The Cure

Recently I wrote an essay about a couple who had endured the hurt that comes from death and suicide. One friend whose mother died by her own hand, back when my friend was still quite young, wrote to tell me that she hadn't kept a single picture of herself from childhood, "life in my family wasn't very joyful then."

Another friend whose wife had perished in the very same way wrote to say that the one grace from that period was that, "so many people dared to say something to me, even though they didn't know what to say."

I've been thinking about my friend, and those who dared to say something. It seems to me that ultimately everything we do is an attempt to win the love of others and believe that our life has significance. Occasionally a terrible thing happens that makes our life seem like an argument against everything we hold dear... and we despair. The people around us often assume that the only way they can alleviate our suffering is by finding a fix for the situation that devastates us. When that situation is not "fixable" many of those good people feel impotent. Occasionally they back away, or pretend that everything is normal and that we're not hurting.

What those people do not know is that our real hope has never been a miracle or a fix. We don't hope for the dead to come back to life, or for the unfixable to be fixed. Our goal is simply to believe in love again, and to believe that we are worthy of love. Everything else we hope for is a means to that exquisite end.

So the good news is that there is no such thing as an unfixable hurt. We all carry the cure for everyone who suffers. Each of us can live a life that says, "I love you."