Merry Christmas,
Christmas 2001
by John Harrison
Most of the time at these events our Compassionate Friends leaders John and Mary Bell have arranged for some really smart person to talk, well, tonight you get me. My sole qualification is that just like you, one of our children died too soon.
I wish that none of us had to be here tonight. We have all felt that “pain that passes understanding.” When something like this happens, you need to have someone with you even when you want to be alone. I have been lucky, I have my wife Sandy. She and all of our family are here tonight. I hope you have someone with you to share tonight.
Welcome to all. Merry Christmas, Felize Navidad, Gut Yumtiff, um gut yore.
That last one means, “Have a pleasant holiday and a good year.” You may think I translated that for all of the Christians here tonight, no I translated it for our Jewish Friends. They might not have recognized it in my fractured Yiddish. So I thought to tell them in English just to make sure. The Jews brought us Jesus and they still have much to teach us. For example:
“In the Jewish tradition, the special prayer known as the Mourner’s Kaddish is not about death, but about life, and it praises God for having created a basically good and livable world.”
That is a thought that I will come back too.
There is also a great line from Auntie Mame that we need to talk about tonight:
“Life is a banquet, but most people are starving.”
We do not have to starve anymore. It is incredibly appropriate that we are here tonight in a protestant house –– because, like you probably did as well, I too protested the death of our child to God. While my protest, and yours, did not change things, the protestants and the Catholics have taught us that even when a prayer to God is about death, “Gospel” nonetheless always means good news. So, we will have some of that tonight too.
We are all going home to our families for Christmas tonight. We will all go home to different places together tonight. We will walk our own lonely roads together for at least a short while, tonight. In a strange way our child’s death has taught me that the only way to approach both love and cooking is with reckless abandon. Both can hurt you. Both can make you feel good. We will all need both in this holiday season.
Bill Cosby once said soon after the death of his murdered son that, “We have to laugh again.” I have never seen any reason to be dull, and since I was less than four I have enjoyed entertaining and occasionally startling anyone who may be listening. So if I say something funny tonight—go ahead and laugh. Yeah, it’s a church, but it’s ok, really. I got us a dispensation for tonight. Talked to the Big Guy Himself.
When I had my first child and everything went right I was sure that I was a great father and that I knew how to do it. So, when my second child came along I was sure I was ready. I was sure that I knew all about this parent thing—Boy was I ever wrong.
But things were good. I really only found out how good, later.
Later was Friday, April 13th, 1991, because on April 13th, 1991 our daughter Lucy was killed by a drunk driver. She was 15 and a half years old.
Things were no longer good. It felt like things could never be good again. Then, we found Compassionate Friends and things, after a while, well after a while things changed again.
As almost all of you already know, telling our stories, the story of the death of our child is the way we begin our meetings at Compassionate Friends. The first time I told Lucy’s story, it took me forever to wrench out each word, but my Compassionate Friends waited patiently. They had been through this before. They knew how important it is that we tell our child’s story.
Lucy was all that we could desire in a daughter, and I am proud to be her father. There is not one day in her life that I would change. I just wish she had had more days. Bravely, she walked in beauty, and then, she was killed. There was no reason to it, just another Friday night out with friends trying to cross a street, but now she is dead, forever.
A child has been described as a gift from God. A more accurate description, as we have all learned so very painfully, is that a child is a gift on loan from God. However, one of the hardest lessons I ever learned is that as painful as that loss was, it has been a better world ever since Lucy was first here, and that some of that good has remained and it will always remain as long as those of us that knew her still live and we remember her time here.
Lucy’s style amounted to a sort of insolence toward life. She was a bandit, a wholly delightful rebel, brave, bold, funny, bright, and provocative. Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote:
“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.”
Our daughter Lucy left footprints wherever she tread. However, in all honesty, sometimes she also often left some dirt in some of those tracks as well.
“We don’t lose them. When you love them they don’t die.”
I have to believe that, and I do. It may be the only thing that I truly know, but I know that it is true. Whoever you love is alive as long as you are. Remember that, and live for you both.
I now know way too much about grief to think that there is any grieving progress that is typical. However, I have learned that passionate grief does not link us with the dead, it actually cuts us off from them, and from everyone else. At some point you will or you may already have realized that. . .“not everyone lives in this black pit that seems normal to us.” and like me, one day you too will choose crawl out. You too will choose to return to the living.
Grief, even profound grief, is not a permanent state; it is a process. We all grieve at different rates in different ways and that means that even at best that we grieve alone together. That can be difficult, particularly for a couple.
