I Don’t Know Why I Didn't Come

She’s gone.

The Hospice lady wants my credit card number so she can pay for Mom’s body to be removed from her bed.

I ask the Hospice lady on the phone if I can call someone to let them know and see how we can handle the bill for Mom’s removal. I want to talk to my family, my friends.

The lady says that’s fine, but don’t be too long. The reason she called – and she hates to have to do this to me – but the thing is, you see, that bodies start to decompose very quickly. The fluids begin to leave the body in a matter of hours and so if I could get back to her right away…she would’ve called much sooner but the man wouldn’t give her my number until now.

Her voice fades in and out to me as if she were a million miles away. She must be. I am so detached that I am sitting quite still in my car. The light gray vinyl interior looks as dull as my senses feel. It’s comforting. It fits and holds me in this moment.

My brain is on autopilot somehow processing what she is telling me without my emotions keeping pace.

Some miniscule part of me wants for a second to be enraged at the horror and injustice of this moment. The rest of me hushes that voice. There is no point. It doesn’t serve Mom or me, or anyone. The rage retreats to someplace that it can’t be reached. Now I experience a serenity and grace that is truly beyond my own understanding.

You think if certain things happen to you, or if you know certain things, or handle them that you will explode. Or die. But you don’t have to. You just don’t have to.

"Is this to say that suffering is indispensable to the discovery of meaning? In no way. I only insist meaning is available in spite of--nay, even through suffering, provided . . . that the suffering is unavoidable. If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic. If, on the other hand, one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude. Long had not. . . chosen to break his neck, but he did decide not to let himself be broken by what had happened to him.” – Victor Frankl, Holocaust Survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning


"My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing--which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.” – Victor Frankl, Holocaust Survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning