Libby

There’s a temptation to allow pain (in whatever form) to lead us around by the nose wherever and whenever it pleases. There is also something morbid in the fact that we don’t kick such behaviour in ourselves to the kerb sooner rather than later.

I’ve often wondered why that is and have come to the rather uncomfortable conclusion that maybe some part of me likes it! I mean, what other reasonable rationale could I have for allowing it to happen? It’s a harsh realisation. I figure that rolling around in the pain is so much easier than facing up to my shortcomings, wrong choices or even sheer stupidity, although in that, I feel certain I’m not alone.

How do we ease pain in ourselves let alone someone else? It’s a hard question to ask and an even harder one to answer. Perhaps pain then is not the issue, perhaps the issue is really the loss that occurs. And perhaps pain is actually the physical response to that loss of whatever or whomever.

When I lost my friend Libby to leukaemia recently I felt the loss keenly. I hated to think how her parents felt. The inner landscape of my life felt as if an earthquake had opened it up and carved giant scars across the face of it. Mine were probably surface scars compared to the loss to her parents of their only child. I couldn’t imagine the depth of their pain but I could see it.

But this wasn’t pain arising from my shortcomings, my wrong choices or even my own stupidity, those were what I call pains of consequence. No, Libby’s death originated from a different kind of pain. The pain of separation. How do we ease the pain in ourselves? We offer it up open-hearted, open-handed, prayerfully. Libby would have grinned infectiously, she was like that.