Day 334 - In Memory of...WHY

In the Beginning was WHY,

Not YWH.

YWH was born from the Question WHY.
But eventually we realized that the WHYs would never go away.
So we flipped it around and made YWH bigger than every WHY and big enough to thwart a universe of questions about suffering and loss and grief. Now for every WHY that is too hard to answer, too hard to even look straight in the face, we say GOD is the perfect answer.

God is Good All the Time.

All the Time God is Good

I believed in GOD. And His goodness that others fervently claimed was there all the time, even when I was too small to see it or understand.

But I also couldn't ignore the WHYs.
I've always asked the questions.
I've looked everywhere for the answers...the leaves, the sunsets, the stars, a bible verse, a sermon, a phone call, dreams, coincidence, everywhere.
Anything and everything was a clue, a sign, a truth.
And I always believed that GOD was bigger than the WHYs.
That all the WHYs had to come from and return back to YWH.

I was convinced of this when I first heard the news of Amber and Clayton's car accident over the phone while standing in a kitchen in the middle of Kansas. I accepted it when her brain died a week later and they had to pull the plug. I accepted the WHAT even as the WHYs rose to the surface. And I was reading my bible on a plane in the middle of the sky when I found what I believed was YWH's answer to Amber's WHY.

The Lord the Strength of His People

A Song of Ascents.

Those who trust in the Lord

Are like Mount Zion,

Which cannot be moved, but abides forever.

2 

As the mountains surround Jerusalem,

So the Lord surrounds His people

From this time forth and forever.

3 

For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest

On the land allotted to the righteous,

Lest the righteous reach out their hands to iniquity.

4 

Do good, O Lord, to those who are good,

And to those who are upright in their hearts.

5 

As for such as turn aside to their crooked ways,

The Lord shall lead them away

With the workers of iniquity.

Peace be upon Israel! 

I was reading through the Psalms at the time and was on Psalm 125.
(I was also really good at creating a personal interpretation from the most bizarre texts.)

So, I read this, flying through the sky to my dead sister and I immersed myself in my illusion of GOD's good purpose, His LOVE, and His PLAN for our family.

Her memorial service was in a Baptist church, led by some pastor I didn't know and who barely knew her. Our family is awkwardly gathered on the traditional front pew, as if our grief is meant to be on display as much as her white prom dress now clumsily wrapped around gray lifelessness. I was asked if I wanted to share anything for her service, but I had declined because I really didn't know what to say. There was no song to sing. There were no words to say.

Lauda shared something she wrote about running the race and she talked about Amber's track reputation for setting records and then breaking her own records. It was thoughtful and sweet.

Then the pastor starts to talk.

It is a lot of senseless drivel to be honest, but then he strays too far when he starts to paint his own GOD illusion of how Amber must have been a sweet angel, throwing herself in harm's way to spare Clayton's life. I feel the constriction of horror in my throat as I'm jerked out of my own numb retreat from the grinding cogs of this death machine. I look at Clayton, his 12-year-old smallness, his shining copper hair, and I watch as the words slam into his chest and break loose the avalanche of fear that he has been hoping against hope isn't really true: that Amber died because of him.

He is lost, he is undone.

He sobs and sobs and sobs

An angry protectiveness surges through me and I want to rip this man's tongue out of his head.

My hands are shaking, but I raise one and trepidly step toward the podium to interrupt the sermon: "Actually, I do have something to share..."

But as soon as I'm up there, my raw emotion collides with my own need to make YWH the perfect answer for our WHYs, for my baby brother's WHYs. First, I tell everyone that Amber was not an angel. I was her sister and I should know that better than anyone. 

She would torment everyone in the house with playing Fur Elise over and over, faster and faster.

She would fight with me and one time she punched me in the leg.

I didn't tell them how she stole my first boyfriend, but I could have.

"Amber was a sinner, 

just like all of us. 

She wasn't an angel 

and 

she didn't die to save Clayton. 

She just died in a car wreck."

Then I pulled out my Bible and I read that stupid Psalm and somehow end up giving my own GOD illusion of how Amber's life and death was a reminder to all of us to live our lives for GOD. Something about the fear and trembling and hope in the goodness of GOD.

