In Messengers of God, Elie Wiesel takes us on a journey through the trials and tribulations of Job. Wiesel is angry with the ending of the story; Job’s immediate surrender to God after God rebuked him. Why did Job not demand an answer from God for all the pain and suffering? What of justice for his children, taken through no fault of their own? And yet, Job agreed to live, again. As Wiesel points out; “Therein lies God’s true victory: He forced Job to welcome happiness. After the catastrophe Job lived happily in spite of himself.”
When we are physically wounded, scar tissue will eventually form over the wound. At first, the new skin is very thin, weak and vulnerable. If the wound is not cared for properly, it can re-open, starting the healing process all over again. But over time, a physical wound that is cared for will heal and the scar tissue that covers it can be stronger than the original layer of skin. So, too, with the heart and the soul. The initial wound can be so deep as to almost kill, not the physical body but the soul. But like skin tissue, the soul, too can heal. Over time the scar over the wounded soul will become stronger, perhaps even stronger than the original covering.
Unfortunately, there is an expectation, today, of closure following a catastrophic event, from the death of a loved one to the death of a dream. I have lost track of the number of books, articles, television programmes and gurus who have told us how to grieve and find closure. It is an industry. We want answers when life falls off the rails, veers from our carefully, lovingly planned path. Rare are those amongst us who choose chaos over control. When we lose control we turn to anyone who says, “I have the answer. Come, follow me.” And we do. We take their plan, from their personal experience as if there were a one size fits all pattern for grieving. So we follow their way and yet, there is no closure.
Promoting the concept of closure is facile, disingenuous and mean-spirited. It is my experience that seeking closure is an exercise in futility. We are not obligated to accept a tragedy. Rather, to survive we must come to terms with it by accepting and embracing the person we become because of the tragedy. And that requires forgiveness, especially of ourselves. First, we must forgive ourselves for our anger and hurt. We must forgive ourselves our guilt and our sense of failure. We ask God to forgive us our trespasses. And from that we learn that we can forgive others. We forgive, not for their sake, but our own. For those we cannot forgive, for events that are evil, we leave forgiveness to God. As long as you carry anger or hate towards another, you are in a damaging relationship with that person. It takes time and work to let go. Forgiveness that comes too soon, too quickly, is superficial.
Life is a not a book of separate, neat, distinct chapters as if the past experience can be put behind us, behind a door. It is done. Put it away. End of chapter. Now, move on, carry on, look to the future. How unfair to the heart and the soul. The chapters and verses are interconnected, sometimes flowing one into the other and others so disjointed that looking back one wonders, “whose life was this?” Life ebbs and flows with times of joy and sorrow and with intermittent, quiet, restful times that each soul needs to recuperate, to adjust to the loss, waiting for the right time, to begin again, to dream again, to look outward with hope and renewal.
