job, and he or she has not treated colleagues, friends or family well, then he or she can end up bitter and lonely in old age. Or frantic, desperate and borderline hysterical, because no one remembers the ‘important’ contributions he or she has made. You would think that people gain perspective as they age; some do, but you’d be surprised at the stories I’ve heard about former professors (men and women both) in their eighties and nineties arguing about who was the better scientist, or convinced that their contributions to the field were those that revolutionized it. ‘You’re only as good as your last publication’—is a common expression in academia. The problem begins when a person begins to believe the hype he or she hears about himself or herself—that one is irreplaceable, brilliant, a genius, the best in the field. It’s nice to receive the accolades. Far better to have reflected on what is really important in life, and to have treated your colleagues and students in a way that reflects the kind of love that 1 Corinthians 13 talks about--patience, kindness, lack of envy, lack of boasting, and humility. How many former top professors will mentor and encourage their one or two brilliant students without envy, and how many of them will keep those students down so as to hinder competition? How many of them will actually let go of their control over their students and let them fly and shine? I’ve seen a few of the latter, and many of the former.

What have I learned this year from my reflections upon the good and bad things that have happened? My brother’s death was a real shock to me (and to my sister), and permeated our lives during this past year. The complicated situations surrounding his death introduced me to a dark world where nothing was as it seemed. My brother was a master at pretending that everything was ok, when in fact it was not during the last two years of his life. He opened the window into his life a crack and let me see some of what he had to deal with (financial problems, his being the primary parent), but he shut it just as quickly, either so I would not worry, or so that he would not lose face. Either way, he was afraid that he would be judged, because he himself was often quick to judge. He knew that I would not judge him; perhaps that made it harder for him to open up, because it would have meant breaking down his own walls. I wish he had, because I loved him and however difficult his life had become, I would always have loved him. He, like many others in our materialistic society, did not want to admit that money, fame, a city job, an apartment in a tony Manhattan suburb, or materialistic things generally, were not the answers to happiness in life. But it’s hard in our society to let go of that way of thinking. He was on the verge of changing his life when he died. Sometimes you’ve got to just toss in the towel and start over in a simpler world, where love is the foundation, and not materialism. There were many people who got in touch with me after his death to tell me how he had affected their lives, especially when we all were younger—how he helped others, was a good listener, took a back seat to others—all things I knew and loved about him. My brother was my good friend when we were younger; we spent many a Saturday evening in Manhattan, meeting friends, dancing and having a good time together. My friends knew and liked him, and his friends knew and liked me. Despite having the Atlantic Ocean between us after I moved abroad, we always got together in Manhattan when I visited each year in the summertime. He would use his company expense account and treat me to lunch at one or another restaurant that he had discovered, and we would walk around lower Manhattan for a few hours and just talk. I am grateful for those memories.

I am grateful for so many other things this past year—my closest friends who were and are always there for me, in good times and in bad. I am grateful for having been a part of a joyous May wedding (the daughter of my close friend got married) that balanced out the sadness of my brother’s death. I am grateful for having met a lawyer (the father of my good friend) who helped me with a specific legal situation related to my brother’s death; I am forever grateful to my friend for having arranged that meeting with her father. I am grateful to my husband for always being there for me, without a lot of fanfare and fuss. I am grateful to my workplace that approved and financed a yearlong leadership course from which I learned a lot—a course that changed my perspective about leadership, about my own leadership qualities, and about the importance of real dialog and communication in the workplace. It seems strange to say it, but often out of sadness come many good things—reminders as it were that there is a reason to continue to hope and to believe.  There is good in the world, and real love does exist. 

A new poem for my brother

Moving on

Seven months have come and gone

Months you did not get to see

All the life that once was yours

Weeks gone by, life moved on

Thinking of you, not forgotten

But then there are those sudden thoughts

A hand grips tightly round my heart

Is life’s struggle all for naught?

Were your life and death in vain?

