My friends,

When I started this #journeytojoy, I wanted to emulate my recently-deceased mother-in-law, Joanna MacLaughlin.  At her service, the minister remarked on how she had endured her final illness without complaint.  That inspired me to want to navigate an entire year without voicing complaint.

I stumbled during that first 365 days, so I decided to blog about the experience until I eliminated complaint from my way of life.  I’m still trying.  Along the way, though, I have learned to identify the various ways in which I express “complaint”, distinguished from advocating for justice.  Additionally, others have shared their stories and remarked upon the common human enterprise of learning to live a joyful life.

Though I try to focus on positive occurrences, some tragedies strike me as too terrible to ignore.  From time to time, I have mentioned the suffering which I experience in order to also share the lessons which I take from my pain.  When people for whom I care endure trauma, I comment to the extent that I want to provide comfort or commend their strength.  The woes of society or political angst usually gets relegated to my occasional social and political blog, which you can find HERE.  I don’t record many entries at the site because, quite frankly, it’s all just so unbearably depressing that I prefer to focus on #myjourneytojoy.

The tragedies of the last week compel me to remark that some occurrences demand protest.  Call that complaint if you will, but my moral duty motivates me.  I won’t debate gun control (I’m in favor of it) or whether any particular elected official properly responded to what happened in El Paso, Dayton, or even — with very little press — Chicago this weekend.  I have not processed my emotions in response to what I’m reading, except for two thoughts:  First, I feel incredibly lucky to be alive; and, second, I worry about my son who lives in the heart of Chicago and travels its streets and public transit every day.

I offer for your contemplation, two photographs and one absent picture.  For the photographs:  Pictures of the known El Paso Victims and the known Dayton victims.  For the absent photograph:  I could find not one composite photo of the people killed in Chicago this weekend.  I found article after article talking about the many shootings there.  One article even noted that so many people were injured this weekend by violence that some hospitals had to close their doors.

We must stop this violence.  It is no longer sufficient to simply complain about it, assuming that  complaint ever sufficed as a response to this travesty.  Complaint does nothing more than “thoughts and prayers”. 

We must join our voices in relenting condemnation of anyone who incites, inspires, or engages in this senseless violence.  Any killing is too much.  And the rivers of our nation have been stained with the blood of too many innocent victims.

It’s the fifth day of the sixty-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining.  For me and mine, life continues.  

My father called me “Secondhand Rose”.  He got the name from a Barbra Streisand song. As the fourth daughter, I never got new clothes.  It is one of a few pleasant memories  of my father:  Sitting with him over the St. Louis Post-Dispatch learning to read; his voice intoning the story of Mary and Joseph seeking a room and finding only a stable, just before we lit the Mary Candle and put out cookies for Santa; and his affectionate linking of me with his favorite singer.

I still like used clothing, and dishes, and trinkets.  I can merge those belongings with whatever I already have, like a new pair of shoes pushed on the shelf with the worn sandals and the dusty boots.  They suit me.  I know what to do with them.

But I have wandered aimlessly through this week as secondhand sorrow washed over me.

On Monday, one of my friends lost her son to suicide.  I only met him once.  She and I had talked about our sons — our pride in them; our fears; our hopes and dreams.  Because I know and care for her, I mourn the pain which drove him to this terrible choice.  I grieve for her.  I don’t know what to do with my feelings, though.  The only people who might understand have too grim a closeness to bother with me.

I can’t think of anything to do for her.  She had gone abroad and has not yet returned.  When she does, she will need space and time to learn to live in a world without him.  Nothing I can say or do will change the ice in her veins or the shard of glass driven into her soul.  She has a daughter and two grandsons.  But I have a son. I cannot imagine losing him and now my friend must endure the unthinkable.

Suffering stands as the singular and solitary state of each human.  My friend dwells in that empty chamber now, listening to the echo of her beloved boy’s fading voice.   She will carry this burden for eternity, even after she resumes the threads of her daily existence.  This sinister reality stays any thought of complaint, as the sun sets and the darkness settles on my tiny house.  I’m calling all angels to watch over my friend tonight.  She has greater need of them than I have ever known.

It’s the second day of the sixty-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Away
By James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916)

I CANNOT say and I will not say
That he is dead.—He is just away!

With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,
He has wandered into an unknown land,

And left us dreaming how very fair
It needs must be, since he lingers there.

And you—O you, who the wildest yearn
For the old-time step and the glad return,—

Think of him faring on, as dear
In the love of There as the love of Here;

And loyal still as he gave the blows
Of his warrior strength to his country’s foes.

Mild and gentle, as he was brave,
When the sweetest love of his life he gave

To simple things: where the violets grew
Pure as the eyes they were likened to.

The touches of his hands have strayed
As reverently as his lips have prayed;

When the little brown thrush that harshly chirred
Was dear to him as the mocking-bird;

And he pitied as much as a man in pain
A writhing honey-bee wet with rain.—

Think of him still as the same, I say:
He is not dead—he is just away!

***************************************************

The passage which I read at my brother Stephen Patrick’s funeral when his own pain claimed him, is, finally, all that I can think to offer to my friend as she mourns the loss of her own Steven:

From The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupery, Chapter 26: 

“And at night you will look up at the stars. Where I live everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is to be found. It is better, like that. My star will just be one of the stars, for you. And so you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens . . . they will all be your friends. And, besides, I am going to make you a present . . .”

He laughed again.

“Ah, little prince, dear little prince! I love to hear that laughter!”

“That is my present. Just that. It will be as it was when we drank the water . . .”

“What are you trying to say?”

“All men have the stars,” he answered, “but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You–you alone–will have the stars as no one else has them–“

“What are you trying to say?”

“In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night . . . You–only you–will have stars that can laugh!”

And he laughed again.

“And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, ‘Yes, the stars always make me laugh!’ And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you . . .”

And he laughed again.

“It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh . . .”

And he laughed again.