Learning from Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela died a year ago today. History remembers him for many things, all of which are humbling and inspiring. He spent 27 years in jail. He saw countless friends die or suffer under the indignities of apartheid. He quietly persevered, knowing history supported him, knowing that a just world could not accept the injustices of South Africa. And slowly he won. Slowly the world came to recognize the power of this slight man with his gentle voice.

Last year, following news of his death, I listened to countless news stories about Mandela as the world tried to figure out what to make of his legacy. And one thing that struck me was how he forgave his tormentors. In fact, he invited F.W. De Klerk — his main oppressor and the man who stood for everything he opposed — to his presidential inauguration. I listened with awe to this. Mandela was an amazing person. I should be like him and forgive. Unfortunately, I don’t always live up to his example.

Mandela’s compassion is inspiring. I want to be that kind of person. I want to be magnanimous and kind. I want to let go of my attachment to fairness, to justice. But it’s hard for me. And so sometimes when I think about Mandela, I feel weak and flawed. I can never be as good a person as he was.

Mandela stood up for all the black people in South Africa, not just for one person. Not just for one person who died from a thrown rock. When I compare my story to his, I come off pretty badly. When I compare my story to so many tragedies in the world, I come off pretty badly.

I lost one man. A man who didn’t suffer in life, nor presumably did he suffer in death. In the grand scheme of things, our tragedy was really, really small. But I suffered. I struggled with my sense of injustice. And so I find myself looking for reasons that Mandela was able to be so good when I am so easily lost in my vindictiveness.

I think about his story and find myself arguing that he could afford to be magnanimous because he defeated his oppressors. Because the fact is Mandela won. No one likes De Klerk. No one thinks apartheid has any redeemable features. Everyone knows that the horrible things done to blacks under De Klerk can never be justified. So Mandela could invite De Klerk to his inauguration and, in doing so, rub De Klerk’s nose in his smelly, inglorious and utter defeat. De Klerk stood there embodying evil. Everyone looked at him with disgust and hatred. Everyone looked at Mandela with love and awe.

We cried over his words, wrote them down in journals and tried to emulate him in our daily lives. I did then and still do now. Mandela was and is an inspiration. He embodied a kind of grace and gentleness that we all aspire to. And yet … when I let my less-than-evolved self take over I can’t help but feel as if we overstated the meaning of his forgiveness. He forgave because something happened. His oppressors were proven to be wrong. If they did not exactly apologize, they paid for their wrong by losing their position and power. By falling from the pedestal they’d built for themselves as the controllers of South Africa.

I don’t mean to criticize Mandela or his legacy. I do mean to pick away at the meaning of forgiveness because I sometimes get tired of people holding it up as if it is the penultimate human action. Sure Jesus preached that we should turn the other cheek; but his father — the Christian God — spoke differently in the First Testament. Didn’t an eye for an eye come from the Bible? Isn’t the Bible rife with stories of vengeance? The whole First Testament teems with it. Sinners are struck down in Babylon, by Noah’s flood, by plagues and war. And it’s not only Christianity. That’s just the heritage I’m familiar with, but the desire to seek vengeance is universal. It crosses cultures, race and time. It’s not a pretty emotion, but it has had incredible power over the human race. Perhaps that is why Mandela’s compassion is so noteworthy. Most of us can’t live up to him. Most of us want vengeance.

Understanding the rage that drives us

When I was a young woman civil war broke out in what had been Yugoslavia. The unrest hit close to home. I’d been in Yugoslavia. It wasn’t an alien culture with an inaccessible belief system. The Serbs and Croats looked and acted like me. Therefore I couldn’t explain away their war by saying they were other. And yet their war defied my understanding.

It made no sense to me to watch people kill each other for what seemed like trivial differences. I tried to understand what it would take for me to behave like that — to want to kill my neighbor because he or she wore a headscarf or had a different color skin. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine being driven by that kind of hatred or fear. I couldn’t imagine feeling so threatened by someone else that I wanted to kill him or her to protect myself or my family. I was too lucky, too sheltered. The whole idea felt alien. It’s not that I liked everyone in my community or even believed in the same things they believed, but I wasn’t going to kill them for their differences. 

But after Avery was born, I realized that my world was more fragile than I thought. Suddenly I knew that I had something that I would sacrifice everything for. If someone threatened Avery, I think I might be able to kill him or her if that seemed to be my only recourse. And so I learned that even affluent, white, WASPy me — who lived far, far away from any war or terror, who could leave my house unlocked without fear, who could walk down the street at night alone without concern — even I could consider killing someone if that person touched the right nerve.