So unfair, your early exit

Left behind uncertain fates

And sad hearts that know of pain

Seven months have come and gone

Those in your life move on without you

I see you in my mind’s eye alone

I wish I could have protected you

copyright 2015

Paula M. De Angelis

A poem about death

My brother passed away suddenly this past weekend. He was fifty-four--too young to leave us. I will always remember him as my friend from our teenage days, when we had long talks about life and love and finding our way in the world. He and I used to bike a lot, and he went on to become a triathlete who competed in a lot of triathlons. My mother and I used to attend some of them, and we marveled at the positive spirit that the athletes had. He was also an avid fisherman in his youth, something that he did not pursue into his adult life, unfortunately. He worked on Wall Street and in the corporate world after college, but was never really happy in it. Later on he married and had a family; his two children were the apples of his eye. He loved his children and they loved him. That was always so clear whenever we were together. Unfortunately, life deals out bad luck at times, and he and his family had their share of it during the past few years. He always remained upbeat despite the problems, but I think the stress just did him in at the end. He will always be in my mind and heart. And I will carry the happy memories of being together with him and his family for always. 

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Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sun on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.

Remembering my mother on her birthday

Had my mother still been alive, today would have been her 94th birthday. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2001. The cause of death was sepsis, which is not a very uncommon cause of death among elderly people for reasons that are not well-known. My mother had been in very good health until she neared her 78^th year; I can recall only two times in her entire adult life when she was hospitalized, once for a viral infection in her middle ear, and the other for an operation to remove an inflamed appendix. When she was in her late seventies, she began to have problems with her back. She was eventually diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the spine, again, not an unexpected diagnosis for many of the elderly. Having been a great walker for most of her life, my guess is that she looked ahead and did not like what she saw—a future with limited opportunities for walking, perhaps the use of a wheelchair and/or walker—in short, a more restricted life than the one to which she was accustomed. She was independent and stubborn; when she was hospitalized initially for medical tests, she was in good spirits and was sure she would be able to return to her old life. Sadly, that was not the case. She ended up at a care center so that she could undergo physical therapy to get her back on her feet again. For some reason, she became quite stubborn (more so than usual) and refused that help. And that refusal was her undoing. Had she worked at her physical therapy, she might still be alive today. All these many years later, I understand that she simply could not accept the idea that she would be dependent upon anyone or anything, and the idea that she was suddenly infirm did not appeal to her. My mother had no patience for being old, for the various small irritations and physical limitations of old age. She was vehement about not giving in to old age. What is surprising is that she did not understand her role in her own recovery, even when it was explained to her; had she taken the reins and insisted upon therapy, had she done what it took to get better, she might still be alive. But she had no personal experience with chronic or long-term illness, even though she had taken care of my father, who had debilitating heart disease, until his death. Taking care of him had not prepared her for suddenly being afflicted herself. Her two brief hospital stays must have convinced her to get out of the hospital and back home as fast as possible. I understand her at the same time that I question her actions during the last few months of her life. But I accept what happened even though I don’t understand completely what happened.

In the intervening years, there have been other illnesses and deaths--family members and friends alike—and I have had a chance to witness first-hand how these people tackled the illnesses that preceded their deaths. Illness does some surprising things to people. Some of them simply accepted their diagnoses and the accompanying conditions, others fought against them. Those who fought were mostly younger or middle-aged people. I also know older people who have done what it takes to get well, who were assertive about getting back on their feet again; interestingly, they are still with us. I've also known older people who did what they had to do to get well, but death took them anyway. Along the way, I've learned that you simply cannot know how you would think or feel if faced with a similar situation. And until you step into the shoes of a person who is ill (with a terminal diagnosis or long-term illness) you have no real idea of what they’re going through. It’s best to be there for them, to help out, to listen, to advise when asked for advice, to offer hope, to be positive, even if we don't always understand their situation or their response to it. Not much more is asked of us. 

In memory of a good man

Do not stand at my grave and weep

by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die. 

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In memory of my friend Jean's father, Jim, who passed away at 97 this past Wednesday. May he rest in peace. I know he is together now with his wife. Sometimes Jean and I would comment, when we visit Sleepy Hollow cemetery, that her parents' grave is right near my parents' grave, and that perhaps they have all met each other now and are together in heaven, happy and at peace. I hope so. 

