I don’t believe in the superstition that says death tends to come in threes. So the fact that it keeps happening in my life has given me fresh respect for coincidence.
Most recently, I lost a dear friend, a sister-in-law and a Brigham City religious and civic leader who has been very generous to my family.
And those three body blows have combined to send me scurrying back to a little volume that has become my “go-to” book for grief over the years.
“A Letter of Consolation” (Harper, 96 pages) was written by Henri Nouwen, a Catholic wisdom teacher. Nouwen wrote the letter to his father soon after his own mother died.
When my mother died 25 years ago, I gave Nouwen’s book to my dad.
“The guy’s been reading my mail,” dad said later.
After reading “A Letter of Consolation” for the first time many years ago, I thought, “People really are more alike than they are different.” I felt I was inhabiting the same skin as these two Dutch Catholics from another generation.
As Arthur Henry King, the Latter-day Saint scholar might say, the book is written in the voice that people use when they want to tell the truth.
In one touching section, Nouwen tells his father:
“It always seemed as though you felt that mother was the one who took care of personal relationships. I remember how often you used to say, as I left the house to return to the United States, ‘Don’t forget to write mother.’ ...
“Whenever I called you by phone, I was surprised that you took it for granted that I really called for mother. After reassuring me that everything was fine with you, you always said quickly, ‘Well, here’s mother.’ I knew a call made you happy, but your happiness seemed to be derived from mother’s joy and gratefulness.”
Sound familiar?
Toward the end of his letter, Nouwen tries to find a perspective that makes sense of his mother’s death:
“The friends of Jesus saw him and heard him only a few times after that Easter morning,” Nouwen writes, “but their lives were completely changed. What seemed to be the end proved to be the beginning. ... The best way I can express to you the meaning death receives in the light of the resurrection of Jesus is to say that the love that causes us so much grief and makes us feel so fully the absurdity of death is stronger than death itself.
“Love is stronger than death.
“The same love that makes us mourn and protest against death will now free us to live in hope. ... It is with this divine love in our hearts, a love stronger than death, that our lives can be lived as a promise.”
Harriet Johnson, Janice Archibald and Jeff Thorne, your passing has wrung out all of our hearts. But the pain we feel is there because we loved you so much. Now, because of that love, you will continue to influence, comfort and sustain us. Your place in our lives hasn’t grown smaller with your passing.
Your place in our lives has grown larger. In many ways, you are more a part of out hearts and souls now than you were when you were alive.
Email: jerjohn@deseretnews.com