Of course that feeling was pretty abstract. I wasn’t really thinking about killing anyone, because I was safe. Avery was safe. Pete was safe. We were protected by money, skin color, a warm home, a big healthy family, more food than we needed and loving community. The fragility of this situation never occurred to me. I feared loss, but hadn’t really felt it and I certainly had never felt any great deprivation.

But Pete’s death roused some ugly, primal feelings in me. His death showed me I’d been incredibly naïve in thinking we were immune from tragedy, and it stirred up feelings of anger, fear and rage that I suspect were similar to the feelings that drove the civil war in the Balkans. That led to demonstrations in Fergusson, Missouri. The same rage that has caused endless suffering throughout the world.

I know what I need to do to get rid of these feelings. I know I need to look at people like Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Christ, Mother Theresa, Buddha and others and emulate the lessons of their lives. I’ve been reading lots of stuff on forgiveness and releasing anger. I’ve been trying to meditate. And it’s helping. But it’s not easy. I keep find myself saying, “Of course that all makes sense, but….” And you know where that “but” goes — it goes to the unfairness, the injustice, that damn feeling of frustration that someone has gotten away with something at my expense.

Forgiving without the need for victory

If I had been Mandela, I think I would have felt vindicated by seeing De Klerk humbled and subservient at my inauguration. How glorious it must have felt to be the victor in such an incredible battle. How incredible it must have been for him to stand as a black man on the pinnacle of power in South Africa where before he’d been forced to ride black-only buses, where he’d been unable to vote or send his children to the best schools. Where he could not buy a house in certain neighborhoods even if he’d had the money. Where he’d spent a large part of his life behind bars. And then he was president. If that is not the ultimate revenge for 27 years in prison, I can’t imagine what else would be.

But I suspect Mandela really didn’t see it that way. The man I read about truly seems to have transcended my petty vindictiveness. He had found peace and with that peace, he forgave.

I’m trying. I’m trying to close my eyes and breath deeply rather than make a voodoo doll of my friend’s supervisor so I can stick pins in him. I know nothing positive will come from doing that. I know it. And yet … part of me still think it sounds pretty cathartic. Ugh. That’s the ugly part of myself that I need to work on. The ugly part of me that needs to remember Nelson Mandela. 

A time to purge

A week ago I got an email from a friend who’d spent the weekend moving her in-laws into a smaller home. For hours she dug through piles of clothes, sorted stacks of paper, cleared shelves of countless nick knacks, lugged bags of unwanted stuff to the thrift store and carted a car full of trash to the dump. Overwhelmed, she wrote advising us to purge, to get rid of all the stuff that clutters our lives and bogs us down.

I understand where she’s coming from. I think about my parent’s house and cringe at the thought of clearing it out. It’s full of our relics. The shelves in my childhood bedroom are still lined with dolls my parents brought back for me from their travels 40 plus years ago. There’s a complete set of National Geographics dating back to the 1960s in a cupboard in the den. The basement has a room overflowing with art supplies: old tubs of cracked, dried out tempura paint and brushes too stiff to bend. My youngest brother is 45 now. No one has been in that art room in decades.

I hang on to this old newspaper clipping because it takes me back to my childhood. Some things have the power to transport you.

And yet, that stuff holds memories. I wore the strapless dress hanging in my old closet to my rehearsal dinner in 1988. The faded ribbons pinned on the wall in the playroom at my parents’ remind me of myself as a child, shivering on the blocks at swim meets, terrified as I waited for the blast of the starting whistle.

It’s a fine line between what is junk and what is history. I remember hiking in the desert where the ancient Native American artifacts we encountered were considered historical, the modern cowboy stuff junk. For those things the line was clear: 50 years. Older than that it had value; younger it was litter. And yet, I enjoyed poking around the old cowboy camps, looking at the rusted cans, trying to decipher their labels and imagining what it was like to travel the landscape on horseback before the advent of lightweight gear and detailed topographic maps. But I suppose you have to draw a line with that stuff somewhere. It’s less clear where to draw it with your own belongings.

My house is not overly cluttered with memorabilia, but there are things that I am reluctant to toss that most people would consider junk or at least worthless stuff. There’s a coat that belonged to my first husband that just hangs in the closet. I don’t really look at it and I certainly never wear it, but when it catches my eye, it brings back memories. There’s my racing shirt from my college crew days. It’s 30 years old now and I haven’t worn it in ages, but I every time I glimpse its telltale blue and white with the distinctive Y on the back, I can feel the heft of the oar in my hands and the rhythmic back and forth of the slide as we pulled the boat through the water. I have a suitcase full of letters that my mother wrote me. I haven’t reread them, but maybe I will? Maybe Avery will? I can’t throw them away. They capture a part of my life that is gone and maybe sometime I will want to look back on it. Maybe.