Talking about loss and sorrow

This past summer has been a reminder that life is fragile and that sorrow and loss are ever-present parts of life. I have written several posts about loss during the past several years; it strikes me how we can never really quite come to terms with loss and the grief that accompanies it. It can be the loss of a friend or family member due to illness; I know of several people who have ‘lost’ their spouses to Alzheimer’s disease and to the slow descent into oblivion that accompanies it. The healthy spouses live with a sorrow that they silently carry around with them. Sometimes they are able to talk about their loss; mostly they do not. Others deal with illnesses that may rob them/have robbed them of their mobility and physical freedoms. Others deal with separations and divorce, or the loss of treasured friendships. Most times it is death that takes our loved ones from us. We need only listen to the TV news to know that this happens every day due to crime, war, or tragic accidents (as just happened to my husband’s good friend who drowned last week after falling off his boat); or just the inevitable progression toward old age where again, people we love move into old age, forge the paths they are able to forge through that barren wilderness, before they move on into the world where death takes them physically from us. Learning to let go of those we love is probably the most difficult thing we will ever be asked to do in this life. Wondering if we will ever know happiness again, that question haunts us.

There are other losses that are not spoken about very openly, despite the means for communication that are continually available to us. We as a society seem to be at a loss for words when it comes to truly describing how we feel about losing our jobs, our identities, our pride or self-esteem, about how it feels to be displaced or frozen out of the ‘good company’ at work or in school, or simply ignored by our workplaces and schools. We talk about bullying in society and that it should stop, but it doesn’t. People who are bullied and harassed experience a loss of self-esteem and happiness that is difficult for them to deal with and that may affect them for the rest of their lives, and they may grieve silently for those losses. We are told to deal with constant change in our workplaces, and while most of us adapt to the new changes and patterns, it is neither as fast as management wishes nor as successful as they might hope. ‘Something’s lost but something’s gained, in living every day’, as Joni Mitchell sings. That’s true, but sometimes the gains don’t outweigh the losses. I would argue that it depends upon what is lost and what is gained. Nonetheless, we cannot stand still and we must live in the now. So we are forced to deal with loss and change.

Our sorrows are often right under our surfaces, but we are silent about bringing them to light. I was at a summer party recently, and I met a young woman who told me about her father’s quiet sorrow; he was born in another country and came here to live many years ago, probably as a political refugee. He married and had a family, but he never stopped missing his birth country. For her young age, she was deeply reflective, and her love and understanding for her father were clear. Her description of his sadness was something I could understand viscerally. For I too miss my birth country; it is a tangible feeling of sorrow that I carry around with me, and that I have done a good job of keeping under my surface until now. But I cannot do that any longer. At the same party, I met a fellow expat, who told me that he hated America and that he would never go back there to live. I could never say the same. I love my country the way I love a person—we are intertwined. I couldn’t tell you why it is this way; it just is after many years of living away from my birth country. So I could not understand my fellow expat, although I registered his words and opinions. It made me think of my grandparents who left Italy for America in the early 1900s and who never once returned there, as they could not afford to do so. What must it have been like to know that you would never see your father, mother, or siblings again, unless they followed you to America? Loss and sorrow on both sides. How their sorrows must have defined their lives, especially when their lives took a downturn during the Great Depression when my grandfather lost his pharmacy. I know that their sorrows colored their later lives because my father told me a lot about his family life and how his father suffered. Not all immigrants miss their birth countries; I know several people who have moved from Europe to the USA, who have become successful and who would never move back to their birth countries. But I also know immigrants to the USA who miss their birth countries regardless of their successes. It is an individual thing—how we deal with loss and the sorrows that accompany it. But it is good to talk about it sometimes, because you find out that you are not as alone in this life as you may think.  

A City of Flowers--Oslo after July 22nd

We were in Amsterdam on July 22^nd when the madman who is Anders Behring Breivik put into action his evil plan—something he had been plotting to do for nine years according to news sources. This by itself would boggle the mind; the fact that he went after children and teenagers on the island of Utøya is something that no one can or should ever forget. Watching and hearing about what unfolded there is like watching a horror movie, only with the knowledge that it is for real. I cannot imagine what went through the minds of those who experienced this horror, only that I would like to reach out my hand with a magic wand to obliterate the images that the survivors will live with for the rest of their lives. My brother, who worked in the Twin Towers in NY and who lost colleagues and friends on 9/11, says that many of those he knows who survived suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder ten years later. He was fortunately spared—first in 1993 when a car bomb went off in the parking lot under the towers, and then in 2001 on 9/11—both times he was away from his office. But even for those of us who were not physically present in NY when 9/11 occurred, the images of the Twin Towers being hit by the planes and then disintegrating have engraved themselves on our memories for always. To this day I cannot watch video footage of this happening without falling apart. So I know it will be the same for many of the survivors of July 22^nd in Oslo and in Norway generally.

We watched the terror unfold in Oslo on a TV in a hotel room in Amsterdam. Minute for minute, hour for hour—updates, pictures, interviews, more updates. Shock and more shock. Stillness, deathly quiet—that is how the public’s reaction was described following the bombing in Oslo. That is shock. That is disbelief, horror, and sorrow. It is hard to believe that a huge car bomb went off in Oslo. It is hard to believe that a mass murderer mowed down so many young people on an island that is only accessible by boat. It is hard to fathom that it happened in peaceful Norway. And yet it did. It is hard to imagine that this society could have ‘grown’ such a person; that such a person could be the product of a free and democratic society. And yet he is. Norway in that respect is no different than other free and democratic countries. We pay a high price for our democratic philosophies and for our freedom of expression. But we must ensure that the price that both homegrown and external terrorists pay is even higher. What Breivik did is treasonous, and if it was wartime, he would be tried as a traitor. But it is not wartime. This is peacetime. So he will be tried as a mass murderer. He will go to prison for the rest of his life. But he goes to prison knowing that the families of those he murdered are in a prison of their own, of his making. They have lost their children or their spouses or their friends. This is the prison of death and sorrow. For some it is a lifetime sentence, for others it may not be so. But it is impossible to say what it will be for each person affected by this tragedy, because each person is an individual.  

We joined the huge numbers of people who found their way into downtown Oslo yesterday. We placed flowers in front of the Oslo Cathedral like so many others. The front of the church has become a sea of flowers, spreading out in all directions. We were there at 3pm; by 7pm the sea had doubled in size, both horizontally and vertically. There are layers upon layers of flowers, interspersed with lit votive candles. Many people circled the sea—just standing and reflecting, taking pictures, others explaining to their children what had happened. What they could not explain was why is happened. No one will ever really know why evil happens. But it does. Evil exists. Hate exists. Darkness exists. Sometimes the darkness tries to obliterate the light. But the sea of flowers is a symbol of compassion and love for the victims and their families, and really for all those affected by terror and tragedy. I remember the flowers and candles and flags that people in Oslo placed in front of the American embassy building after 9/11. People reached out, like they do now, with compassion and thoughtfulness, and I hope these feelings and emotions last and lead to a more empathetic world society. 

