“I’d rather be blind.” Etta James sings“Than to watch you go.” When I first heard this song, I was drawn to her powerful emotion. Yeah, that’s what it feels like when you break up,I thought, Maybe it’s not. actually Exchange your eyesight!
How many desperate parents would offer their lives to God or the devil to ensure their children’s survival? Unfortunately, that deal doesn’t go through.
After his daughter died, he realized the lyrics were more than just bluesy hyperbole. Many bereaved families had begged God to take them instead. The struggling child proves false the Faustian fantasy of selling one’s soul to satisfy desire. How many times have desperate parents offered their lives to God or the Devil so their child could survive? Sadly, the deal didn’t go through. “The world is darkness to me, with all its cities and stars,” he writes. Abraham Heschel“Who could bear such suffering without my faith that God listens to cries in silence?”
Who hasn’t felt deceived and abandoned by God when a loved one is suffering? At times, feelings of remorse, guilt, betrayal, abandonment, and loss of trust may come to mind. These feelings are normal.
Goethe felt completely changed after the death of his beloved sister Cornelia. He described her as a strong, dependable root that had now been cut off, leaving the branches she nourished to wither and die. He wrote that he had no choice but to surrender to nature, which “makes us feel great pain for a short time, but makes us grieve for a much longer time.” A month later, Goethe wrote the following poem about Cornelia:
The Gods are Infinite and All-Giving
To my loved ones, to all:
All our joy is infinite.
Our suffering is complete and never-ending.
Goethe hints that the generosity of the gods may be too extravagant; by giving everything, completely and lavishly, they perhaps give too much. The poet is heartbroken and a little sullen. This is not surprising. Anger, vengeance and hostility are recognised aspects of grief. Many bereaved people express bitterness, disillusionment and a sense of having been betrayed by God. They blame God and perhaps even ridicule his apparent indifference.1
When I see photographs of people who have suffered the same pain, I am moved by an indescribable but palpable sadness, a sense of empathy.
“You see, I love you too much and I don’t want to see you go,” Etta sings. “I’d rather be blind.” She’s right. I wouldn’t trade my sight to have my daughter back, but the fact is, my expression, my perception has changed. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then in grief our eyes reveal a wounded soul. Look into the eyes of other mourners; you might see your own.
In 2018, Time Magazine Photographed by Adam Ferguson Seven bereaved families “Photographing each of these parents was complicated and challenging,” Ferguson writes, “and no photograph I took could ever seem to capture the grief of losing a child.” time They come from different walks of life, but their eyes tell a common story that goes beyond words.
This realization is surprisingly helpful. When we look at photographs of people with the same suffering, we are touched by an ineffable yet palpable quality of sadness: a sense of solidarity. We are not alone. Emily Dickinson may have understood this. She wrote about grief “It still intrigues me to imagine there’s something like me out there,” she said.
I measure every sorrow I encounter
With searching eyes
It weighs as much as mine –
Or there is an easier size.I think some people who have been patient for a long time
At last their smiles returned.
Imitation of light
There is almost no oil
Other Romantic poets also mused about the hidden sadness that lurks beneath the surface of our eyes. “Leave me to my sorrow!” cried the bereaved father Friedrich Rückert. “My eyes are already accustomed to it. Every time the eastern light shines through my soul darkens and adds sorrow to sorrow.” These words resonate with me. Nature soothes the heart and gives signs of joy, but it is also dangerous and destructive. Nature is not safe, not docile. Perhaps it is in our sorrow that we finally see this clearly. As Dickinson wrote, we may feel that our eyes and smiles are imitations of light that now have lost its life-giving oil.
A restrictive one-size-fits-all theology, or a strictly observational model of grief, denies the “complex and often perplexing phenomenon” of grief and brings more harm than relief.
“Something told me it was over,” Etta sings. “Something deep inside me told me to cry.” Though most of the lyrics are about love lost, that one line still resonates with me today.Something told me.
