I Have No Answers, Now


One of the many problems occupying me in the months following Francine's tragic death - and among those many problems still, as yet, unsolved - is the problem of remorse. The problem of knowing our errors, our mistakes, the suffering we have caused to others, and knowing we must change. But we have so much regret for the hurt we caused, we desire to return to some past moment in causal time when we would behave in a different way, say different things, having learnt from our mistakes. Thus might we change what-is-now, redeeming the suffering, the death. But this return is impossible, of course, a wakeing dream, and so there is a desire for some kind of forgiveness and a gentle determination not to commit the same mistakes, again.

Why such a desire for forgiveness? And from whom, since the person we loved, we failed, is dead? Forgiveness, as catharsis - to ease the burden of remorse, and of that guilt that seems to have seeped deeply within us, born as it is from our now shameful knowing of ourselves, for we are no longer the arrogant, prideful, often unempathic person we were. Now, we know our limits, our faults, our blame, and it is such clear self-honesty that shames us.

Of course, in times past we might and probably would have laughed at such thoughts, such feelings, and returned to our joyful often selfish immersion in life, regarding the person we now are - we have become - as someone weak, foolish. And it is sometimes tempting, still, to forget our new self-image, and return to the games we played with others in the past before the tragedy of a loved one's death overwhelmed, leaving us in those first fresh days of our new life with such morbid thoughts as kept us sleepless, weeping, bereft, as if the force of life had been somehow taken from us. No more, then, now, the lying - the lies we so often told to ourselves; no more, then, now, the so-convenient forgetting, the dislike we had for, the blame we cast at, others in the instinct of dishonourable self-survival and arrogant hubris.

We cannot hide, any longer - we have seen ourselves as we are, and we do not like much, most, of what we have seen. Much, most: for we have kept ourselves alive, at least in body, plodding through the days, the weeks, the months clinging to that still remaining small part of ourselves which is or seems to be imbued with life. Yet how many have failed, here? Failed to find within, in some shadowed space, an intimation of life - of that good which might, which can, redeem us still? To find something we, at least, still like about ourselves... How many, failed - and so in their despair by their own hand removed themselves from life? Too many; far too many, too many times.

So we cling to life, plodding through the days, lacking hope. For the hope of life, of our future, has gone, turning thoughts, feelings, back toward forgiveness, grace, redemption: toward the loving merciful kindness of the Saviour, the God, who, which, so often seemed to save us in the foolish gawky days of early youth when there seemed to be no horizon beyond the simple family life we lived; no problems that a parent, a Saviour, a God, some gift could not solve: days when happiness was play, a swim in sea; in finding what was beyond the corner of that reddish dusty track in the bush we walked one sunny day to picnic there beside the lake in that dry season...


Where is my Saviour now? Where the peace of prayer among the incense that lingered as the oak of the choir stalls creaked as they creak, echoing in such vaulted nightime silence? Where that innocence returned, felt, known - even briefly lived - when a purity of spirit seemed as if it came to dwell within? As when, the beautiful, numinous, Ave Maria Stella of Compline over, there was out of pure love a kneeling on the stone floor, wordless prayer and often tears before the deep peaceful rest of sleep. Such simplicity, there - lost now, by the sadness, the grieving sadness, for doubts, intellect, pride and passion have distracted me, distanced me from the life, there, from belief, faith, piety, obedience: especially from belief, so that there seems to be now at best only an allegory left, bereft of real, deep, immediate personal meaning.

Such sadness - for such loss; for her loss; loss upon loss... Can there therefore be hope, redemption, no more forgetting, a removal of remorse, without a Saviour's grace? Without God, prayer, faith?

I have thought so; I have hoped so. It has worked - for a while, as when the days of warm and hot and humid Summer past were felt, experienced, sometimes, as I walked the fields, the hills of this rural land I love, finding, in moments, such peace, such joy, as kept me quiet, smiling so that I was able for an hour, two, to lie gently on warm forgiving grass and drift toward, into, sleep, dreaming of so many happy days, gone. But now - now there is only the dismal cold rain of late Autumn, Winter; dark nights; a tension that leaves my head, aching, dull; and so many hours - so many hours - of painful remembering of times past when I in my stupidity, pride, arrogance, caused so much suffering to so many people. So much painful remembering, especially of how many times I failed Francine.

Solve vincla reis,
Profer lumen caecis,
Mala nostra pelle,
Bona cuncta posce

Will this bleakness, this darkness, this crippling remorse, pass? Or will there - must there, should there - be a turning back, toward prayer? So much need, it seems, to believe - and yet no belief, for it is as if I yearn here for those warm, hot, humid, days of Summer, for the purity of wordlessly kneeling sans thought. No lasting deeply personal comfort, it seems, in Nature, as the cold darkness returns: no distractions to hold me in abeyance until the warmth, the light, the joy of Spring bursts forth bringing joy to a man worn, tired, from so many experiences, so many mistakes. No personal love, grace, there, emanating from some living personal loving Being - only what-is, as it changes within such change as covers us through Nature's living acausal life.

Thus, it is the realization of personal love that is missing, lost: but no woman, now, to suffuse such vacant spaces with meaning; no woman to gently love with a knowing formed from failure; and no hope of such a loving being, given such a reclusive life born of such shame as now deeply dwells, within.

So there are no answers, now.





DW Myatt
2454068.233
November 2006 CE