However, trust yourself. Do what you used to like to do. Do it together even when you do not feel like it. In a while you will like to do it again. I promise.
I know three things about your child:
1. Your child would not want you to feel as you do tonight. Your child would want you to be happy.
2. Your child does not want to be remembered only in pain.
3. The world today is a better place because all of our children once lived and played, and were loved.
As any careful historian will tell you that all religions are united, but not by belief in God, by a belief in life after death. They all agree that it will get better after the end. You will not ever be “well” again but it will get much better than it is today. That is the good news that I bring you tonight.
I promise you that it will get better for you.
So our word of hope for you tonight is that it will get better. Truthfully the pain will never leave you, but it will get better. You will smile and you will laugh again, and there will come a time when you will not cry nor even want to cry when you think of your child. I promise you.
At some point, we will all give each other our Christmas’s back. I hope we will do it tonight for everyone here, but we, the Compassionate Friends, will do it for each other. I promise you; it will happen.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. Learn from my mistakes. I took way too long to try to begin to recover, but trust yourself. Be gentle on yourself, and begin when you can, not when others may think you should. Begin when you can. There is no set time for any of this, but it is time tonight for you to heal at least a little. You can do it. I will show you how. I promise you.
Emotions are always judgements; if we fear or desire something, it is because we received an impression that it was bad or good, and we choose to assent to that impression. Since wickedness alone is bad and virtue alone is good, to judge that anything else is bad is a misjudgment –– but it is still a judgement; and wrong judgements turn into passions and they gather an impetus of their own. Do not accept your emotions as always right, or even that they are always yours; examine them, gently. It will help. I promise you.
Death, even an early death, cannot be wicked, it is a natural event. Never forget that it is your child’s life that is important, not the timing, nor even the nature of their passing. They were always going to leave. It was always a question of when. Don’t let your concern with your child’s too early death overwhelm your love of their life, of the life that they and you did have together. Do not let this mistake happen to you. It makes it so much harder for you to see things as they really are.
As you do this, please remember to take into account that great love and great achievements always involve great risk. Don’t let a natural event destroy a great relationship. A wise man once said:
“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
As a teacher, I know that we do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, but we can help each other in that process. Please, allow me to help you with this. This thought helps. It is our children’s life that matters, not their death, I promise you.
The character of a person can nearly always be measured by their willingness to be kind. We need now to be kind to ourselves as well as to others. This is Christmas, and we have suffered enough. Our children want all of us to have a truly, Merry Christmas, I promise you.
At one Compassionate Friends’ meeting over two years after our daughter had been killed, a woman that I had never met before said to me: “You don’t have to feel that bad.” I date the beginning of my recovery from those few words. I would have never accepted that advice even from a doctor. I had not accepted it from my family, but I took it from her, from a stranger, from a fellow suffering stranger. I had been down so long that I had forgotten where up was. I needed help and she gave it. If you need help you can find it too. I promise you.
“There are three things which are real; God, human folly and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension. So we must do what we can with the third.”
This was a favorite quote of President John F. Kennedy. This was from a man whose older brother Joe and his sister Kathleen, and his son Patrick had all already died much too soon. But God, human folly and laughter were still “real” to John Kennedy. They can be real to you again as well. I promise you.
As the Talmud says we see things: not as they are; but as we are. The facts of life and death are neutral. We, by our responses to life and death, give them either a positive or a negative meaning. In that sense, it is our choice that matters, not the fact of life or death.
The question of “Why?” always arises, but the “why” in these questions is always a mystery, not a real question. This “Why” cannot be solved by thinking, or study, or investigation, or meditation techniques, nor even by prayer. Such strategies merely replace this central question of life with belief in an answer, but, if it works for you, do it. I have no “Life After The Death Of A Child” instruction book. Do whatever works for you without apology to anyone as long as it works, as long as you always remember that it is their life that really matters.
Life is accident prone, and the idea that there is a right way to approach recovery from the death of your child is preposterous. Nonetheless, I have learned a few things from our daughter’s death, and I’d like to share them with you.
The question we should be asking is not, “Why did this happen to me?” Or, “What did I do to deserve this?” These are really unanswerable, pointless questions. A better question would be, “Now that this has happened to me, what am I going to do about it?”
Let me suggest that the bad things that happen to us in our lives do not have a meaning when they happen to us. They do not ever happen for any good reason which would cause us to accept them willingly. We did not earn them, neither we nor our children deserve them, but we can choose to give them meaning, or we can chose to leave them as the random, cruel, acts of nature, or of an equally cruel God.
