By David McGovern
LAST week, I received a message from a mate. It was bad news, about a fellow friend who was in hospital with a massive brain tumour.
In the following days, I received regular updates. He was out of a coma; he was undergoing surgery; his wife was hoping he would make it, not only for the obvious reasons, but also because their second child was due to arrive soon.
For that family, and my sick friend’s parents, siblings, and their partners and children, life was on hold.
I went about my days – working, eating, sleeping, playing – even if it was with a heavy heart and the knowledge that somewhere, in a hospital room, people were contemplating the very real possibility that they may have to say goodbye to a loved one.
Needless to say, I have an immense amount of empathy for those facing the reality of the human condition.
I have watched both my children grapple with ill-health.
I have held them after the struggle became too much and the Lord called them home.
Denise and Bruce Morcombe never got to hold their son, Daniel, in that moment after his life was extinguished.
They spent many years, yearning for the chance to lay him to rest.
The people waiting for news on the fate of the Malaysian airliner, and those on board, can only grasp and conjecture and hold onto hope.
Chances are, however, that they too will eventually be confronted, like the Morcombes were.
These two, very public, moving news stories, and the private heartache unfolding in a hospital room, may not seem connected.
They each vary, in terms of scale, profile and community impact.
However, I can’t help feeling that each of them offers us a glimpse into the human condition.
We need one another. We need to know that we are connected, that we are in relationship, that we have the capacity to feel strongly for others, and that they feel strongly for us.
As the poet Louisa S. Guggenberger writes in Am I To Lose You?:
“sometimes we in quietness should stand
As fellow-solitudes, hand firm in hand,
And thought with thought and hope with hope compare?”
I am praying for my friend to recover. And not only recover but be fully restored to good health – “Nothing damaged – nothing broken.”
They are the exact words I would pray, standing by the cot of my son Brodie, after he was first born and the situation looked precarious.
I want that for my friend, for his wife and children, for his parents, his brothers and sisters, his nieces and nephews.
Jesus, in his earthly ministry, made a point of emphasising the importance of relationships.
He was constantly visiting, encountering, dialoguing, interacting.
He walked the earth, hand-in-hand, with his followers and, with them, helped restore sight, healed the deaf and mute, cured the sick, raised people from the dead.
And he also bid farewell. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus; he set out with a renewed purpose after hearing of the death of his cousin, John the Baptist.
Guggenberger concludes in her poem:
“What is your answer? Mine must ever be,
‘I greatly need your friendship: leave it me’.”
Parents need their children. Families need their loved ones to return from holidays. A spouse needs her husband to be around to help raise their young children.
This is the way of the world. But if the time comes for the natural order of things to be disturbed, we also need the chance to “bid … quietly, ‘Good-bye’.”
David McGovern is Catholic Mission director in Brisbane archdiocese.
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