For Devin Yurga

On Saturday, Devin Yurga was working on a Knowlton farm, using a tractor to uproot a tree, when the 2-ton vehicle flipped on top of him about 10:30 a.m., State Police and relatives said. The boy died almost 11 hours later at Morristown Memorial Hospital.
http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1167631841177860.xml?starledger?nnj&coll=1

To read the devastating news that a good young man has died before his time is to lose a piece of our soul. A tiny piece just goes spinning off into the universe, as we watch helplessly, wondering at the futility of taking care of our children, how in spite of our best care, they go and get pinned under a tractor and die on us. It’s unreasonable to expect us to know how to deal with such pain, such trauma.

So we cry quiet tears, rocking in anguish as the tears track slowly down our cheeks, drip from our chins, moisten the earth or the kitchen floor or our daughter’s head as we hold our children close, to keep them safe for one more precious moment. We keen our wild crazy grief in the shower, clutching our bellies in despair at our inability to keep our children safe. We startle from sleep in the dark hours of the night, and waft silently from bedroom to bedroom, checking on our children to make sure that they are still there, still safe, still with us.

How do we answer one mother’s anguish? How do we offer comfort in the face of despair? How do we still our own deep dark panic? How do we begin to come back to center ourselves, and continue on with life? How do we find an answer for untimely death?

We may never find an answer. The only way I know to answer a mother’s anguish is to reach out a hand, a hug, a shoulder to cry on, an offer to share the load of grief, to sit in silent witness. We still the panic by sitting through it, holding onto ourselves and each other until the panic passes, as it always does. We come back to center the same way, by sitting with the grief, sitting with the pain, understanding always that while it will never entirely leave us, it will lessen. Moments of joy will work their way back into our lives, if we but open our eyes enough to see them.

Our job here is to live our lives, with all the pain and agony, with all the tenderness and compassion, with all the glorious spirit we can muster. We live our lives in spite of everything that happens to us, and because of everything that happens to us. We live our lives for the sake of living, because life, after all, goes on. It goes on through agony, through heartbreaking sadness, through misery, through healing, through joy and laughter, through passion, through quiet simple peace.

We have a choice therefore, to live as a silent prisoner of misery, or to allow ourselves to finally float up to the air, up to the light, buoyed by our own ocean of salty tears perhaps, but float, allowing the gentle sun to finally dry our tears, balm our souls, heal our wounds.

We begin those first motions toward the light by acknowledging our pain. It hurts, deeply, shatteringly, exquisitely. We feel our pain, and by sitting with it, allowing it to waft through every cell of our bodies, we allow it finally to begin to trickle out of us. And those first drops of pain that finally melt from our bodies along with the rivers of tears begin to lighten our souls, to give us the buoyancy we need to start our journey forward back into life.

Healing will come.

Devin, we will miss you!

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver