It's Okay, Life Must Go On!
Adult study
The Many Faces of Evil
Reflections On The Sinful, The Tragic, The Demonic, And The Ambiguous
Here is a letter a father wrote to his children on the first anniversary of their mother's death.
October 19, 1988
Dear Paul, Nancy, and Melissa,
It was a year ago this week that your mom died. I am not sure what to say, but I felt we needed to take some notice of this together. I hope this letter may be a means of our sharing some thoughts and feelings even though we are far away from each other.
This has been a hard year for us. Every holiday, anniversary, and birthday has been a reminder of our loss. I miss her very much. I don't cry as much as I did. Now it is mainly when something triggers a memory - driving by the Plymouth Avenue exit that leads toward Mt. Carmel House, seeing the beautiful leaves and knowing how much she would have enjoyed them, things like that. It has taken most of this year to recover a sense of equilibrium and somehow to be able to go on and enjoy life. Last year after returning from the funeral, I was walking around outside Saunders House in the parking lot. I suddenly had a sense of your mom's presence. She was saying to me, "I'm all right. It's okay for you to be happy, to carry on your life." That was very reassuring. But as I look back I realize that it was not until late this summer that I was really prepared to go ahead and try to live life to the fullest. Gloria and I went to church in Griffin on August 14. Bruce Morgan's topic was "The Show Must Go On." He told the biblical story of King David, whose son, Absalom, was killed in battle. He grieved and grieved until at last someone in effect told him, "Life must go on. You have a kingdom to rule." That message came to me at the right time. Only then was I able to hear it and to know that it was okay for me to be happy, to get on with life.
All last winter I felt disjointed and out of sorts with the world, irritable, cynical. Nothing felt right. I was alienated from my job, religion, everything else just about. I am sure my illness of three months was somehow tied into all this. It has only been since going to Georgia and returning that I have felt whole again, really excited about my writing, happy in my job, etc. Grief takes a long time. Healing is slow, but it is coming.
It would be dishonest to cover up all the differences your mom and I had. I left, and we were divorced. That is the fact. We had a lot of anger and alienation. I am very glad to say that during the last months of her life, we really did experience a deep and complete reconciliation, and we said as much to each other as I sat holding her hands through the bars of her bed at Mt. Carmel. We agreed that there was nothing more that needed to be said on that score. I was reminded of an old gospel hymn - "That Old Account Was Settled Long Ago."
That made it possible for us to remember the good things. And there were many good things. Your Mom was one of the finest human beings I have ever known. Her integrity and honesty were beyond reproach. There was not a devious or deceitful bone in her body. She was utterly genuine and sincere all the way through. Her love of life was very deep. It was the simple things of family and friends, love of home - she wanted a beautiful home, she once told me more than most anything else - her love of nature, of beautiful scenery, and on and on. Nobody ever loved husband or children more than she. They were first in her life. She had her faults, we all do, but in the very best way she knew how, she devoted her life to us - her husband and her children. She spent hours and hours shopping for all of us, going all over town in snow and rain to find just what she wanted, something she thought we would like. She was never to have the house she wanted or keep it the way she wanted. She just couldn't do what she wanted most. But she tried and I think did the best she knew or could under the circumstances.
We all had painful experiences and have painful memories. But somehow that does not seem as important now as the memory of a kind, gentle, loving person who just wanted to be happy and to make her family happy.
Something she and I shared was our common love for the three of you. We were never divided on that. She was so proud of you, each one of you. She took such great satisfaction in your accomplishments. She loved you very, very much. We sometimes failed you, each of us in our own individual ways, and together as parents we did not provide for you the kind of stable, loving, contented household we both wanted for all of us. All of this has left me with a pretty deep sense of the tragic in life. Here were good people who really loved each other but who did not know how to get what we wanted most. No bad will was present in anybody. We didn't know how or couldn't manage it.
I guess that is the saddest part of it all. Many times I have said and thought, "I wish it could have been better for her." I wish it could have been better for the two of us and for the five of us, but most of all I wish it could have been better for her. The last years with my leaving, your growing up and moving away, her living alone and unable to cope, and finally the illness that conquered her were marked with a lot of loneliness, suffering, depression, and pain. I wish it could have been otherwise. There is a tragic dimension to life, to her life, and to the lives of so many people who only want to be happy and to live their lives out with some satisfaction.
