Dwellers

I was asleep until I felt a little pressure on the side of my bed. My mom had come home from her night shift in the ER. She either worked the 11 to 7 shift or the dreaded 7pm to 7am shift. Either way, it was early and she was tired. She usually didn't wake any of us. This morning something was wrong and she needed to wake me. She didn't say my name or ask me to roll over, she simply pulled my little 10 year old body closer to her and held me for a little while. Then she kissed my head and told me she loved me. She went to bed and I fell back asleep.

That's how I remember it.

I later found out that a little boy my age had been in a car accident, no seatbelt, he was blonde like me and was alive like me when my mother first met him. He'd died of his injuries by the time her shift ended.

I once dated a girl who worked in the emergency room. She would sometimes stay with and even cradle babies that had died until the coroner could come and claim the body. I asked her why and her answer was simply that she wouldn't want her baby left alone and couldn't bear the thought of someone else's baby going unheld. At first that seems a bit dark, but grace has a strangeness that is only familiar to those who deal it out the most.

I just watched the new movie Gone, Baby, Gone. It's about child abduction. It got me thinking that there are good people who must dwell in dark places in order for us to function as a culture.

My dad performed CPR on a two-year old who'd been run over accidentally by her own father. The girl died and my dad continued to push and to breathe and beg with his efforts just so her watching parents never had to question that nothing else could have been done. I don't know how I'd handle seeing a dead child. I can't imagine telling a mother her that her baby is gone.

There are good people who must follow bad people to the dark places they dwell in order to save the rest of us.

My mother watched a boy like me die, probably more than one. Her empathy allowed her to understand the pain that an event like that must cause a parent. Her sense of gratitude made her come home and hold the boy she'd been given to love.

I have a friend who lost her son to suicide and is now a part of a grief counseling network. She dwells in the lives of those who've lost, she's equipped because of something that was taken from her. In her loss, she gives. She revisits her loss so that newcomers to dispair don't walk alone.

I think those that dwell in these dark places, these heroes of the sorrowfields, I think they must have a light in them. But I don't know where that light comes from. I know that most medical professionals have a warped sense of humor. It's a coping mechanism. But I think that there's a presence of character, something greater than even bravery that allowed my mother to return to work knowing that another car crash could bring another little blonde boy to die in her presence. My father puts on his uniform knowing that he will go out and encounter bad people doing bad things in bad places - places he hopes his grandchildren never have to see.

I hope, working in child care, that I can bear the site of atrocity, should it ever come to me. I've seen very little evidence of abuse - and have dealt with it professionally and with compassion that I've learned from my parents' examples. But that's about as dark as it gets for me.

I don't know how anyone dwells in a dark place without letting some of the darkness in. I think Nietzsche said that you can only stare into the abyss for so long before the abyss stares back into you. Well the people I'm thinking of don't stare into the abyss, they run to it, calling out for the attention of whomever may be lost there.

I hope for two things and in this order:

I hope when asked to dwell, for another's sake, in a dark place, I do so with grace and strength and return intact and able to serve again.

I hope I never have to dwell in a dark place.

I pray for two things and in this order:

I pray that those lost in the darkness are found.

I pray that those who dwell in darkness in order to find the lost can always find their way out again.

This post is a little sad.

I'll do better next time.

Peace,

Caulfield