Boston Counseling Therapy

A Counselor’s Insights into Life, Death, and Fatherhood

(By Therapist Ryan Thomas Neace)

In just a few short weeks my home will be filled with the sounds of my newborn infant daughter, which in itself is ironic given that the term “infant” is from the latin “infans,” which means, essentially, “incapable of speech.” Nonetheless, gurgles and coos and neh’s and wah’s will be heard, in a language all their own, and I am, in short, excited. As of late my mind drifts to all kinds of places, most of which are probably a bit romantic, but sweet nonetheless - a pint-sized ball of curls and swaddling clothes asleep on my chest; flirtatious smiles capable of melting even the hardest heart; barely-there kisses; tender touches from tiny hands that humble the spirit and wet the eyes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a gentle stirring in my soul beckons me to appreciate life a bit more just now. My sense is that this is some of that proverbial, “you just don’t understand till you’re a parent” business the old folks used to talk about.

All of this fanciful revering has lead to a good bit of more serious contemplation as well, which I’m told is quite normal by my book, “The Expectant Father” by Armin A. Brott. And I suppose it does make sense – all of this talk of new life helps one to realize his own will one day end. When I look up from my daydreaming I find nearly-teenaged nieces and nephews and aging parents caretaking for aging grandparents. And the circle of life seems to be leaving increasingly deep impressions like crop circles on the green fields of my experience.

Genesis 3:19:
“…until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

Book of Common Prayer (p.485, Burial Rite 1):
“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Ryan, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

The underlying message here isn’t just written in the ancient texts or in the ritual processions of the religious. It is a common thread woven into the tapestry of nearly everything I see.

My wife and some friends and I recently saw the movie, “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” in which Eric Bana plays a man with a rare genetic anomaly that causes him to live his life shifting back and forth through time, appearing at this moment or that. He has, of course, fallen in love, and is therefore cursed to watch himself as a young man who doesn’t yet know the woman who he’ll marry, and then again as an old man who dies in her arms, and the arms of his daughter.

Even the last Simpsons episode I watched depicted Homer and Grandpa on a jaunt to Ireland to live it up as part of one of Grandpa’s bucket list wishes. And the fact that I can use the term “bucket list” and you know what it means only reinforces my point.

And music is certainly no place to look for an escape either. Imogen Heap laments the passage of time in one of my favorite songs, “Hide and Seek.” The imagery practically creates itself out of thin air right before you: “hide and seek/trains and sewing machines/all those years/they were here first/oily marks appear on walls/where pleasure moments hung before/ the takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life.”

But that’s just it – life isn’t still, though it is most desperately insensitive. The seconds and minutes and hours and days and months and years keep passing me by whether or not I protest. And all the while, the sirens’ song is heard with increasing clarity:

You are mortal. You will die.

I am mortal. I will die.

What’s a boy - er, man to do?

I guess haven’t quite figured out the answer yet. But, seeing as how the passing of time, and even my own death is not at all unlike the inevitable forced assimilation by the Borg, I have begun to develop the attitude, “resistance is futile” (yes, that was a Star Trek reference). So, I might as well enjoy the passing of time rather than spend my years trying to escape it. But to do so, I must conceptualize death as something other than a forever haunting, scythe-wielding, hooded Skeletor.

In 63 B.C., Seneca (Lucius Annaeus) wrote, “You will die not because you are sick, but because you are alive. That end still awaits you when you have been cured. In getting well again you may be escaping some ill health, but not death.”

It is as simple as that. To be alive, and indeed to truly live, is to die. This is echoed in a hundred clichés about self-sacrifice and tales of all-for-one and one-for-allism, but I’ve always conceptualized it in such immediate terms. The soldier recklessly charging a hill, the death of the hero for God and country, that sort of thing.

But to go on living wisely (see the prayers of Thomas Aquinas), in light of my imminent death, as if that death is in fact the most real part of my life, is something much more confounding. It is much more gradual, much more difficult, much less glamorous. Yet, my experience thus far also suggests it may be much more meaningful.

Prior to this stage of life, I found myself in hearty agreement with and placed shoulder to shoulder among the ranks of my contemporaries who wonder at the self-centeredness ending possibilities of marriage, children, and family life, and, though we may not have said it, most any meaningful connection with other humans that asks us to exit our one act, one actor, often plotless tragedies. We could scarcely dream of committing to something we weren’t convinced would work or of bringing children into a world so cruel and unforgiving. Even now this line of thinking is provocative to me.

But part of what makes a tragedy a tragedy is that no matter what unfolds at its beginning and end, the main character, the hero, the one everybody likes, still ends up dying in the end. This is, in a word, tragic.

Likewise, whether they are extended, self-indulgent monologues or complex confluences of interactions that have ripped us from our infatuations with self, our lives will still end.

Perhaps if others are involved, if we have truly given ourselves to others, and ultimately, to God, something profoundly transformational occurs;

Perhaps we learn to laugh at ourselves.

Perhaps we learn to delight in seeing others preferred over ourselves.

Perhaps we learn to smell fresh lilies, to rub ocean-foamy sand between our toes, to take our coffee with chicory, to play hooky from business meetings to go on dates with our daughters, to love and be patient with our sons.

But my sense is that it for me, it will be profoundly difficult. That in this life of living I will experience more pain than ever before. More joy too, but still, much more pain. And that if my previous behavior is any indication, in response to that pain life will begin to take on a hazy gray quality when I’m seduced away from those to whom I’ve given myself because it just hurts too much.

But I dream that maybe I’ll hear my wife’s voice or hear my daughter’s singing, or I’ll just feel the gentle prompting of the Holy Spirit in my heart, and the yellows, and greens, and blues, and browns, and dashing violets and splashy oranges will come rushing in again and I will feel alive for the joy and the pain alike.

All of this will be subtle, however, which is what makes it real life and not some technicolor dream movie. And I will need God’s help to be sensitive to the changing tides of myself and my world. But when I am most sensitive, if I am listening, a Voice will remind me…yes, yes! Life is worth the living.

And perhaps, when life is worth the living, my imminent and unavoidable death, my mortality, can only serve to remind me how fearfully, wonderfully alive I am.

I hope so.

rtn

**

–Man fully alive is the glory of God.–
St. Irenaeus of Lyons, 185AD, Against Heresies (Lib. 4, 20, 5-7; SC 100)

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