I think my friend would argue with my maybe. And she’s right. The truth is I’m unlikely to read the letters and someday someone will have to take them to the dump. But for now, I find it hard to let them go.

People suggest that you set some guidelines to help you filter through your belongings and determine what's worth keeping. Maybe a year for a piece of clothing, maybe a bit more for a piece of gear. If you haven’t used the item in that time, it’s time to let it go. The principle is to think about what you really need and to recognize the fact that these things do not bring happiness.

And I totally get that. I agree things don’t bring happiness, but I also think it’s a little more complicated, at least for me. What things do do is transport you to places that bring happiness. Whether it’s the literal transportation you get from a pair of skis or the figurative trip you take when you look at an old picture or a piece of clothing, things can be a vehicle that trigger memories and bring joy.

It’s just that too much stuff overwhelms its power and saddles your loved ones if they are left to pick up after you. So the lesson that I take from my friend’s words is to take stock. To really look at the things I’ve stashed in the dark corners of my basement or garage. To open the cupboard doors and take things out. Hold them in my hands. Do they move me? Do they tell me a story? If not, maybe it’s time to let them go.

Living for today

In Sunday school when we were kids, my brother was asked to draw a picture of the ascension of Christ. He was four or five, a literal little boy. He drew a pair of sandaled feet hanging down from a puffy white cloud over a field of daisies.

We grew up going to Sunday school at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church where we were taught we’d all go to heaven when we died, and for a long time Teddy’s drawing captured my sense of what that meant. I thought we’d float up from the Earth, pass through the clouds and then hang out in a puffy, white land with a fatherly God who sat in a big throne and had a long, flowing white beard. I imagined we’d be able to bound around, leaping from one cloud to the next. I wasn’t sure what else we’d do up there. I couldn’t be bothered to ponder that part for long. I assumed we’d look the same as we did in life, but hadn’t figured out if that meant the same at age 8? 20? 80?

I can’t recall exactly when I began to doubt that image. But somewhere along the line, science replaced faith for me, and I no longer believed I was heading for the fluffy clouds above. I knew I would die and that frightened me once I decided there was no bouncing heaven waiting for me. But I didn’t come up with any alternatives.

And then Pete died. His death forced me to confront my fear and ambivalence about what happens to us if there is no heaven.

I recently pulled out my journal from that first year. My handwriting changes with different entries, sometimes it’s neat and controlled, my normal all-caps printing, other times it’s a cursive scrawl that I can barely read. But you don’t have to catch all the words to understand what I’m saying. Over and over, I wrote, “Where are you, Pete? Where are you? I want to talk to you. I want you.”

If he wasn’t floating around in the clouds, where was he? What was he? Was he even he? Without religion, I did not have an answer. I couldn’t fully embrace the idea that Pete was nothing. The finality of that stopped my breathing, left me gasping. I could not conceive of the sudden extinguishing of life — of his brilliant, beautiful life. But what was the alternative?

After Pete died, someone sent me Pema Chodron’s book “When Things Fall Apart.” It was the first time I’d grappled with the idea of nonattachment. Chodron writes about the idea of letting go — letting go of the things that make you fearful be they material possessions or your emotional ties to life. She herself let go by becoming a Buddhist nun, stepping away from her role as a wife, mother, professional to embrace the role of spiritual teacher. Or at least that’s what I read. I could barely get through the book. Not because I did not agree and recognize the power of her words and the wisdom of her path, but because I could not see past my daughter’s green eyes. I could not abandon my grief over Pete’s death. I heard nonattachment to mean you could not love people or you were destined to suffer.

I was attached to Pete and Avery. I clung to them desperately. They defined me and brought me joy. I wanted them in my life. I was not whole without them. If that meant I would suffer at their loss, it seemed like that was part of the deal. I got the joy and love and then I’d have to pay for it. And the payment was hard, but would I forego the love to avoid it?

I recognize that I didn't really understand Chodron’s writings. I resisted them, convinced they meant I could not be attached to people, which I took to mean I could not love them. But her words plagued me like that ringing in your ears after a loud concert. It was a nagging sensation I could not ignore because fundamentally I knew she was right. I was not listening to what she really had to say because I was afraid to. 