One of the most gratifying and joyful aspects of all this is the way the three of you rallied around your mom during those last months. You were all wonderful in the way you moved in to help and make her last days as comfortable and satisfying as they could be. Equally important is the way you have supported each other. I am so glad for that. I am glad we have all had each other during this difficult year and the one before that when the inevitable was pressing in on us.
I have written this with many tears. I have not written you to make you sad, but I hope that by experiencing and sharing our grief with each other we can move through this. Your mom is saying to all of us, "It's okay. It's okay for you to be happy." Yes, it is okay. Life must go on. I think I am ready for that now. I hope you are too.
We do not know what the future holds. But we do have each other. I love you, each one of you in your own special uniqueness and all of you together, very much. Like your mom, I am very proud of you. We have shared a lot together, and it has drawn us all closer.
I look forward to seeing all of you at Thanksgiving. It will be good to be together. Please accept this letter as a way I could share some deep feelings with you. It has been good for me to write it and to experience what this week means in my memory with you.
I love you very much.
Dad
I am that father, the author of the letter. I took it right off my computer files. The experiences I had during the last 25 years of Eloise's life had as much as anything to do with my understanding of the many faces of evil. Throughout this little volume I have made reference to events and feelings in my inner life and history that theologians writing books on evil do not usually share publically. Most of my own writing on God and evil has sharply separated my personal life from my conceptual conclusions. That is the style of most theological writing. I do not disparage that practice or deny its legitimacy. Yet all of us have a self known to others in public encounter and a self known only to ourselves in introspective reflection. Only in the union of the two can we fully express the whole meaning of life. The knowledge of good and evil resides in its completeness in the depths of the heart. There alone are to be found the inner agonies and ecstasies known only to ourselves as well as the outer travails and triumphs known also to others. The private and the public go together to form the entire fabric of life.
On the public side, I write these words the day after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in April, 1995. A little more than a year later I make this final review during the month when TWA flight 800 took a fiery plunge into the Atlantic Ocean and when a crude pipe bomb in Centennial Park in Atlanta (July, 1996) shattered the mood of celebration at the Olympic Games and cast a shadow of apprehension over a nation coming to grips with the ever-present possibility of terrorism. In these public events too are the manifestations of the sinful, the demonic, the tragic, and the ambiguous.
It was in the intimate laboratory of life that I came to understand in my heart more than I had ever learned from books or in mere thought about the many dimensions in which this life is troubled. It was all there in my marriage. The sinful was present. While I never had any intent to hurt, not all my actions were wise or kind or helpful. Some of my damaging behavior expressed my own pain, frustration, confusion, and anger. Sometimes it was incompetence in knowing how to respond and relate rather than any moral failing as such, although that was involved too. Separation and divorce created injustice for our children. I divided my income equally with Eloise, but running two households was expensive. Our children were in college and suffered financially. In addition, the resulting pain and suffering they underwent from the breakup of the family was unjust. They did not deserve that loss of the most intimate and nourishing community humans have devised to promote the well-being of children.
Could I have done differently? That question is difficult and one I have often pondered. In some cases, the answer is that I could have. In other instances, I think I was very near the borderline between unable and unwilling without really understanding which most accurately described my actions. At other times, I did what I did because I was who I was. I could not have done differently or better than I actually did in those circumstances at that point in my life. This means that sometimes I did what was actually objectively best under the circumstances, as I honestly understood things. At other times I did the best that I could do, even though it might not have been the best objectively possible as measured by the facts and options available. Frequently, I wanted to do what was objectively best but was not sure what that was, given the situation as it had developed. Human life is complicated, and we must not reduce it to a few unambiguous principles that always apply.
Certainly the ambiguous was present. To ask what is best is not a simple question. Best for whom? Myself? The children? Eloise? Best in what respects? Many choices result in some good consequences and some bad outcomes, with no way to have one without the other. That is a point I have tried to make over and over. I could spell that out with many details from my marriage. One choice, however, stands out and may represent the rest.
After many years of talking, praying, and on occasion seeking professional help, I made a decision to move out in 1979. She would have continued to struggle on, since she believed that a bad marriage was better than a divorce. Had I decided to stay on and struggle with improving the marriage, good and bad would have been mixed up in the consequences. Certainly we would have been better off financially. We had two children in college whom we could have helped more. Melissa could have continued to live with both parents, whereas after I left she moved back and forth between us. In many ways the separation was hardest on her, since she was still living at home. I remember very well what she said when I told her and Nancy in a laundromat in Claremont, California, that I had decided to move out. Immediately she posed a question, "What will happen to me?" What happened to Melissa was a source of great pain to her and to me. Yet Eloise and I had struggled for more than fifteen years with a failing marriage. To continue on would have perpetuated the misery and conflict we had both experienced. For years I had been agonizing over what to do. Finally, on August 1, 1979,1 moved into an apartment a few blocks away.
The painful truth is that separation and divorce were liberating for me but devastating and destructive for her. I had hoped that divorce, as torturous as the process would be for us and our children, would eventually prove to be beneficial, all things considered, for both. A therapist had encouraged us to expect that outcome. He said to Eloise, "I'd be willing to bet that if Ken moves out, within a year you'll have a job, and you'll be better off all around." It did not work out that way.
I will not go into all the details, but within a month after I moved out, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She had surgery and lived cancer free for six years. Another tumor appeared in 1985, requiring more surgery. By the next June diagnosis revealed that the cancer had spread to her liver. After that it was a matter of time. She died on October 21, 1987.
Could she have done differently? Could she have worked out a better life for herself? How responsible was she for her misery? I will not make judgments about that, for I really don't know. It appeared to me that, by and large, she did the best she could under the circumstances with the personal resources and strength of personality she possessed. Maybe she would answer as I did, saying that sometimes she could have done better or differently, and sometimes she could not. Perhaps if she had remained healthy, she might have been able to find a more satisfying life for herself. Divorce and cancer were too much.
That recognition leads us to the tragic dimension. Given her personality and mine and our life histories, I think some of our difficulties and suffering were inevitable, unavoidable, and irredeemable. I have no patience with shallow optimists who glibly proclaim in books, sermons, conferences, and television uplift sessions that all good things are possible for everybody, that life can be beautiful all the time, that happiness and bliss are ours to claim. Usually, there is a catch. All this can be ours - if only we will follow some prescription they possess and are eager to supply. To be forthright, most inspirational speakers depress me with their superficial platitudes, their easy, failsafe remedies, and their infallible road maps to utopia.
Life is full of hope and possibilities for redemption. We do not always do the best we can to actualize the real potential for good in situations. Sometimes we could do better than we do. Some of our suffering is self-inflicted and avoidable. Much suffering is redeemable. Of course, all that is true - and more. Nevertheless, there is a point beyond which human frailty cannot take us, a line at which unwilling does pass over into unable. Beyond that point and that line a tragic dimension enters into life. We are limited by the resources of personality we were born with and acquired through nurture, experience, learning, and choice. Sometimes that is not enough to enable us to avoid or redeem all suffering. When we have done the best we could with what we had in the light of our best knowledge and still affliction remains, the tragic enters.
Finally, the demonic was present. Whatever insufficiencies we had from our genetic inheritance that limited our ability to cope constituted part of the tragic dimension. Whatever structural impairment incorporated into our character structure that had its ultimate origin in irresponsible choices, either ours or that of others, constituted a demonic element. Doubtless both factors were present to some degree. I grew up in an unhappy home during my early years. I am sure that the arguments, the screaming and yelling, the accusations, and all the rest I heard at night that resulted in my crying myself to sleep certainly left their mark on me. Perhaps my parents had tragic and demonic components in their own makeup. The demonic passes on from parent to child to grandchild, and so on. Each new generation adds its own failures to the mix.
I am not a psychiatrist, but I have come to understand some of the ways in which what I experienced in childhood handicapped me as a marriage partner. Other demonic influences may have damaged me in ways that I have not yet fully understood. I am happy to say that some of those demons have been exorcised through professional and self-administered therapies, though I am not yet fully whole. To mention one point, long buried anger toward my parents was at last touched, expressed, and robbed of its venom.
The last word must be one of hope. Irresponsibility, ignorance, injustice, the tragic, the demonic, and the ambiguous all contributed to the suffering Eloise, Paul, Nancy, Melissa, and I underwent. Nevertheless, out of it came much that was good. The letter that began the chapter tells part of that story. Eloise and I were brought to complete reconciliation. She died in a hospice, where I visited her every day I was in town until she died. We had long talks amid many tears. Forgiveness and healing of personal wounds are real possibilities. I have experienced it firsthand. My children were drawn closer together, and those bonds remain strong. The way they love each other and come to each other's aid is a joy in my life. My children and I came to love each other even more deeply as we gathered around their mother during those months of her dying. I have reason to believe they have forgiven Eloise and me for the hurt we caused them by our difficulties.