Well then, what is to be the outcome, the meaning, of your child’s too short life? Is it to be pain? Or delight? Only you can chose. Only you can make it so.
The more we become conscious of the mysterious unfolding of life, it becomes ever more clear that its purpose is not to fulfill our expectations. True understanding of this means acceptance of the reality that the only certainty in life, is that it will end.
So, our pain really arises not from the death of our child, but from the timing of their death, because we know that no conditions in life are permanent. No conditions are even reliable, except that birth will be followed by death. What happened, however it happened was natural and inevitable, however premature it may have been. It was always a natural event absolutely certain to occur at some point. Surely, if we can remember this, then the day will come when we will all remember in joy all of the good that was piled into that too short time that we did share with our children. I promise you.
We must all at some point realize that for much of our life we have failed to recognize what is happening in the here and now. Instead of living in now, we are reliving an edited version of the past, planning an uncertain future, or indulging in being elsewhere, or worst of all, running on auto pilot without even really being conscious at all. However, there is nothing that brings you back to the reality of life quicker than the death of a loved one.
No matter how it happened, it was not your fault, death was ordained at the time of conception. There is nothing that can be done by you now except to choose to live, and to choose how your child’s short life is to be remembered. That is all, the rest is all vanity, or it leads to lunacy.
The philosopher George Santayana defines happiness as taking ”the measure of your powers.” While we all have the power to heal ourselves, sometimes we need help. I had help from my wife Sandy and I needed it. I got help from doctors, and I needed it. I got help from Friends, and I needed it. If you need it too, look for it. It is there. I promise you.
Always remember, we have an obligation to live and to enjoy living and to celebrate the real gift that our children are, and were for as long as we live; and this obligation is particularly important if they were only here for a short time! That is when they need our help the most.
“Where was my heart to flee for refuge from my heart? Whither was I to fly where I could not follow? In what place should I not be prey to myself?”
St Augustine recognized that it was himself that was his problem. Like the classic cartoon character Pogo he had met the enemy and recognized that his enemy was in the old Irish phrase, “himself”, and no one else.
When you recognize this, you are more than half way home. Take that first step tonight. Help us, help everyone to remember your children as they lived. Work at that and it will get better. I promise you.
Now, we must turn to our children’s Christmas celebration.
The first year I came to this service to say Merry Christmas to pain. When I said “Merry Christmas” that night to our child in my mind that is what I felt I was doing. I was saying, “Merry Christmas pain. Merry Christmas.” But it gets better each year. I promise you.
Now I want you to close you eyes and say “Merry Christmas” very softly to that scarred, and raw portion of your brain where your child still lives. We all know that our children never die as long as we remember them. Remember them now. They are not here this Christmas unless you remember them. You will be together again, someday. Remember that, and them, and then gently say:
“Merry Christmas.”
Now, please open your eyes. Now I want your to turn to your Friend on your right, or left, and say “Merry Christmas.” and shake their hand, or better yet if you both feel like it, give them a hug. Now turn to your Friend on the other side and do the same. Now to the Friend in front and the one behind.
We all have the same reason for being here. Our children asked us to come to a party, to a celebration, not to a wake. If your Friend says “Happy Hanukkah”, say it back. You can’t say it any worse than I did.
Everybody done?
Now lets’ all say it together, lets’ say it to Heaven and to Hell, lets’ say it to God and to everyone in between, I want you to say it loud. I want you to say it strong. I want you to say it as though you mean it with every fiber of your being, and you know you will. It is a long way to there but, we can do it. We can get our message to there. This is a Protestant Church. It can take the noise. On three please say “Merry Christmas.” with me. 1, 2, 3,
“Merry Christmas!”
Ring that bell! When you get to my child’s name, please, ring that bell!
We all do the best that we can. Remember, where there is great love there are always miracles. I believe that. However we describe life, what is happening is utterly mysterious, and beautiful. Our children contributed to that mystery and to that beauty. Let us celebrate that truth and their beauty together tonight.
Lovers, you and me,
We started our family,
Together we brought in another,
And then we were three
Our growing family,
Our circle of friends,
And like the circle,
There was neither beginning, nor end,
Our family has grown, time has passed,
now some are here, and one is there,
But we are still more than we were,
Not one less.
Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
And today, today is a gift
Our family shares with all of you. . .
“Love is the only rational act.”
Merry Christmas and Good Night.
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