Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Lamentations 1:1-12

“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow...”

This is my second time reflecting on Lamentations (see Tuesday, April 15, 2014 for my thoughts on 1:17-22.) As I meditate on the reading this time, I’m struck by the writer’s desperate desire to be seen. Standing in for the destroyed city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants, the writer calls out to passers-by to stop and notice her suffering. Look and see… Keenly feeling God’s absence, the author calls out, “O LORD, look at my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed.”

            Isn’t this desire to be seen a universal desire? 

Especially when we suffer, don’t we want to be noticed? I suspect that many would disagree. For some of us, we would rather suffer alone. Somehow the gaze of others magnifies our grief, and the grief we have is enough already.

            Canadian fiction writer Frances Itani writes beautifully of a woman who would initially rather be alone in her pain. In the short story, Marx and Co., Itani introduces us to Jill and Margot, neighbors who become fast friends as they raised their children and tended their farms. They cemented their connection through twenty-two years of shared tears and shared laughter, although only once had they articulated their relationship. “If ever there comes a day,” Jill had said, “if ever the day comes when I need you, you’ll hear my cry all the way across the ridge. You’ll hear it piggy-backed on the North wind.”

            There had come a day when Jill needed Margot, but Jill did not cry. Diagnosed with breast cancer, Jill had a mastectomy. For the previous four months, Jill had turned away from Margot, turned away even from her own husband, and “turned her face toward death.” She would not listen to the offers of comfort or love, although Margot faithfully gave them.

            During that four-month silence, Jill had also refused conventional medical treatments, until one day the cry she had promised Margot years before, finally came. Jill wanted Margot to accompany her to the hospital. Because she let her treatments lapse, the doctor wanted to resume therapy right away, and asked Jill to consider it. The friends drive home together, and we get a glimpse into Jill’s mind during that four-month hiatus:

Margot drove back from hospital, headed up the lane into an afternoon sky of shifting violets and blues, Jill looking straight ahead, saying, “You know the way we’ve talked all these years, Margot? About how we’ll never find the answer till we know what the true questions are? It’s taken a long time, but I finally do know some of the answers.”“Do you now?”“You know what else?”“What?”Jill grinned. “I’m taking them with me.”And they ended the afternoon that way. Laughing till the tears poured out of them, until Jill began to cough and cough and went into spasm and Margot thought she’d have to pull over, but made it to the crest of the hill where Jill’s house marked the descent to the other side, down, down the sloping fields to the sea. Wilf [Jill’s husband] coming out when he heard the car, and when he looked at Jill and Margot and saw them laughing, he, too, smiled and followed them inside, a secret, pleased look on his face.”

Itani’s story embodies the grief cry of Lamentations. Perhaps both stories affirm our basic need to be seen, to be in relationship, especially during our times of greatest pain. Both stories are gentle invitations to let our cries for companionship be “piggy-backed on the North wind.”

(You can find Itani’s story in her collection, Pack Ice, or in the wonderful collection called The Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women.)

- David Shumaker