I cared for Eloise during the last year of her life. I paid her bills, bought her groceries and medicine, took her shopping, saw that she got to the doctor. I made arrangements to get her into Mt. Carmel, where she spent the last five months until her death. I planned her funeral. I took the dress she was buried in to the cleaners and then to the funeral home. I had the slab put on her grave. My children were scattered around the country. All of Eloise's relatives lived in Georgia. I was in every way her primary caretaker. We found a peace and joy with each other in those last months that we had not had since the early years of our marriage.
Let me repeat that I do not believe God arranged for Eloise to be sick and to die so that these good things could come to pass. For God to bring suffering on one person as an instrument to produce good for others is incompatible with divine love. Moreover, the idea that God is working things out in accordance with some foreordained plan unknown to us that we must simply accept on faith is not a part of my theological outlook. I do not believe God manipulates persons and events in this fashion. I do believe that God is at work in all circumstances of life to achieve the highest possible good, but God works in and through the structures and processes of nature, history, and human freedom to accomplish this steady love-motivated aim. God does not violate these regular patterns or interfere from without with the laws of nature or the decisions of human beings. Rather God works through the drive toward fulfillment, the eros that urges all life toward the actualization of its built-in potential for enjoyment.
Let me complete my story on a happy and sad note. I have been happily remarried since October, 1984, and I am very greatful for the life Gloria and I have together. And what about my parents who kept me awake at night with their quarreling when I was eight years old? They entered a nursing home in December of 1994 and shared a room. On March 10, 1995, they celebrated 66 years of marriage. It would be difficult to find a more devoted and loving couple. My mother was in the hospital for a few days in October, 1994. I took my father in to visit her. I rolled his wheelchair as close as I could to her bed. Neither spoke, but each extended a hand toward the other. Tears rolled down my cheek as I watched their bony fingers grasp each other and hold on tenderly as they looked into each other's eyes. Redemption is possible, and I was witnessing it. My father was approaching 88 when he died in his sleep on May 1, 1995, after a bout with pneumonia.
I still talk to Eloise now and then. She continues to tell me that she's okay, that everything is all right, and that I should live as fully and as happily as I can. And now when I talk to my dad, he tells me the same thing! Despite everything, life must go on. So it does.
October 19, 1988
Dear Paul, Nancy, and Melissa,
It was a year ago this week that your mom died. I am not sure what to say, but I felt we needed to take some notice of this together. I hope this letter may be a means of our sharing some thoughts and feelings even though we are far away from each other.
This has been a hard year for us. Every holiday, anniversary, and birthday has been a reminder of our loss. I miss her very much. I don't cry as much as I did. Now it is mainly when something triggers a memory - driving by the Plymouth Avenue exit that leads toward Mt. Carmel House, seeing the beautiful leaves and knowing how much she would have enjoyed them, things like that. It has taken most of this year to recover a sense of equilibrium and somehow to be able to go on and enjoy life. Last year after returning from the funeral, I was walking around outside Saunders House in the parking lot. I suddenly had a sense of your mom's presence. She was saying to me, "I'm all right. It's okay for you to be happy, to carry on your life." That was very reassuring. But as I look back I realize that it was not until late this summer that I was really prepared to go ahead and try to live life to the fullest. Gloria and I went to church in Griffin on August 14. Bruce Morgan's topic was "The Show Must Go On." He told the biblical story of King David, whose son, Absalom, was killed in battle. He grieved and grieved until at last someone in effect told him, "Life must go on. You have a kingdom to rule." That message came to me at the right time. Only then was I able to hear it and to know that it was okay for me to be happy, to get on with life.
All last winter I felt disjointed and out of sorts with the world, irritable, cynical. Nothing felt right. I was alienated from my job, religion, everything else just about. I am sure my illness of three months was somehow tied into all this. It has only been since going to Georgia and returning that I have felt whole again, really excited about my writing, happy in my job, etc. Grief takes a long time. Healing is slow, but it is coming.
It would be dishonest to cover up all the differences your mom and I had. I left, and we were divorced. That is the fact. We had a lot of anger and alienation. I am very glad to say that during the last months of her life, we really did experience a deep and complete reconciliation, and we said as much to each other as I sat holding her hands through the bars of her bed at Mt. Carmel. We agreed that there was nothing more that needed to be said on that score. I was reminded of an old gospel hymn - "That Old Account Was Settled Long Ago."
