It was 7 September. It happened to be the seventh day of the retreat I was guiding. It was the pre-Ordination retreat for the Deacons of the two Jesuit Provinces in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu – Chennai and Madurai. I had finished the first talk and had come down for tea. It was then I was struck by a thunderbolt - a piece of news that came through the phone: my beloved Jesuit brother, younger to me by more than two years, was no more.
In the records, he was Fr. Emmanuel Arockiam, SJ, but everybody called him ‘Emma’. He had to get admitted at this Chennai hospital before noon that day, as his complex heart surgery was scheduled for the next day, 8 September. But around 10.15 am, as he was getting ready to go to the hospital, he suffered a massive heart attack, and breathed his last on the way to a nearby hospital. Therefore, instead of the surgery, we had Emma’s funeral on Our Lady’s birthday. Several friends had told Emma what I had: Since 8 September was the birthday of our Blessed Mother, she would protect him and restore his health. Nobody thought that she would insist on Emma being ‘up there’ with her on her birthday.
These days, while trying to recover from the acute shock, a numbing sense of loss, and deep, dark sorrow, I am trying to practice all that I had talked about and written about the necessary process of grieving that helps us recover from the impact of the painful loss.
Words of spiritual writers like Henri Nouwen and Ronald Rolheiser have been of great help. In his book, Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen says, “The deep truth is that our human suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire… Everything we live, be it gladness or sadness, joy or pain, health or illness, can all be part of the journey toward the full realization of our humanity….When we lose a family member or friend through death…the question “Why?’ spontaneously emerges. It is arduous to live without an answer to this ‘Why?’”
Ronald Rolheiser says in his book, Forgotten among the Lilies, “At times death catches people before they have had the time to say things that should have been said or done things that should have been done… Many of us, I am sure, have had persons close to us die with whom we had unfinished business…. The Christian doctrine concerning the communion of saints asks us to believe that we are still in vital communion with those who have died, indeed in privileged communication… They are linked to us in such a way that we can continue to communicate, to talk, with them.”
I remembered what I had said in my book ‘Think Like A Mother!’ I had talked of something that the good-hearted Otto does in the film, ‘A Man Called Otto ’-talking to his beloved wife whom he had lost as if she was there listening to him.
A message sent by a friend said, “Some people may leave this world, but they never truly leave us. We still find them in our memories and speak to them in our hearts…” Another message contained deep wisdom: “You have to take the deep pain inside of you and give it a place to live that is not in your body. Your body is not a place to bury your pain. Give it a place in art, writing, music, or by making beautiful new connections with others.”
Another friend, who lost her beloved husband to the heartless pandemic, sent me the words of Bl. Oscar Romero: “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”