Sometimes I make lists of what is important to me. Usually it starts with people, then it moves to things like snow, flowers, mountains, water. The list doesn’t include my new dress, my favorite earrings, my skiis, my computer or cell phone. But I spend a lot of time obsessing on those things. Why? Do they make me feel whole? Do they make my life richer? No, they are just things. I get that being attached to them is a waste of time and energy. But people? People bring meaning to my life. I am attached to them.

Right after Pete died, I remember flying to Finland with Avery and thinking that if she weren’t beside me on the airplane, I wouldn’t care if we dropped into the sea. I really felt detached from everything except my grief. It wasn’t a good feeling, but there was some freedom to it. Planes always frighten me, and so it was strangely relaxing not to give a shit if the engine noise changed or we hit turbulence.

But that emptiness has refilled. I no longer don’t care about anything. I am attached, to Avery, to Allen, to my friends and family, to the Earth, and this attachment brings fear for what happens after we die. And yet perhaps one way to face this fear is to think more carefully about what Chodron meant. I think I understand now that she was not saying don’t love, but was saying that in loving we need to recognize the impermanence of those relationships and to make sure we nurture them every day. Because you never know what is going to happen tomorrow, so don’t regret what you did or didn’t do today.

Creating ritual

Two weeks ago I hiked into the Leg Lake Cirque with a group of friends for what has become an almost-annual pilgrimage into the site of my first husband’s death.

The final push up to the cliff where he was climbing crosses a large boulder field and then angles up the remnants of an old glacier to the bottom of the route. The ice is pockmarked and dirty in the autumn, making it easy to crunch your way up to where Pete and Steve’s rope, once yellow now faded to white, still hangs. Usually we scramble up to the cliff and create a kind of shrine there at the base, but this year the boulders were covered with a couple of inches of snow and ice. So after some slipping around in the rocks we decided to stop short and create our shrine in the boulders.

We had prayer flags to hang and candles to light. Together we came up with a scheme to string the flags between two large rocks. Underneath we built a small cairn to prop up the red roses I carried. Pete always bought red roses for anniversaries, birthdays, Valentine’s Day … you name it, he bought red roses. I can see him now, smiling and proud of himself for picking the perfect romantic flower. I tried to hint once that red roses had lost some of their power with their ubiquitous presence in the nation’s grocery stores. But Pete never really caught on. For him it was simple: Romance? Red roses. Check.

So I always brought red roses to Leg Lake. It was part of my ritual. Somewhere near the base of the climb the remains of six bouquets lie frozen and desiccated, together with a few candles, some bundles of sage and the six strings of old prayer flags that were part of our annual altar in the rocks.

This year, after we strung up the flags and lit some candles, we sat around silently. For a few minutes no one knew what to do. Despite our ritualized props, we have not come up with any kind of service to follow, no set language to guide our words or actions once we put the altar in place.

Finally we began talking about memories of Pete. I played with the candle flame while the conversation ebbed and flowed. The sun shone down on us. A breeze cooled our skin, reminding us that winter was coming despite the warmth of that October afternoon. The cliff face towered in the shadows behind us, cold, dark and oblivious. We laughed and wept.

After a while, we ran out of things to say and decided it was time to go. We gathered our belongings, pulled our packs back on and began our return hike.

That hike has become a ritual for me. I sometimes feel awkward asking my friends to come along. I wonder if they would prefer not to dredge up the old sorrow. I know it is easier to just go forward, soldier on, eyes ahead. But for me, even though I feel silly and pretentious lighting the candle, stringing up the flags, sending a message of love up to the clouds, I keep doing it. I want to honor Pete and the life we shared. I want to acknowledge his importance and the hole he left behind when he died. And so, with my friends, I’ve created this ritual.

I grew up Episcopalian, but in my teens lost interest and faith in the church and left it behind. Now, although I attend an occasional service at Christmas with my parents, I consider the natural world my real church. But that sanctuary doesn’t give me any guidance when it comes to honoring grief or any of life’s milestones really.  After Pete died, I struggled with the fact that I had no traditions to follow, no set modes of behavior. I didn’t have to shave my head or wear black. I didn’t have to sit shivah. I didn’t wash Pete’s body or choose the clothes he’d wear into the afterworld. I had no time-honored ceremonies or practices to guide me and in their absence I floundered.

Years ago I read a story that described a woman’s journey after the death of her mother. I cannot recall who wrote it now, but I remember being struck by how hard it was for the author to cope with her grief without religious or cultural norms to guide her. That story came back to me after Pete died. I felt the same way. Our society seems to place great emphasis on moving forward, getting over it, toughening up. You have your memorial service or ceremony of life or whatever you want to call it and then you go back to your house, your job, your life and do what?

