10. COLLAPSING BOUNDARIES

My visit to Cairo was ended abruptly by a telephone call that I received at about five o’clock one morning. When I picked up the telephone, I heard my sister Joanie, who told me that she was over at my other sister’s house and that she was calling to give me some terrible news: my nephew David had been killed in an automobile accident just a few hours earlier. She said that the whole family was gathered at Claire and Bob’s house, and they were sitting around the telephone as they called me. I couldn’t believe my ears, and I had a flashback to the time, just seven years earlier, when Joanie had called me with the same news about the death of her own son Mike. I was devastated, and I asked Joanie if I could talk to Claire.

When I got Claire on the phone, I could hardly talk. I just broke down, crying uncontrollably, and all I could utter between sobs was “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Claire was trying to help me, as crazy as it sounds, but that’s the way it sometimes works at times like this. She was trying to comfort me, but I was helpless.

Joanie had previously told me that nothing—not the loss of a parent, or of a spouse, or even the impending loss of your own life—compares to the pain of losing one of your own children. I was feeling Claire’s pain at the loss of her son, and I completely broke apart. It was as if there was, at that moment, a complete and total connection between Claire and me. Our emotions were one. I was crying her tears; there was but one tear. It was as if time and space had disappeared, and Claire and I were the same person, as if I had merged at that moment, at that instant with her. There was something terrifying about that experience.

I don’t recall much of what happened during that conversation, but looking back, I now realize that I had experienced another collapse of boundaries similar to those experienced earlier, but this time the disappearance of the boundaries was so complete and involved such pain that it left another indelible mark on me.

As I flew back home, I thought about all of this. I had experienced in a short time such strong feelings of euphoria and oneness with the world, and suddenly the deepest and most profound pain and oneness with Claire. On the plane I was trying to make sense out of what had happened. I was unable to articulate it, but at a deep level I knew I had to find a way to understand this dynamic, this opening up to the world. Somehow I knew it was part of my journey.

When I finally got into Houston, it was the day of the funeral. The service was conducted by a very close friend of Claire’s, Bob’s, and mine, the Reverend Robert Ball of the Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church. It was Bob Ball who had helped sustain me during the darkest days of my divorce. It was a wonderful service. Instead of making it a morbid affair, Bob made it more like a celebration of David’s life. Robert and John, David’s brothers, gave beautiful testimonials to David. And then Bob spoke. He talked about David’s way of living his life: to the fullest and highly independently. He did things his own way and expected others to do the same.

As Dr. Ball spoke of David, he called him “Eli,” a nickname his close friends had given him. “Last night,” Dr. Ball said during the course of his remarks, “it came to me how uniquely rare it is to have contact with another human being, one who truly treats you as an equal. Eli did that for me. These moments are so precious, so full of life, they are so much of what life at its best is meant to be, that when they are happening to you, you have the impulse to take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground.” Later in his remarks Dr. Ball mentioned that human life, according to the scriptures, is not a matter of having arrived somewhere, but it’s a matter of being on the road, being on the way, a matter of becoming. He said “Somehow, some way, the message had gotten through to Eli that life is a place to be lived, and so he continually took it out into the marketplace and lived it. The life that Eli lived was full of meaning.

“I don’t have the explanation for why tragedies such as this occur,” said Dr. Ball. “I cannot claim any special wisdom as to how it is all going to turn out. But it’s my hunch that Eli, who treated me and a lot of other human beings as equals, was right at the center of what it’s all about, and still is and always will be.”

We buried David next to Joanie’s son Mike. At the burial services, as I was looking at the casket covered with flowers, I felt a strong closeness and presence with David. After the burial service was concluded, and we were walking away toward our cars, I had the impulse to pause and take a final look at the flower-covered casket. As I fixed my eyes on the casket, I could swear that I saw David sitting on top of that casket. His arms were folded, and he had that slight smile on his face that I remember so often. His eyes were looking directly at mine, and his head was cocked slightly to the side. In a firm voice, he said, “Go for it!” I know it must have been my imagination, but I can see it as clearly now as I did then.

It was as if David was giving me that final blessing, that final nudge or permission to leave everything behind, acknowledging how deeply the events of the past two weeks had affected me.

I turned and continued walking toward the car. Even to this day, I don’t fully understand it, but at that point I knew my journey had begun.