Grief

A short time ago I heard about a seventeen year old girl who died from a fall off a cliff while hiking with friends. She disobeyed a warning sign, got too close to the edge and fell. She had made a small mistake in judgement and paid the ultimate price. This young girl, by all accounts, was a good person, full of promise and headed toward a very bright future. I did not know her personally but I do know many members of her family. From the moment I heard of the accident the magnitude of the tragedy has stayed with me. It has caused me to take a retrospective look at my own youth. I made so many worse mistakes as a child but paid only a small toll on my way to adulthood. Motivated by the enormity of loss and perhaps by a sense of “survivor's guilt” I have attempted through my own introspection to derive something from it all. I have not discovered a path through the labyrinth of grief in which her family are now lost. This is not an egotistical attempt to whisper some magical words into the ear of the bereaved in order to transform grief into happiness. This is my humble attempt to look at this tragedy from a different perspective.

As we grow older, grief finds us all in some form or fashion. The individual that is forced into the grieving process by the loss of a loved one does not overtly decide the course of grief. The avenue of advice to that person does not exist. My life has seen the passing of my parents, friends and their family members, two women that I dearly loved, and a cat. Each passing, including the death of my pet, has caused me different levels of grief. Each has inspired tears and smiles. As time has passed, more smiles than tears.

The young live with a sense of invincibility and are blind to the dangers of life. Most children and young adults survive the mistakes and transgressions of youth. The cruel fate that snatches the few unlucky away from us is so unfair and heartbreaking. Unfortunately it happens all too often and those left behind are burdened with the lonely question of how to live on. I have never been a parent so I cannot comment on the death of a child from that point of view but I have extensive experience as a child. There were countless times in my youth when I went passed the warning sign, walked along the edge of disaster and fell only to be spared by luck and a forgiving destiny. There is one such time that stands out above all the rest.

When I was twenty years old I was more than cavalier about my life. On the nights that I would go out, my mother would come to my room, look at me so worried and practically beg me to be careful. Many times in my young life I would not come home. Drinking, fighting, and confrontations with the police would delay my return. It was a bad track on which I raced through life.

One particular night I was out drinking with friends near the seedy Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Bored and filled with courage emboldened by youth and alcohol, we marauded through the streets occasionally going into massage parlors to give the ladies a hard time. Just before entering one establishment a man approached me and offered to sell me some drugs. I dispatched him with some choice descriptive words, most of them four letters in length. I was inside for less than three minutes and upon returning to the street I notice the drug salesman was still loitering near by. When he menacingly came toward me I knew that we were going to fight, but I was not concerned as I was a veteran of many fights. As we came together I tackled him to the ground in preparation for the pounding I was surely going to give him. I was making a huge mistake. As we went to the ground he stabbed me three times in the back. I stood up and staggered away as he ran off into the night. I slumped down on the curb and began to bleed on to the sidewalk. I leaned back against the parking meter to avoid falling in the street and struggled to breath, I became light-headed and with every fiber of my being believed I was going to die. As I sat there I did not scream or cry, I did not beg for divine life saving mercy, all my thoughts were of my poor mother. I thought of the pain that my mistake in judgement, my death, was going to cause her. I just wanted to tell that I loved her and that I was sorry for wasting the life she had sacrificed so much to give me. I wanted to reach into the future, the one she would have to endure without me in it, and take her grief away. Obviously I did not die, but I came close. I was hospitalized for days, one wound a quarter of an inch from my spine and another punctured and collapsed my lung. I had survived a bad youthful transgression but more importantly my mother had been spared the grief of my death.

I do not know the specifics of the pain felt by the family of this poor young girl. I do not have the words to take the agony away. But I do believe, as they move through this unmeasurable grief, a moment will come when the child lost will whisper to their soul, “I love you, please be happy again”. Why do I think this is true? Because that is what I wanted so desperately to tell my mother.