It was Bible bullshit with the best of intentions.

We've all been there.

I just wish I hadn't said that part.

I wish I had said more about the loveliness of her sinfulness.

Like how she and I slept in the same bed, and wrestled, and laughed, and told secrets.

How smiley and true she was.

How one time she and I dared each other to roll completely naked in the fresh Virginia snow while Lauda looked on with a smug satisfaction because she refused to be so idiotic. 

And how we kept our sisterness in tact even with the dumb boyfriend debacle.

I don't regret standing up for Clayton and I would do it all over again, - except without the Sword of Truth.

Today is Clayton's memorial service and I'm not there.

It's in a Mennonite church for the Mennonite grievers.

There will be a Mennonite devotional and some Mennonite songs.

Part of me wishes I could be there.

And part of me wants to rip the symbolic shovels out of their death hands.

I hate that religion wants to cover up the pain of WHY with a big, fucking, glorious YWH.

I hate that we pretend that death is better than being alive.

I hate that we cut down our beautiful brokenness and glamorize our ultimate destruction to this GOD's narcissistic demand that every knee bow and every breath be returned to a pile of ashes.

And yet even as I write this, I feel my own inner turmoil again.

Some say we all let Clayton down.

But how fucking convenient that we humbly confess this now that he's dead.

And also how fucking self-flagellating about our own broken and hurting WHYs.

So this is what I want to say to Clayton:

I think we did let you down.

I think we do sacrifice the alive ones for the dead ones.

And when Amber died, you were the first and worst sacrifice.

We valued our grief over you and we forgot you.

I should have left Kansas and come home to you and Lauda, the alive ones.

I shouldn't have waited two years and then demanded that you and Mom carry your grief stones to Kansas where I could conveniently rescue you and convert you to my GOD illusion.

I broke us, even as I threw out your CDs of angry music and I broke down your bedroom door with a hammer when you refused to open it to my own anger.

I let you down when I called the cops on you for bringing drugs home and when given the option, I piously told them to cuff you and arrest you.

I didn't understand your struggles.

And I betrayed you with my self-righteousness.

From then on, you knew what each of us already knew. 

Our family was only there for you when you were dead...and you weren't dead yet.

As long as you were alive, we expected you to be grateful for merely being alive and to be responsible for your own survival.

Honestly, I still struggle with these feelings because we are all broken and filled up with our stones of grief and I know that many of us did reach out, even in our confusion and weaknesses.

We called and you wouldn't answer.

We apologized and you gave little grace.

We tried to help and you responded with your own demands of anger.

We gave and gave and gave what we could and you only withdrew, asking us to give you more.

Clayton,

I desperately wish I could get back to that 12-year-old boy and do things different. Somehow you got stuck there and so did I, only on different dimensions and we could never reach each other. Everything after that was too late and a fight to break through one another's defenses and hurt memories.

You summed up your loneliness with a memory that everyone in our family knows well, each in our own way:

We walked the mountain every day to our house back in Jollet Holler.

In the mud, in the rain, in the snow.

In the cold, at night.

To and from the school bus.

With sandals or rubber boots.

Construction coveralls, scarves and mittens.

Even with the handles of plastic grocery bags twisting around our cold, numb fingers.

Our feet knew the ruts of that lane so well that it didn't matter if it was a cloudy night or a full moon.

You were probably six or seven when we moved to that house and us three big sisters had already learned how to bend to the work of surviving. We each just dug in and conquered the mountain because it had to be done. I actually have very few memories of being with you or Amber or Lauda on the mountain. But you remembered. Because you were smaller, with shorter legs, and you would get left behind.

As you got older and the hurt harder and harder to bear, you let yourself ask for that little boy wandering up that mountain all alone,

"Please just come back down the mountain,
hold my hand,

and walk up with me."

I'm sorry that I didn't notice.

That I forgot you in my own survival.

I'm sorry I never figured out how to come back down to you and walk up with you.

I'm sorry I let you down.

That's all. No Bible verse.

Or explanation of a perfect YWH for this tragic WHY.

All I know is that I will always hurt for you
and I will always love you.

And now we will all finally remember you
because now you're dead.