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Friday, September 27, 2002
OBENIETA: Ash in the wind
By Myke U. Obenieta
SOUND OF MOSAIC
A scaled-down variation on the fall of Icarus, what the child Rizal learned by lamplight, by the warmth of a mother’s wisdom: Don’t go far like the moth, or the flame will catch you.
If they’d have their way, any parent would rather have their children forever cocooned in the comfort of home. Too often, though, the lesson boils or gets watered down to homespun paranoia. Don’t dare stay outdoors too long.
Outside the home’s walls, or so parents could have glowered, danger is always up and about like hell. Watch out, blah blah blah, beware.
Which explains why some guardians, when they go out to work or anything, would rather lock their kids inside the house. Often their caution holds true.
Outside, young girls have been waylaid by strangers, and found days after with naked, mangled bodies. Two teenage sisters were abducted, gang-raped, killed. A schoolboy’s corpse was discovered in a sack, riddled with stab wounds. Endless, the dire possibilities.
For goodness sake, stay home.
Some lessons, however, have the weight of ashes in the wind. No way it can be grasped, like the grief of the parents of at least six kids who burned to their deaths in three separate incidents recently, a rehash of the terrible end of three siblings in Consolacion town more than two months ago.
If there’s something to be learned somewhere, when confronted with unspeakable sorrow over the death of someone’s child, it is for us who are seeking to reach out in sympathy. Shut up, for goodness sake, when offering your condolences. What’s most soothing might be our silence.
What not to say to a grieving parent, that’s one homework worth hunching over.
“Our suffering has also been unwittingly increased by some well-meaning but inappropriate remarks,” notes Laura M. Grimes, an American mother who wrote a magazine article three months after an automobile accident killed her baby daughter.
These are the “least helpful” remarks made to her and her husband, to wit:
l “She’s in heaven.” Never mind if it echoes the Christian hope of life beyond death, parents “expect to die before their children.” The reverse, says Grimes, is unsettling.
“It fails to honor the deep suffering that parents undergo. It is hoped that the child would have gone to heaven eventually; it is no blessing to be taken there before experiencing the great gifts this life has to offer.”
l “We don’t understand God’s plan.” Okay, death is God’s will, but Grimes states that God never wills what is evil, much less the death of a child. It made me angry with God, she says. Fortunately for her, a retreat director wisely encouraged her to express her anger and rage directly to God through her prayers.
l “You’ll have other children.” Nothing else denigrates a parent’s sense of loss. “Even if a couple has a dozen children, each is irreplaceable,” stresses Grimes.
l “I know how you feel.” To this, Grimes retorts, “No, you don’t.”
l “Are you going to counseling?” It adds insult to injury—all the unsolicited advice and preaching. Grimes states: It’s a stress to have to defend coping style and to wonder whether there’s a proper way to grieve.
In the end, Grimes concludes, nothing is more helpful to grieving parents than people “who simply companied us in our sadness.” More often than not, she adds, an offering of prayers is enough.
(Michael U. Obenieta welcomes your comments at his e-mail address: yomyko@yahoo.com)
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