Broken – Marilyn R. Gardner

When my brother Stan was in high school, he rescued one of our baby bunnies who had been rejected by its mother. The bunny was so young that it had not yet grown fur. He set up an incubator type space for the bunny in a box with a lamp and a soft cloth, feeding it with an eye dropper every few hours and watching over it constantly. Despite his efforts, the bunny died. I remember all of us feeling the sting of loss and death. It was deeply sad. It might have been only a bunny, but it was a bunny that had a devoted caregiver determined for it to live.

We cried the sobs of the young who encounter early experiences with death only to discover that it is not something we have power over. Instead, it would come and it would bring sorrow and pain throughout our lives.

Growing up in the developing world, I understood early on that sickness and death were part of our world. We were not shielded. I have found that this was not necessarily the case for those who grew up in the western world. Yet, if there is anything that this year has shown to all of us, it is that we don’t have nearly as much control over our lives, over sickness, over death as we may have thought we do.

I can fight this, but it doesn’t change reality. Sickness and death seem to be excellent teachers. When faced with these, I don’t know what the next minute will hold, let alone the next week.

I’ve always known in my head that I have no control over death, but I think in my heart I somehow felt I might be able to stall it, to negotiate it for better times. Like making a doctor’s appointment: “I’m sorry, that time won’t work for us. Could you make it for Tuesday at ten? Thank you so much!”

It doesn’t work like that. The death of the bunny was only the beginning. And it was a small prick of pain compared to pain that would come later.

One of my biggest honors in writing is hearing from people around the world. I get emails and messages that tell me of hurts and struggles, of family members near death and of struggles in life. This Monday morning I have received messages that have made me weep, made me realize the fragility of life. One reader tells me of an early morning trip to a hospital for his child, another tells me of their daughter facing such deep loneliness during this pandemic isolation that she has been hospitalized, another tells me of his family member who is dying. Each story has so much more to it than the few lines that have been shared. Each story involves multiple hurting people and families.

It is a Monday morning and the world feels deeply broken and hurt, deeply wounded. Like the bunny in the homemade incubator, our world feels to be hanging on to life by a thread.

I have no words of comfort other than this: If a teenage boy can care so much about a baby bunny that he sets up an incubator and watches over it, feeding it with an eyedropper, then surely the God whose image that teenage boy bears can care about the deep pain present in all these situations.

So today, if you are in pain, if you are grieving and hurt, if you are watching someone you love die by degrees, may you know that God – a God who cares about teenage boys and bunnies, a God who whispers in the quiet nights of our pain, a God who not only bears witness to a suffering, fragile world, but also entered it – may you know that God cares infinitely about you. May you have people to walk with you through your pain.

There is something about suffering that longs for someone to sit with us, to be present through the pain. It’s the fellowship of suffering. It’s the words ‘you are not alone’ put into action. The sitting bears witness to our pain. More than a card or a casserole the familiar, patient presence of another says to us “it’s too much for you to bear, but I will sit with you, I won’t leave you alone.”
from Just Your Presence

[Image by Milchdrink from Pixabay]

Subways in cities are a microcosm of our world. In an enclosed space with graffiti and advertisements for art, we bump into, and sit by, complete strangers. It is in subway cars that languages from all over the world blend together, a verbal match to the rhythm of the train, and every shade of skin color is present. You never know if you are sitting next to a soon-to-be Nobel prize winner or someone who can barely make it to the next day.

Except sometimes you do – because sometimes the person is so drunk that they teeter across the moving train and fall against you.

Sometimes the person is so mentally ill that if you make eye contact you will face burning rage that reveals itself through a nonsensical tirade.

Other times the person is violently lashing out and your heart beats a little faster, wondering if now is the time to pull the emergency lever.

It’s these times that there are clear distinctions between the sane and the insane; between the ‘broken’ and the ‘whole’; between the drunk woman and the rest of the car.

It was like this the other day. The sane and sober watched as a drunk woman took the stage on the ride home. She alternated between angry belligerence and tearful grief. She stumbled and fell, held up by the sober man who was with her. Her face spoke a hard life with mascara and lipstick smeared, premature wrinkles, and a glazed hard shell over her eyes.

What grieved me was the laughter and mockery her performance yielded. It was human on human attack and inside and outside I cringed. There was no effort made to hide it; she was a person to be mocked and avoided.

But what resonated to my core were her words just before we reached my stop. Sobbing she looked at the man with her and said “Just let me go! Let me cry! Let me be. You don’t care anyway!”

The words struck me as the cry of humanity – a cry that pushes away, that can’t receive comfort, that, despite the tears and sorrow, wants to go it alone. The cry that reminds me of a two-year old “Do by self!” — emphatic in its scream of independence.

The cry of humanity that every one of us on the subway understood, but that most of us have learned to disguise.

The woman pushed away at the man who was with her the way I push away at God.

Let me go! Let me cry! Let me do it my way! Let me be! You don’t care anyway. The cry of all of us really. The cry of humanity that has echoed to the Heavens since time began.

The man wouldn’t be put off. He held her as she pushed back. He took the punching and the hitting and spoke softly to her. He stood tall as she fell against him, finally defeated, finally realizing that yes – she did in fact need him. She couldn’t have taken two steps without his support, his strength,his sobriety.

And the rest watched – mocking.

We got off at the same stop. I went one way. They went the other – the woman leaning on her support as he walked her toward the exit.

It struck me that despite appearance, they may be the two sanest people in that subway car. The one – who realized despite her drunken state, that she was desperate for support; the other – determined to stay with her and support her through the ride.

These two, broken and exposed, illustrated in virtual reality both the cry of humanity and the answer to that cry.