Nov 19 2009

Losses

Category: Soft Edges — Jim Taylor @ 8:51 pm

Wednesday November 18, 2009

‘Til death do us part

By Jim Taylor

Floating in the salty sea of the womb, we had only a watery environment to see, feel, taste, or touch.
        But we could hear. The sense of hearing develops by about the fifth month of a pregnancy.
        So we heard familiar, repetitive sounds — the mother’s heart beat, her breath, her digestion…
        But we could also hear sounds from outside.
        Boris Brott, conductor of the Hamilton Symphony, has described knowing some musical selections by heart, even though he had never played them before. Especially, he said, the viola parts. Then he learned that his mother, a viola player, had practiced those parts while pregnant.
        Other musicians — Arthur Rubinstein,Yehudi Menuhin – have made similar assertions.
        So perhaps it’s inevitable that some of our favourite mental puzzles have auditory references. Such as the famous, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
        Or this one: “If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it fall, does it make a sound?”

Inevitable losses
        Perhaps it’s a consequence of increasing age, but I no longer find those conundrums particularly intriguing.
        Rather, I catch myself wondering, “What sort of sound does a breaking heart make?”
        One morning recently, I had coffee with a small group of men. Three of them had lost, or were in the process of losing, their wives of many years – two by cancer, one by Alzheimer’s Disease.
        A fourth man could have contributed to that discussion. But he was busy that day, preparing to attend a memorial service for the woman he had been married to for 56 years.
        Do women have these kinds of conversations too? I don’t know; I can only speak from my own experience.
        Obviously, I’m not thinking about the kind of broken heart celebrated in pop songs and Archie comics – the self-centred angst that believes it is the first to experience loss. Such laments simply demonstrate that their writers/singers haven’t lived long enough to understand that a broken heart is far more than getting dumped after a brief bout of passion.

The sound of silence
        A heart breaks when 50 years of vigorous life shrivel into a hairless fetus curled up in a coma. When 50 years of memories are replaced by vacant eyes that ask, “Who are you?” When 50 years of company become a vacant seat at the table, a warm body missing on the other side of the bed, fingers that will never again intertwine with yours…
        A broken heart comes only after two hearts have truly become one. It doesn’t matter whether those years together were blissful every day, or were the stormy struggles of two strong personalities trying to work together.
        In the traditional vows of marriage, two persons become “one flesh.” Time welds them into a unity.
        Until, as the vows also say, “death do us part.”
        Which it will. Inevitably.
        And half of a joined heart no longer beats.
        Maybe Simon and Garfunkel got it right, years ago. The sound of a broken heart is the sound of silence.

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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn



I’m away on the road this week, teaching my Eight-Step Editing workshops (which I thought I had retired from doing a couple of years ago, but life doesn’t always work out the way you plan it) so I don’t have access to the e-mails that have come in. I’ll catch up with a selection of them next week.

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About My Books


Over the years, I think I have written (or ghostwritten) about 17 books. Several of them (mercifully) are no longer available from any source. But here’s a listing of those that are still available. The ones marked “WLB”, you can order from Wood Lake Books, either on-line at http://www.woodlakebooks.com, or call Wood Lake Books directly at 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-654-5129 (Pilgrim Press) in the U.S. The ones marked “JT only” are now available only directly from me — and I have only a few left. As collector’s items, I price them all at $25 Cdn.

  • Everyday God: Insights from the Ordinary

    • (1981 and 2005, WLB, $19.95)

  • Worlds in One

    • (1985, JT only)

  • Chance

    • (1989, JT only)

  • Seeing the Mystery: Exploring Christian Faith through the Eyes of Artists,

    • (1990, with William S. Taylor, JT only)

  • Surviving Death

    • (1993, JT only)

  • Everyday Psalms

    • (1994 and 2005, WLB, $19.95)

  • Everyday Parables

    • (1995 and 2005, WLB, $19.95)

  • Letters to Stephen

    • (1996, WLB, $17.95)

  • A New Understanding of Virtue and Vice

    • (1997, WLB, $19.95)

  • Precious Days and Practical Love: Caring for an Aging Parent

    • (1999, WLB, $19.95)

  • for Beginners

    • (2001, WLB, $11.95)

  • Spirituality of Pets

    • (2006, WLB, $39)

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TECHNICAL STUFF

To comment on something, in these columns, send a message directly to me, at [email protected].
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        You can access several years of archived columns at http://edges.Canadahomepage.net.
        I write a second column each Sunday, called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justic issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, at the address above, or send a note to [email protected]

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PROMOTION STUFF…

If you know someone else who might like to receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to [email protected]. Or, if you wish, forward them a copy of this column. But please put your name on it, so they don’t think I’m sending out spam.
        For a lighter look at life, faith, and the lectionary, I recommend my friend Ralph Milton’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it by sending a note to [email protected].
        For other web links worth pursuing, try

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