I Know Pain, Grief And Suffering

A grieving unto death. You will not know it until you have experienced it. Once you know it, you will pray to never feel it again. A grief wherein your soul cries out for an end to it or even just a moment to catch your breath. I think suffering in this way has to befall all of us at some point. I would like to say my life was better, richer, more nuanced for having suffered like this. I can't though. My life just has simply had more pain in it for suffering like this. I can say without doubt I have suffered in this way only twice in my life - both events that by definition cannot happen again. I have had other bad things happen to me you see, things that at the time I believed them to be suffering like I could not compare - like when I shipped off to war the SECOND time and believed in my heart I would never make it home alive again, or when my room mate in college was killed in the street in front of our apartment over a parking space - these events were terrible, miserable things to be sure and it was not a grieving unto death. A grief as if we will literally die is a heavy thing. Few events will hurt you this deeply in your lifetime. I am not sure if that is the case because we harden our hearts so we cannot be hurt like that again later or if the events themselves are so singularly tragic that they cannot be compared to later in life. Maybe it's a bit of both. The first time I felt that I would die out of loss and grief it very nearly literally killed me. It was my son and his prescience in my life that pulled me back from the edge of the abyss. Actually, it was the same thing that saved me the second time. Without him, without being in his glow of young life, love, resilience and happiness I could never have endured. Do we harden our hearts against this types of vicious wounds?. I suppose we do to a degree. It comes at a cost though. The harder the heart the less completely it has the capacity for love. Each person I have lost in my life has hardened me against further losses - by the experience and by the effect that grief like this has in which you distance yourself from those things with the most capability to do this type of tearing at your soul, to leave you gnashing your teeth in anger and loss. You (well I) find myself at a greater distance from people as a result of this process. I find myself disenfranchised from my generation, my faith, my family and even my own identity. Russian authors deal with the themes of the necessity of suffering in one's lifetime extensively. I think this is simply because they (collective as a people) suffered greatly under Stalin and it permeates their literature and art. One of the most interesting classes I ever took was a Russian Literature class. I need to find more to read from those authors. Zemyatin, Tolstoy, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (forgive the spelling). They can quench the fire of suffering in your soul by showing you that you are not alone in your suffering AND that if one man can survive what you are facing then you can survive what you are facing. A Judeo-Christian example is the book of Job. A man beset by the worst that could be thrown at him merely to prove unto all that he could endure. I am not Job. I don't have the strength of Job or the patience of Job. I am terrified to ask for them out of fear that God would bring down upon me those things necessary to teach me strength and patience instead of granting it to me.