Saying goodbye to Fru Østbakken

On June 5th of last year, I wrote a post about Fru Østbakken (http://paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com/2010/06/fru-stbakken.html), who in her 94th year had moved into a nursing home temporarily to recover from a small stroke. She was eventually moved to Grunerløkka nursing home in the early autumn and it was there she lived, in a small room with some of her furniture, paintings, and belongings about her, until she died last week (June 14^th) at the age of 95. My husband and I attended her funeral service, which was held this past Wednesday in the basement chapel of the nursing home. The service was well-attended by her extended family and a few of her neighbors; she had no children of her own and her husband pre-deceased her in 1993. Most of the elderly ladies who lived in the same co-op development whom she socialized with have passed on or are themselves living in nursing homes now. So there has been a real changing of the guard not only at work but also in the co-op development where we live. One of the neighbors who attended the service together with us, an older man of 70, commented on this—how strange it felt to see this happening. He meant that when he looked around, he knew no one anymore. Everyone he knew has either moved away or passed on, and he will also be moving away, to Germany, at the end of the month. It is a strange feeling to watch the years pass and to see this happen. I agree with him. But there is no stopping the progression of time; it is also very strange to think that someday, God willing, we will also reach 70 and maybe even 80 or 90 years of age. It must be strange to know that most of life lies behind you, in the past, and that there is nothing you can do to stop the flow of years, that brings you to your own passing. The realization that one is a mortal being is a gradual process. Though we know when we are younger that we will not live forever, it is not ‘real’ in the same way as it is when you hit middle or old age. I remember that with my mother, who sometimes commented on it but who mostly avoided the topic. Fru Østbakken talked a little about what it meant to foresee her own death when I visited her before Christmas. She was ready to die, even though she was afraid to die. She meant that she had lived a long good life. The priest who led the service also commented on this. I think she was more afraid of not knowing when her death would happen, what it would involve, or how much pain or suffering it might involve, and so on. When we visited her a few weeks ago, her doctor had essentially informed her that it could happen at any time. She had advanced colorectal cancer and it had apparently spread, so that it was only a matter of time.

I write about her now because I look up to her and admire her courage. This life we live is a mystery, but death is also a mystery. No one has managed to explain why we age and pass on. Scientists study aging, and they have their theories with some underlying data as to how we age (e.g. telomere shortening that leads to cell aging), but why this should be the case, that we build a life on this earth that we must let go of at some point, remains an unknown. It is not for nothing that you realize at some point that life becomes about how to let go of things gracefully. Not an easy task. It is not easy to say goodbye, not easy to let go, not easy to deny our will and our desires. I have realized that truly living life is a paradox—one lives best when one knows that one will not live forever. In that way, you will not take life and loved ones for granted, when you know that seconds, hours, days, and weeks become years and decades and that time passes and that the present is what we have—to make good memories together with those we love. So I say rest in peace to Fru Østbakken; I know she would tell us to live life and to enjoy ourselves. She embraced her life each day; her will to keep going was impressive and if given a choice, she would have remained in her apartment, at home, until the end, but she was not able to afford what it would have cost to have made that possible—live-in care. So she was pragmatic. She understood this and accepted her lot. That was very characteristic of her—she was pragmatic and accepting. I hope she has found the peace that she deserves. 

“There are no answers, only choices”

