Almost Spring, 2015
Recently on campus there has been a month long event featuring various exhibits and presentations on forgiveness. These have been sponsored by what is called the Forgiveness Project, a UK based charity organization whose primary focus is to (from their website http://theforgivenessproject.com):
use storytelling to explore how ideas around forgiveness, reconciliation and conflict resolution can be used to impact positively on people’s lives, through the personal testimonies of both victims and perpetrators of crime and violence. Our aim is to provide tools that facilitate conflict resolution and promote behavioural change. Central to the work is our commitment to work with ex-offenders and victims of crime as a way of modeling a restorative process.
Their reach is global, their founders, speakers, sponsors, and work with victims of horrific violence is world renown. In every sense it is an organization that represents the best of what we can achieve as humans--compassion, understanding, tolerance, peace. What negative or disparaging thing could be said about either their intent or more particularly, any of the individuals who, after having either inflicted and/or suffered unimaginable cruelty and pain now actively practice non-violence? How is it possible, when faced with their stories, so many of which are unbelievable given the extent of the atrocities committed, the suffering endured, to find one dismissive thing to say about the efforts of this organization and it’s participants, believers, followers? How could anyone be “against” forgiveness? Even to express a desire to examine the concept in its details is tantamount to a kind of moral heresy. Their cause is more than just; more than right; it is, has become a profound religious movement against which any expression of skepticism is viewed as the pathetic bleatings of the ill-informed, the lost.
I admit then, that I am lost. And will probably remain so--my own choice. In the seven years since Maxx died, I have closely, microscopically, obsessively examined every idea, every suggestion, every approach possible not only to understand what happened to my son and my life, but also to make meaning out of what is inherently and always meaningless, the death of one’s child. In this pursuit, I have come across the idea of forgiveness in all its forms-- again and again and again. Forgive the doctor, forgive the medical arrogance that gives rise to the lie of “expertise,” forgive a monolithic medical/pharmaceutical cartel that promotes and rewards monetary greed (to the tune of billions). Forgive, forgive. Forgive myself--for not knowing more, or enough in time to pull my son to safety before the drugs he took killed him. I am no stranger to this landscape of forgiveness, to its tenets, its theories, its comforting homilies.
From a study table in the far corner of the Library Reading Room I listened to one of the speakers, Fred Luskin, (he too is “famous” for his work as the Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects and an Associate Professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.)
Lest anyone not take Mr. Luskin seriously, or doubt his decades of expertise and knowledge in the philosophy of forgiveness, please note that he has worked with “the mothers of Ireland” whose sons were killed fighting in the IRA, he has written a book, helped to produce a film, “The Power of Forgiveness”, traveled the world spreading his message to thousands. He joins the ranks of some of the most famous, well respected people in history--Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela… . And, as if anyone needed it, there’s more… Dr. Luskin’s work is not only intrinsically the “right,” the ethically correct way to live, it is physiologically good for you, “proven” to be a powerful antidote to living a life in psychic pain and possible ill-health--backed by studies at Stanford (six of them, I think it said on the website). Learning to forgive lowers your blood pressure, boosts your immune system. Not, actually, a new idea though. Ancient Judeo-Christian thought repackaged for 21st Century virtual consumption. Dressed up in “evidence-based” science as measured by biofeedback markers, MRI’s and brain cat scans. I remain unimpressed--but not for the reasons one might think.
Mr. Luskin addressed his audience of students and faculty about the power of forgiveness using examples of a “a fight with your parents,” or an abusive “boyfriend.” Admittedly, he was meeting his listeners at their level (mostly female teenagers and young adults). But even as I understood this, I could not help but feel deeply irritated, yet again, by a relatively gentle, life-affirming concept reconstructed into a zealous, head banging rant; a hue and cry taken up into the popular global culture as another sloganized placard of assault.
Enough. Perhaps there is room for forgiveness in any number of circumstances.
But not all.
There is, to my way of thinking, no forgiveness for the perpetrators of the Holocaust (including those who turned their backs-people and nations). And to this I add--because this was my own personal holocaust--no forgiveness, no understanding, no acceptance for anyone or any happenstance array of events or decisions (call them mistakes) that had anything to do with the death of my son. No forgiveness. Ever.
This is complex. Because I need, on some level, to be forgiven for what I feel was a disastrous decision to allow him to take the medications he did to keep his ulcerative colitis in remission. If I cannot “forgive” myself, how can I continue to live? Yet, live I do. Every day. And this is where I take exception to the entire concept of forgiveness--which seems to me is really only ever about finding a way to feel “good” about oneself. And my point is just this:
Sometimes it is not possible to feel good.
Sometimes we must live with, and in, our excruciating pain for as long as it takes-forever. There is no way out. No escape. No denial. No amount of forgiveness that will or SHOULD assuage our anguish, or for some, mitigate taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions-intentionally hurtful or not. Of course, I did not knowingly injure my son with deliberate intent. The fact that my only desire was to help, to heal, does nothing whatsoever to alter or alleviate my anguish. How could it? Perhaps, the best we can ever hope for (in the rare moments when we dare to hope) is to learn how to live inside the Iron Maiden.
Forgiveness, feeling better, being “OK,” accepting that I was not to blame is not the goal, is no longer either the catalyst or the loadstone of my life as a grief-stricken parent. My grief belongs in the realm of sadness. That is its place, its authentic home. It is not within my power, nor would I assume it is my right to lighten the burden. I will not “recover.” To do so would only be possible if Maxx were to live again. This, now, is my reality and I am under no compunction to forgive--anyone, anything. Nor will I be bullied into believing that such a simple concept could ever be enough to embody or explain the beauty, the life, the potential, the glorious human who was my precious son, Maxx.
This is what I am left with. It is enough, simply because there is nothing more. I adjust constantly to the hurt, the guilt, the longing, that pumps my heart, envelopes my brain in a fog of sorrow and doubt. I know that the full-body adrenaline rushes of anxiety that jerk me awake from a restless sleep will pass. So I wait. That is my lesson and has nothing to do with forgiveness. It is only and ever about one thing. Waiting. Waiting with your pain. No need to embrace what suffocates you, what defines you. No need to accept, or “forgive,” or “recover.” Just learn to wait and be with what is.
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