That made it possible for us to remember the good things. And there were many good things. Your Mom was one of the finest human beings I have ever known. Her integrity and honesty were beyond reproach. There was not a devious or deceitful bone in her body. She was utterly genuine and sincere all the way through. Her love of life was very deep. It was the simple things of family and friends, love of home - she wanted a beautiful home, she once told me more than most anything else - her love of nature, of beautiful scenery, and on and on. Nobody ever loved husband or children more than she. They were first in her life. She had her faults, we all do, but in the very best way she knew how, she devoted her life to us - her husband and her children. She spent hours and hours shopping for all of us, going all over town in snow and rain to find just what she wanted, something she thought we would like. She was never to have the house she wanted or keep it the way she wanted. She just couldn't do what she wanted most. But she tried and I think did the best she knew or could under the circumstances.
We all had painful experiences and have painful memories. But somehow that does not seem as important now as the memory of a kind, gentle, loving person who just wanted to be happy and to make her family happy.
Something she and I shared was our common love for the three of you. We were never divided on that. She was so proud of you, each one of you. She took such great satisfaction in your accomplishments. She loved you very, very much. We sometimes failed you, each of us in our own individual ways, and together as parents we did not provide for you the kind of stable, loving, contented household we both wanted for all of us. All of this has left me with a pretty deep sense of the tragic in life. Here were good people who really loved each other but who did not know how to get what we wanted most. No bad will was present in anybody. We didn't know how or couldn't manage it.
I guess that is the saddest part of it all. Many times I have said and thought, "I wish it could have been better for her." I wish it could have been better for the two of us and for the five of us, but most of all I wish it could have been better for her. The last years with my leaving, your growing up and moving away, her living alone and unable to cope, and finally the illness that conquered her were marked with a lot of loneliness, suffering, depression, and pain. I wish it could have been otherwise. There is a tragic dimension to life, to her life, and to the lives of so many people who only want to be happy and to live their lives out with some satisfaction.
One of the most gratifying and joyful aspects of all this is the way the three of you rallied around your mom during those last months. You were all wonderful in the way you moved in to help and make her last days as comfortable and satisfying as they could be. Equally important is the way you have supported each other. I am so glad for that. I am glad we have all had each other during this difficult year and the one before that when the inevitable was pressing in on us.
I have written this with many tears. I have not written you to make you sad, but I hope that by experiencing and sharing our grief with each other we can move through this. Your mom is saying to all of us, "It's okay. It's okay for you to be happy." Yes, it is okay. Life must go on. I think I am ready for that now. I hope you are too.
We do not know what the future holds. But we do have each other. I love you, each one of you in your own special uniqueness and all of you together, very much. Like your mom, I am very proud of you. We have shared a lot together, and it has drawn us all closer.
I look forward to seeing all of you at Thanksgiving. It will be good to be together. Please accept this letter as a way I could share some deep feelings with you. It has been good for me to write it and to experience what this week means in my memory with you.
I love you very much.
Dad
I am that father, the author of the letter. I took it right off my computer files. The experiences I had during the last 25 years of Eloise's life had as much as anything to do with my understanding of the many faces of evil. Throughout this little volume I have made reference to events and feelings in my inner life and history that theologians writing books on evil do not usually share publically. Most of my own writing on God and evil has sharply separated my personal life from my conceptual conclusions. That is the style of most theological writing. I do not disparage that practice or deny its legitimacy. Yet all of us have a self known to others in public encounter and a self known only to ourselves in introspective reflection. Only in the union of the two can we fully express the whole meaning of life. The knowledge of good and evil resides in its completeness in the depths of the heart. There alone are to be found the inner agonies and ecstasies known only to ourselves as well as the outer travails and triumphs known also to others. The private and the public go together to form the entire fabric of life.
On the public side, I write these words the day after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in April, 1995. A little more than a year later I make this final review during the month when TWA flight 800 took a fiery plunge into the Atlantic Ocean and when a crude pipe bomb in Centennial Park in Atlanta (July, 1996) shattered the mood of celebration at the Olympic Games and cast a shadow of apprehension over a nation coming to grips with the ever-present possibility of terrorism. In these public events too are the manifestations of the sinful, the demonic, the tragic, and the ambiguous.
It was in the intimate laboratory of life that I came to understand in my heart more than I had ever learned from books or in mere thought about the many dimensions in which this life is troubled. It was all there in my marriage. The sinful was present. While I never had any intent to hurt, not all my actions were wise or kind or helpful. Some of my damaging behavior expressed my own pain, frustration, confusion, and anger. Sometimes it was incompetence in knowing how to respond and relate rather than any moral failing as such, although that was involved too. Separation and divorce created injustice for our children. I divided my income equally with Eloise, but running two households was expensive. Our children were in college and suffered financially. In addition, the resulting pain and suffering they underwent from the breakup of the family was unjust. They did not deserve that loss of the most intimate and nourishing community humans have devised to promote the well-being of children.
Could I have done differently? That question is difficult and one I have often pondered. In some cases, the answer is that I could have. In other instances, I think I was very near the borderline between unable and unwilling without really understanding which most accurately described my actions. At other times, I did what I did because I was who I was. I could not have done differently or better than I actually did in those circumstances at that point in my life. This means that sometimes I did what was actually objectively best under the circumstances, as I honestly understood things. At other times I did the best that I could do, even though it might not have been the best objectively possible as measured by the facts and options available. Frequently, I wanted to do what was objectively best but was not sure what that was, given the situation as it had developed. Human life is complicated, and we must not reduce it to a few unambiguous principles that always apply.
Certainly the ambiguous was present. To ask what is best is not a simple question. Best for whom? Myself? The children? Eloise? Best in what respects? Many choices result in some good consequences and some bad outcomes, with no way to have one without the other. That is a point I have tried to make over and over. I could spell that out with many details from my marriage. One choice, however, stands out and may represent the rest.
After many years of talking, praying, and on occasion seeking professional help, I made a decision to move out in 1979. She would have continued to struggle on, since she believed that a bad marriage was better than a divorce. Had I decided to stay on and struggle with improving the marriage, good and bad would have been mixed up in the consequences. Certainly we would have been better off financially. We had two children in college whom we could have helped more. Melissa could have continued to live with both parents, whereas after I left she moved back and forth between us. In many ways the separation was hardest on her, since she was still living at home. I remember very well what she said when I told her and Nancy in a laundromat in Claremont, California, that I had decided to move out. Immediately she posed a question, "What will happen to me?" What happened to Melissa was a source of great pain to her and to me. Yet Eloise and I had struggled for more than fifteen years with a failing marriage. To continue on would have perpetuated the misery and conflict we had both experienced. For years I had been agonizing over what to do. Finally, on August 1, 1979,1 moved into an apartment a few blocks away.
The painful truth is that separation and divorce were liberating for me but devastating and destructive for her. I had hoped that divorce, as torturous as the process would be for us and our children, would eventually prove to be beneficial, all things considered, for both. A therapist had encouraged us to expect that outcome. He said to Eloise, "I'd be willing to bet that if Ken moves out, within a year you'll have a job, and you'll be better off all around." It did not work out that way.
I will not go into all the details, but within a month after I moved out, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She had surgery and lived cancer free for six years. Another tumor appeared in 1985, requiring more surgery. By the next June diagnosis revealed that the cancer had spread to her liver. After that it was a matter of time. She died on October 21, 1987.
Could she have done differently? Could she have worked out a better life for herself? How responsible was she for her misery? I will not make judgments about that, for I really don't know. It appeared to me that, by and large, she did the best she could under the circumstances with the personal resources and strength of personality she possessed. Maybe she would answer as I did, saying that sometimes she could have done better or differently, and sometimes she could not. Perhaps if she had remained healthy, she might have been able to find a more satisfying life for herself. Divorce and cancer were too much.
That recognition leads us to the tragic dimension. Given her personality and mine and our life histories, I think some of our difficulties and suffering were inevitable, unavoidable, and irredeemable. I have no patience with shallow optimists who glibly proclaim in books, sermons, conferences, and television uplift sessions that all good things are possible for everybody, that life can be beautiful all the time, that happiness and bliss are ours to claim. Usually, there is a catch. All this can be ours - if only we will follow some prescription they possess and are eager to supply. To be forthright, most inspirational speakers depress me with their superficial platitudes, their easy, failsafe remedies, and their infallible road maps to utopia.
Life is full of hope and possibilities for redemption. We do not always do the best we can to actualize the real potential for good in situations. Sometimes we could do better than we do. Some of our suffering is self-inflicted and avoidable. Much suffering is redeemable. Of course, all that is true - and more. Nevertheless, there is a point beyond which human frailty cannot take us, a line at which unwilling does pass over into unable. Beyond that point and that line a tragic dimension enters into life. We are limited by the resources of personality we were born with and acquired through nurture, experience, learning, and choice. Sometimes that is not enough to enable us to avoid or redeem all suffering. When we have done the best we could with what we had in the light of our best knowledge and still affliction remains, the tragic enters.
Finally, the demonic was present. Whatever insufficiencies we had from our genetic inheritance that limited our ability to cope constituted part of the tragic dimension. Whatever structural impairment incorporated into our character structure that had its ultimate origin in irresponsible choices, either ours or that of others, constituted a demonic element. Doubtless both factors were present to some degree. I grew up in an unhappy home during my early years. I am sure that the arguments, the screaming and yelling, the accusations, and all the rest I heard at night that resulted in my crying myself to sleep certainly left their mark on me. Perhaps my parents had tragic and demonic components in their own makeup. The demonic passes on from parent to child to grandchild, and so on. Each new generation adds its own failures to the mix.
I am not a psychiatrist, but I have come to understand some of the ways in which what I experienced in childhood handicapped me as a marriage partner. Other demonic influences may have damaged me in ways that I have not yet fully understood. I am happy to say that some of those demons have been exorcised through professional and self-administered therapies, though I am not yet fully whole. To mention one point, long buried anger toward my parents was at last touched, expressed, and robbed of its venom.
The last word must be one of hope. Irresponsibility, ignorance, injustice, the tragic, the demonic, and the ambiguous all contributed to the suffering Eloise, Paul, Nancy, Melissa, and I underwent. Nevertheless, out of it came much that was good. The letter that began the chapter tells part of that story. Eloise and I were brought to complete reconciliation. She died in a hospice, where I visited her every day I was in town until she died. We had long talks amid many tears. Forgiveness and healing of personal wounds are real possibilities. I have experienced it firsthand. My children were drawn closer together, and those bonds remain strong. The way they love each other and come to each other's aid is a joy in my life. My children and I came to love each other even more deeply as we gathered around their mother during those months of her dying. I have reason to believe they have forgiven Eloise and me for the hurt we caused them by our difficulties.
I cared for Eloise during the last year of her life. I paid her bills, bought her groceries and medicine, took her shopping, saw that she got to the doctor. I made arrangements to get her into Mt. Carmel, where she spent the last five months until her death. I planned her funeral. I took the dress she was buried in to the cleaners and then to the funeral home. I had the slab put on her grave. My children were scattered around the country. All of Eloise's relatives lived in Georgia. I was in every way her primary caretaker. We found a peace and joy with each other in those last months that we had not had since the early years of our marriage.
Let me repeat that I do not believe God arranged for Eloise to be sick and to die so that these good things could come to pass. For God to bring suffering on one person as an instrument to produce good for others is incompatible with divine love. Moreover, the idea that God is working things out in accordance with some foreordained plan unknown to us that we must simply accept on faith is not a part of my theological outlook. I do not believe God manipulates persons and events in this fashion. I do believe that God is at work in all circumstances of life to achieve the highest possible good, but God works in and through the structures and processes of nature, history, and human freedom to accomplish this steady love-motivated aim. God does not violate these regular patterns or interfere from without with the laws of nature or the decisions of human beings. Rather God works through the drive toward fulfillment, the eros that urges all life toward the actualization of its built-in potential for enjoyment.
Let me complete my story on a happy and sad note. I have been happily remarried since October, 1984, and I am very greatful for the life Gloria and I have together. And what about my parents who kept me awake at night with their quarreling when I was eight years old? They entered a nursing home in December of 1994 and shared a room. On March 10, 1995, they celebrated 66 years of marriage. It would be difficult to find a more devoted and loving couple. My mother was in the hospital for a few days in October, 1994. I took my father in to visit her. I rolled his wheelchair as close as I could to her bed. Neither spoke, but each extended a hand toward the other. Tears rolled down my cheek as I watched their bony fingers grasp each other and hold on tenderly as they looked into each other's eyes. Redemption is possible, and I was witnessing it. My father was approaching 88 when he died in his sleep on May 1, 1995, after a bout with pneumonia.
I still talk to Eloise now and then. She continues to tell me that she's okay, that everything is all right, and that I should live as fully and as happily as I can. And now when I talk to my dad, he tells me the same thing! Despite everything, life must go on. So it does.