I watched the sci-fi movie Solaris (from 2002) with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone for the third time the other night, and each time I watch the film I ‘discover’ something else about it that I didn’t remember from previous viewings. The film was directed by Steven Soderbergh and is a remake of the classic film (from 1972) of the same name directed by Andrey Tarkovskiy. I have not seen the 1972 film although it is on my ‘to watch’ list; nor have I read the novel by Polish author Stanisław Lem published in 1961. I’m guessing that the Tarkovskiy film would probably be as haunting a film as the Soderbergh film. Because that is the only word I can use to describe Soderbergh’s film—haunting. It gets under my skin in a way that no other sci-fi film/story can, with the possible exception of ‘I Am Legend’ (film(s) as well as the story by Richard Matheson). Everything about the film, the atmosphere, lighting, sets, music—combine to create a poignant and haunting film. In my view, the casting of Clooney and McElhone in the major roles as Chris Kelvin and Rheya (his wife) was a small stroke of genius. They are both wonderful to watch in their roles as partners in a sad marriage that ends with Rheya committing suicide.  McElhone manages to portray Rheya as an extremely interesting and attractive woman despite her psychological problems—beautiful, intelligent, classy, and sad. Rheya is a seeker, open to ideas of faith and belief in things one cannot see, and she is uncomfortable with aggressive, all-knowing people who bark out their opinions as though they were the only correct ones. But she is also a depressive personality, a woman who lives on the fringes of life and society, looking in and wanting to be a part of the life she sees around her, but knowing that she does not fit in. Chris is a psychologist and a pragmatist; he only believes in what he can see and know and dissect, and there are several points in the film where he almost gloatingly scoffs at Rheya’s faith in something other-worldly. He is right and she is not. You know by watching her eyes and body language in the film that his lack of faith and his pragmatism are helping to destroy her slowly, because she loves him but does not seem able to reach him. But he does not understand this nor does he intend to hurt her deliberately. Theirs is a marriage where you know that they love each other but their love is doomed to difficulties and problems from the start because they are such contrasting personalities. You know that the only way that things will change for them is through a tragic event. Chris just does not understand his wife, her vulnerability or her psychological problems, even though he is a psychologist and even though she has tried to be honest with him about them. She aborts their baby without telling Chris because she does not want to pass her depressive tendencies on to a child, and he explodes in anger at her when he finds this out and storms out of their apartment, whereupon she commits suicide thinking he has left her for good. After her death, Chris ends up out in space, a long way from earth, in orbit around the planet Solaris, after having been asked to investigate the crew on board who are acting strangely and reporting strange events onboard the ship. Solaris is a planet that seems to be able to read the minds/dreams of Chris and his colleagues on board the spaceship, and manages to ‘recreate’ the people they have lost to death back on earth, the ‘visitors’. Chris’ visitor is Rheya, and even though he knows that she is not really human, he becomes involved with her all over again and realizes that he wants to be with her for the rest of his life, with all of the implications surrounding that choice. He is warned by one of the team members named Dr. Gibarian to leave Solaris and to return to earth, because otherwise he will die there. Gibarian is also another of Chris’ ‘visitors’ who committed suicide shortly before Chris’ arrival; on earth he was his colleague and friend. When Gibarian ‘visits’ Chris, they have a conversation, where Chris asks him “What does Solaris want from us?” Gibarian replies: “Why do you think it has to want something? This is why you have to leave. If you keep thinking there's a solution, you'll die here.” Chris replies “I can't leave her. I'll figure it out”, whereupon Gibarian says to him “Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? There are no answers, only choices”.  And Chris makes his ‘choice’, and it is a choice that moves him from guilt to forgiveness to peace—his own spiritual evolution that allows him to move beyond his pragmatism and to take a leap of faith into the unknown. It is only by taking that leap of faith that he can know happiness, but he does not know that before he takes it. But he takes the risk.

It was the sentence —“There are no answers, only choices” that caught my attention this time while I watched the film.  I thought--how true that is. But I never ‘heard’ or truly internalized these words before, not the way I did the other night. Maybe because I have come to that point in my own life, where I have realized that there are no answers to certain situations, to certain problems—there are really only choices, and it is the fear of making the ‘wrong’ choice that can keep us stuck in one place. I seem to continue to want specific answers to specific problems though, and perhaps they will never be forthcoming. So if I learn to accept that there are no answers, then I turn to the choices to be made and ask myself, which is the right choice? But perhaps there are also no right or wrong choices, even though we want so much to make what we think is the ‘right’ choice—in love, in life, in work.  Perhaps we need to take more ‘leaps of faith’ into the unknown—because really, even when we make what we think is the right choice, we can never really know for sure what we are doing and whether it was the best choice. It simply is a choice that we made, that then led to a life. This is what is scary—should we take the leap of faith into the unknown of a new life, a new job, or a new relationship? And could we have escaped sadness and problems if we had chosen differently? Perhaps. But since we also do not have control over the lives and choices of others who impact on our lives because they are part of our lives, we cannot predict what will happen to us. It’s not easy to accept this sometimes, which makes it difficult to take the leap of faith into the unknown.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday

This is the third year I have attended Good Friday services at Gamle Aker church, a Protestant church that is very close to where I live in Oslo. The church was built around 1080 AD, making it the oldest building in Oslo. It is a beautiful old church with a lot of atmosphere—massive stone columns around the nave of the church that give it an air of being an ancient building. When you step into the church, you walk along a dark and cool aisle that leads to the altar; chairs have been placed on either side of the aisle for parishioners. The church is devoid of statues or any decorations save for a few candelabras on the altar. The service for Good Friday is divided into two parts: the first part is the passion and suffering of Christ, with a lot of readings interspersed with relevant songs from the choir which stands on the altar together with the priest. This part of the service ends with parishioners being able to stand or kneel before a crucifix so that they can pray or touch the feet of Christ, much as we do in the Catholic Church on Good Friday. But the thing that most surprised me and has kept me coming back is the second part of the service; this is a symbolic burial of Christ after he is taken down from the cross. The crucifix is placed on the ground in a circular area behind the altar, and parishioners are encouraged to take a flower and place it on the ‘grave’, then the priest says a few prayers and the service concludes. I found this part of the service to be incredibly poignant the first year I was part of it. It felt so real, and so sad, and that of course is the point of it. It is to make you realize that Christ died and was buried in this way. Experiencing this in a church from 1080 also has the effect of placing you that much closer to the actual event in history; at least that is how I ended up feeling, and I was glad for the experience.

On Easter Sunday I attended mass at St. Olav’s Catholic Church. I happened to attend the high mass, which is a mass sung in Latin or Norwegian, or in this particular case, both languages. It was a joyful celebration of the resurrection of Christ; the day was sunny and warm, the church was full of people, and the priest gave a very good sermon about doubt, the scientific search for evidence of Christ’s resurrection, and the importance of faith. His words struck a nerve; this is how I have been feeling lately. I see how important having faith is, much more important than having scientific explanations and evidence for everything that we doubt or that we meet with skepticism. Doubting Thomas comes to mind; Christ had a lot of patience with him but did tell him that some people had faith and did not need to ‘see’ what Thomas needed to see. Some things in this life are mysteries that we will never be able to explain. Love is one of them. We do not require explanations for why we love or why we are loved; as soon as we start to dissect love it can very well disappear or become merely banal. We trust another or others with our heart, with our love, and we take a leap of faith to do that—whether it is romantic love or friendship or charitable love. If we did not take that leap of faith, we could not give or receive love. We can gather as much knowledge about another person as is humanly possible; still that person is a mystery to us and will remain so until the day we die. We will have learned a little about that person but not everything. This does not stop us from loving. How important this is for me to remember when I doubt my faith; that I love and am loved. If I can experience love, then I can have faith and I can trust that Christ’s life and death have meaning for me and for our world. This is the Easter message and it has become a very important message for me. 

On the tragedy in Japan

Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918) was professor of divinity at the University of Oxford and the canon of Christ Church in Oxford. He wrote “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!”

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It is hard to imagine writing this and feeling its truth. When we watch TV these days and see how many people have perished or are missing in Japan, we know that death is something, not nothing at all. But these words were written by Holland to comfort loved ones, who needed to hear that their departed loved ones were not really so far away from them, just in another ‘room’. And if it was possible to keep life as normal as possible, then it was possible not to miss the departed so much because they were really still with us. My thoughts tonight go out to the Japanese people. I cannot shake the images that I have seen on TV. I also saw that the film Hereafter was pulled from Japanese theaters. I am glad, because that film opens with a horrific tsunami. I have written about this film in another post. It’s hard not to ponder death, the meaning of death, the horror of death as Japan has experienced. Why do so many people have to die in this way? It is not possible to ignore the suffering, the tragedy, the sheer overwhelming feeling of helplessness. How does one help? Is it best to pray? Send money? Hope for the best? What is the best in the face of this kind of destruction? If the nuclear reactors experience meltdown, what then? Suddenly out of nowhere, tragedy strikes. That is how tragedy operates. Earthquake, tsunami, meltdown? Life-changing events. Lives changed forever. There but for the grace of God go we, an old expression that means that it could have been us given other circumstances but that God’s grace spared us. Why didn’t it spare the Japanese people? It’s hard to understand this. It’s hard to understand the immensity of this type of suffering. It’s hard not to get overwhelmed. But it’s important not to because we must be ready to help, at any time. I admire the soldiers and all the medical personnel who are helping in the search for survivors. They are heroes. I just hope they survive the trauma of what they see and deal with. And mostly I hope that the Japanese children find some sort of solace—it must be terrifying for them to see what is happening around them and not to understand it. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all go away for them. I wish that so intensely.