Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 1 (May 16, 1998)

When I first learned of Lana's death, I was struck with a soul-numbing shock. It was initially merciful, in its way, as it prepared my mind for the crushing reality it did not want to accept. Soon enough, though, grief plunged me into an endless dark passage fraught with uncountable traps.

Like someone wounded, I cried out to God: that benevolent, all-loving and good God I'd been taught of my whole life. God, the celestial Santa Claus I'd always turned to in times of need or want and Who, in good times, I generally left alone. Now, I begged for Him, pleading down a dark corridor for help, for comfort. But He was silent. The only thing that came back to me was the sound of my own voice. God had abandoned me. Lana had abandoned me.

God is good, or so I had always been told. God is a loving Father. I'd been told that, too. But I began to believe that God is also a cruel God, too. And why not? The Old Testament is filled with evidence of Him destroying whole cities or nations--even at one time, the entire earth--for the sins of a few. What had I done so offensive that He would play such a cruel joke on me: giving me such a precious gift as Lana and then, before the bud could even open, plucking it away for Himself. This was not a good God, a loving Father.

I shouted to Him, "Look at what you've done! Why, God, why? Just give her back to me and we'll call it even." But no answers would come. He remained silent. And I began to learn that grief is, at its core, selfish: a deep turning into one's self. Grief is not about Lana. It's not about her inconsolable children. It's about me--my pain and the deep traps of loneliness I've find myself in. And where was faith? I looked and saw it was as shattered as my life. I couldn't even pray. But then maybe I'd been fooling myself all these years. Perhaps I really never had any faith and had just gone through the motions of belief and worship. Or it might have been whatever faith I had died with Lana. I know my heart did. So it seemed likely that everything else went as well. All that was left of me was a persistent pain and an indescribable emptiness.

Days blended into nights. I'd fall into bed, clothes and all, and if lucky, drop into a dreamless and death-like sleep. After an hour, maybe two, a thunderbolt of pain would rip through me nearly knocking me off the bed. Other nights, that bolt was just daring me to lay my head on the pillow. It hit before any chance of sleep came. I was left sitting on the side of the bed to wait out the six months until the sun came up the next morning.

It was in those deep traps of night I called out her name. I begged her to come back to me. But still, only silence. With no answers, no faith and a silent God I began to wonder if I was to be left forever grieving Lana with any hope of comfort.

And then came an unexpected and devilish new trap--a deeper pit lined with even sharper impaling spikes. I discovered I not only had to grieve Lana and what we'd had but also everything that was to have been. All of our dreams, our hopes, our plans--the kind of things all lovers talk about and look towards as they set out on a life together. All gone.

Didn't God remember that two nights before she died, we'd spent several hours planning our wedding? Where was this God Who claimed to love His children so much? He had turned His back on me. I felt as alone and beyond hope as a man could feel.

It was during one of those desperate nights that something from my childhood came back to me. When I was a boy in the school yard, there was a day I took a tremendous blow to my midsection from another boy with whom I'd had a scrap. Having the wind knocked out of me, the blow drove me to my knees, bent over double in pain and panic, trying to catch a breath. I felt so alone, so humiliated and believed I was never going to be able to rise again. I'd been brought down by one punch from the other boy and abandoned by everyone who'd witnessed the fight. Being bent over like that, focusing on my own pain, I did not see the kindly teacher who'd walked over and now had her hand extended towards me. It wasn't till I looked up, shifting the focus away from my own predicament, that I saw the comfort waiting for me. All I had to do was put out my hand and take hers.

With Lana's death, I was again like that boy of eleven--so bent down, so focused on my own pain, I could see nothing else. But there at the bottom of the deepest pit waited God. He had been there all the time, biding His time till I hit bottom. All I had to do was reach my hand out and say, "Help me." And therein began strength.

Has this little epiphany lessened the pain any? Will there ever come an hour of a day when I don't think of Lana? Or a day I won't need to find some hidden corner and cry for all that she was and all that was to have been? Or call out her name in the middle of the night? No. She was far too dear. But there are things we cannot understand. And even if we did, that understanding would not ease the pain or sense of loss. Perhaps it's best that we don't understand some things because it would delay acceptance of God's will even longer. No matter how long it takes or how hard it is, no matter how much we rail and rage against it, it is only with acceptance that comfort and healing begins to enter our lives. Even now, when I don't want to believe it, it is the truth. My faith tells me that. My God promises me that.

And where is Lana? Did she abandon me, too? Only a few days ago I found, by accident, some words she wrote to me right before she died. Among them she said, ". . . and remember this forever, I love you." And so says Lana. And so says God. And so I believe.

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