January 2nd… a poignant day….remembering family births and loss…the joyous birthdays of my nieces Rebecca and Sara and my nephew Freddy and then loss of my dad who brought so much love to all of us. I am feeling deeply the complexity of love that takes us to our heights of joy and depths of anguish.
We never know where love will take us and certainly our journey with Freddy in particular was one we never could have imagined….. Freddy was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his late teens and through his wanderings ended up in the California state prison system…a notoriously unjust and cruel experience for anyone…particularly one with a mental illness. He ended up taking his own life there. His life has become an important piece of my faith story
For those who suffer in the world’s trials and injustices I offer up part of his eulogy as a prayer…..
…Godson, so far beyond my reach in the prison where you lived—the walls and bars being only a shadow of the deeper prison of your mind. Your life was our question, shaking us from our neatly held principles of life and love and faith, calling us to places we might not ever have gone. Your life often seemed closed to us—you lived in all the places we dared not go, among the drifters, the homeless, our worst prisons, among the injustices to the mentally ill.
These were no one’s wishes or dreams for you. We want to go back to your smiling, mischievous youth, filled with boundless energy, to the soccer fields, to the boy filled with potential. Is that where we would see the meaning of your life…some lost potential…or would that just be another of life’s lies?
When I ask myself the meaning of your life, a life that often seemed so broken and fragile I search into the ultimate meanings and have to ask…did this life inspire love? And I realize that it has been here in your life that I have seen one of the greatest of loves I have ever known. It has shown through the woman of my sister, who through her undying love never gave up on you, never gave up hope, and who followed you into the worst of places in spite of her own pain.
And what of the rest of us, not so tireless, more easily discouraged. Through you and for us it is a time to know the power of God’s mercy—the mercy that comes to us in our time of need, of sorrow, of our powerlessness, and our human frailty. The love that comes to save us, forgive us in a way much greater than we can imagine, much greater than we ever deserve.
Your life called forth the saints to me to learn how to love you. Mother Teresa, gifted with love, knew how to see Christ in his distressing disguise, like some kiss of Jesus of which we wish to recoil yet she could embrace in suffering. She allowed me to see a love that didn’t need to judge you or control you but just lived as a harbor of love’s grace.
When I saw you in your prison, I was most struck by the sudden flashes of your smile. They were wide, and bright, with a clarity and goodness, often buoyed by thoughts of Nana and Popi Mann’s …it was as though we could reel in all the goodness again and set us all free. But it was not to be our doing.
God is our harvester, claiming his own, reaching into our soul to retrieve our goodness, leaving at last all the demons behind.
Your life has inspired a greater love in me than I would have known without you.
I will miss your smile Freddy, but cannot help but rejoice in your spirit at peace, set free from the world’s sufferings, and at home with God.
