Islands

It is helpful to talk about my dad with other people; to hear what they remember about him, their impressions of him. I knew all along that he was a good man, and it turns out other people thought the same.

One of the things that I'm finding particularly painful right now is feeling the sadness for everyone else who knew him. I'm not the only one missing him, trying to come to grips with his absence. For instance, there is the lady who lives across the street who cried when mom told her he had died. There are the friends who live far away, for whom it is unfathomable that he is gone. There are people who knew him years ago who have clear memories of his strong, quiet presence and must now come to grips with the reality of his death. And what of those who really knew and loved him? They now are trying to regain equilibrium within a new frame of reference - one without him.

My dad was a special man - I know it - but the thing is that we are feeling this grief because we are all connected. My dad was a part of us. His being removed from among us is like having a limb excised from our body; we are lacking something that had enabled us to get on before; or in other words, we got on as we did before because of him, and now we must learn a new way of getting on. Each of us has that impact on others. Any one of us taken from this life has this effect of absence and emptiness. We are not the same as we were, but we will carry on because we are still connected, you and I. It was never just me and Pop - it was you and me and Pop.

I often turn to Donne. Below are excerpts from his Meditation XVII which has the famous lines "...for whom the bell tolls" and, "no man is an island".

And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age,some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that
application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery,as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an
excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.