I decided to create rituals. For the first year, Avery and I lit a candle for Pete every night and read poems out loud to each other before we went to bed. On Pete’s birthday each March, I try to do a big ski day in the mountains with friends. Usually someone brings a flask of whiskey to toast him at the top of our climb. Mainly we want to recapture his spirit by working hard like he would have done to acknowledge the passage of another year.

And, of course, I make the pilgrimage into Leg Lake.

I often feel awkward as I perform my made-up ceremonies. I think it’s because I am exposed and vulnerable when I open myself up emotionally and spiritually in front of others. With organized religion, you have the power of history and tradition guiding you through a set of prescribed steps. You can be anonymous as you stand and kneel, pray and sing, reciting words that have been codified for thousands of years. You become part of something bigger than you, and there’s power in that sense of belonging. When you create your own ritual, you have to bumble along, borrowing bits and pieces from others to come up with something that works for you.

Someone asked me once what helped me get through my grief. My response was my community and our rituals. Even when we felt uncomfortable or sheepish to be talking about mysterious, spiritual things together, even when we struggled to put our emotions into words, the act of creating a ritual was healing. It tied us together, honored our shared past and soothed our wounded souls. Which should be no surprise given the power of the world’s religions over the course of human history.  Because ultimately it seems to me that religion — whether it’s an organized faith or your own made-up version — helps guide us on our journey through life. Without it, it’s all too easy to lose our way.

You can say the wrong thing

So before I dive into this second blog post, I want to share why I am doing this. I'm working on a memoir about my journey through grief and rage at at Pete's death. These blog posts represent some of my thoughts and explorations as I try to put that experience into words. It's been a challenging journey, both creatively and emotionally. I'm out of the darkness now, but to finish this project I sometimes have to plunge back in and reconfront the less than beautiful parts of the experience. That's what this blog is about...

You can say the wrong thing to a grieving friend.

Some of the worst statements I heard were:

• Everything happens for a reason.

• My dog just died; I totally understand how you are feeling. (Sorry I am not a dog person so this one just struck me the wrong way. I bet it would work with some people, however!)

• You are experiencing the five stages of grief.

• It’s part of God’s plan.

• You’ll meet someone else.

I know these people were trying to help. I know they wanted to say something to comfort me. It takes courage to talk to a crazy, weepy, unpredictable friend who is in the middle of everyone’s worst nightmare. Even after going through the experience myself, I don’t always know what to do in the face of another’s grief.

There’s a woman in my community whose husband died last winter. I don’t know her and have never spoken to her before, yet I would like to say or do something — it’s like I have a responsibility to her as a fellow widow. I just don’t know what that responsibility is.

After Pete died I felt as if I had a scarlet W on my chest. Widow. She’s the one whose husband was killed in the Winds by that kid. So tragic.

I hated going to the grocery store, hated bumping into someone, because you don’t just say “hi” to a new widow. You don’t just pretend nothing happened — or if you do, it feels awkward and surreal. I wanted people to know my story, I wanted to talk about Pete, but I also longed to pick up a carton of eggs or a gallon of milk anonymously.

So what did help Avery and me? Lots and lots of things:

Making us dinner, night after night after night.

Organizing Pete’s tools in the garage.

Coming to my house to help or offer moral support when something went wrong with the stove, the water, the plumbing, the cars….

Sitting unfazed through my tears.

Listening to my rage. Listening to my sorrow.

Sending us care packages full of surprises, most totally unnecessary and over-the-top generous, but all incredibly moving and thoughtful.

Writing letters and emails about Pete.

Remembering his birthday.

Wearing his clothes.

Calling me to let me know they thought of Pete on a long run, a hard climb, a tough day.

Helping me celebrate milestones with respect and love.

Taking me on vacation.

Carving a pumpkin with Avery.

Helping me carry his memory.

My community saved me following Pete’s death. It opened up and absorbed Avery and me, wrapping us in warmth, love and acceptance. And as I healed, they healed with me. Our tears finally became laughter, the weight I’d lost came back on (unfortunately), jobs again assumed importance and our children grew taller. Life became normal again, but we were all forever changed by our experience: by being pushed together, forced to confront the scary hard reality of death and loss, forced to drop our cheery “life is good” masks and see each other’s naked fear and sorrow.

And much as I struggle to say this, that change was a strange kind of gift that has made us stronger, happier and kinder.

So I maybe I should write the woman. As a stranger, that seems like the place to start.