When my daughter was a child, we I love you more…. I usually start with something simple like, “I love you more than chocolate!”, to which she chimes in with, “I love you more than Power Rangers!” (A real compliment!) and off we go. is more than One after the other, sooner or later Jess returned to being one of our favorites.
“I love you more than I could ever poke in the eye!”
Jess passed away around 8pm on Friday night, January 16th, 2015. I was at work at the time and felt an intense, unmistakable and strange pressure in my right eye. The next morning, a Saturday, I woke up to find my entire eyelids were covered in mucus. I thought I had suddenly got conjunctivitis. By that afternoon my vision was back to normal.
Jess’s mother was unavailable Friday and Saturday. Finally, on Sunday, January 18th, while I was cooking dinner, I learned that Jess had died of a heroin overdose.Better to be blind” I was speechless, unable to comprehend a reality that I knew to be true. Later that same year, I came across one of the most famous laments in German literature, also by Rückert, which perfectly describes my bewilderment of those first few days:
The maid brings their news.
My sister’s death was a big blow to our crowd.
The boys shout in unison.
“She’s not dead, that’s not true.”They stared at her pale lips,
White cheeks, black hair,
They whispered to each other.
“She’s not dead, that’s not true.”My father cried in his heart
hurt; mother screams;
And yet they resist the truth.
“She’s not dead, that’s not true.”They were there within an hour
When she was buried
Dropped onto the cold ground:
“She’s not dead, that’s not true.”She is here,
It gets more beautiful every year,
Every hour becomes more precious.
She’s not dead, that’s not true.
“She’s not dead,” I groaned in my mind. “Oh, my God, it’s true, I would rather be blind,” Rückert knew this pain. His sons screamed, whispered, resisted, and finally repeated this as they faced the death of their sister. She’s not dead, that’s not trueThe repetition of assurance in the final stanza is almost sacramental; the religious similarity is no coincidence.
The song is “Rückert’s Kyrielle,” says Michael Neumann, professor emeritus of German literature at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. This refers to a French verse form in which the fourth line of a quatrain has a rhyme. Kyrielle comes from Old French. Kyriereword derivatives Kyrie: In many Christian liturgies the fourth line is repeated: “Lord have mercy.”
After a loss, we often turn to certain words that give us comfort when the overwhelming grief hits us. These words acquire meaning through repetition and may include lines from a hymn, a passage from Scripture or poetry, fond words spoken by a loved one who has passed away, or a personal prayer. These form a grieving ritual.
David McNeishMcNeish, a Church of Scotland minister, says such personal liturgies can be productive and helpful. He suggests that restrictive one-size-fits-all theologies and rigidly guarded models of grief deny the “complex and often bewildering phenomenon” of grief and do more harm than comfort. Instead, McNeish recommends practical care that focuses on the personal situation, open listening, and alternative liturgies.
My personal worship takes a different form. Unlike Rückert’s sons, I knew that Jess was dead, and I knew that to be true. If I had the talent of a poet, my Kyriere might end each stanza with a repetition of a different sacrament.
She is here,
It gets more beautiful every year,
Every hour becomes more precious.
I love you more….
I would trade places with my daughter in a heartbeat. If any of us had to die, I think, Surely that must have been meBut faced with the reality of this overwhelming grief, I stopped short of another deal: If either of us had to face a world without the other, I would spare Jess this harm.
I remember an incredible phone call I got a few years before Jess died. A friend’s father had just died. “He was only 55,” Jess said, tearfully. “What would I feel if it was you? I couldn’t bear it. You were my favorite thing.” I see now, I see now. Grief is an act of love, too. Yes, Jess, if either of us has to suffer, it’s me. I’d rather be blind than see you in this much pain.
- Portions of this essay are taken from the book. Songs mourning the death of a child: Excerpts from “Songs mourning the death of a child”. (Translated and annotated by David Bannon). ↩︎
