In a Maine online newspaper I found this lovely obituary/tribute to my friend M., a 43-year-old neurologist and osteopathic doctor, who died on Thursday:
Because of his compassionate nature he often treated patients regardless of their ability to pay. M. was a sensitive and kind soul who took nothing at face value. He was intensely emotional and found deeper meaning in everything, expressing himself creatively through poetry. He boldly spoke of his Christian faith and God's "awesome" love. M. approached life fearlessly, didn't take no for an answer, and to his credit, he rarely had to. He was never intimidated or embarrassed to make waves or stand up for what he believed in. He embraced nature and all its elements. He loved to sleep under the stars, especially in Maine where he said the stars shine the brightest. Breathing in the fresh air of morning was a simple pleasure to him.
Odd where life leads us. Even odder is where we lead life.
Yesterday morning, while reading Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, a lengthy letter he drafted from prison, I found the following passage amid Wilde's struggles over Christ, suffering, and the consequences of being imprisoned:
"If ... a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I shouldn't mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy? Besides, feasts are not for me any more. I have given too many to care about them. That side of life is over for me, very fortunately I dare say. But if ... a friend of mine had a sorrow, and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me I would come back again and again and beg to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to share in. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most terrible mode in which disgrace could be inflicted on me. But that could not be. I have a right to share in Sorrow, and he who can look at the loveliness of the world, and share its sorrow, and realize something of the wonder of both, is in immediate contact with divine things, and has got as near to God's secret as anyone can get."
I want to know that secret. I know it stands at the crux of paradox. Perhaps a cheap adage, borne of M.'s favorite sport of body-building, speaks to Wilde's larger point: No pain, no gain. No doubt it might be better said as "Know pain, know gain." Forgive the diminution of a powerful paradox, but even small things can speak to the deep mysteries.
The flag flies half-staff here at Contratimes.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
1 comment:
Bill
I love the Wilde quote; 'De Profundis' is one of my favorite books, one of the very few of which I keep a copy handy in my home. I'm glad you share my enjoyment of it.
It is also poignant because I feel, in viewing you grief over your departed friend, that I should be better equipped to grieve with you, and I am perhaps too distant and quarellsome an aquaintance (I am reluctant to use the sacred word "friend" here, though I'd like to be a friend) to do so in any useful way. Then again, since this fact of psychic separation grieves me, it brings me closer to grief itself, and perhaps therefore closer to YOUR grief. How ridiculous to take such a circuitous route to what should be second nature.
A friend of mine is doing an audio 'zine in which contributors must tape-record a recounting of a "first time"--I was thinking of recounting for her 'zine the first time a friend of my own-group died, and so your articles about "M" strike a deep chord for that reason as well.
No condolences are adequate. But, though I know you're not invincible, I pray for and believe in your ability to avoid discouragement.
peace
LB
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