Mercy

Here’s a weird story about the way the mind, or, hey, I’ll only speak for myself, my mind, works, and mercy.

I was just in the grocery store, because I’m out of almond milk and I kept forgetting to buy it all week. For convenience’s sake I went to the pricey Gristede’s (nickname “Greedys”) on my block. Since I was on my own, I put my Air Pods in my ears and clicked play on one of my many playlists. Which is where the how my mind works part kicks in.

A song by a Louisiana singer-song writer named Mary Gauthier, called “Mercy Now,” queued up. I’ve been to see Gauthier a few times, drawn by our mutual Louisiana ties. This song in particular speaks to the need many of her close ties…her father, her brother…have for mercy, by which I believe she means compassion, and why, and eventually grows to include mercy for all of us.

It is, in a word, beautiful.

I’d forgotten about it, to be honest. But I’d heard it, ironically, recently, when a woman I know, a fellow mom, back when Henry was in kindergarten (he’s now in 9th grade), who is a dancer, posted a flashback video of herself dancing to it on Facebook.

And I thought, wow, someone else knows about Mary, too. And then the song took over and, as she danced, I thought about mercy, and how hard life can be.

As it happens, this mom/dancer has become a painter recently, and, having seen her stuff on Facebook, I asked her to paint a seascape for me, which I just hung in my living room today.

When I told her what I loved about water, I referenced the water in Bermuda, which I find unutterably beautiful, in part, perhaps, because we visited Bermuda just after my brother died, and I found solace at the sight of it.

So here I am in the grocery store, with a song in my ears that evokes the commonality of pain and compassion, and an artist whose work made an appearance in my living room today, and who is linked to the song, via dance….

And, I’m thinking about my brother….because of the water in the painting, and the brother mentioned in the song. In describing him, Gauthier says, “The pain that he lives in it's almost more than living will allow.” And then a line later, “He could use some mercy now.”

What I was thinking was that I hope, in writing so much about my brother’s resilience that I have not given the impression that he did not suffer, that it came easy.

My brother was 9 when he was diagnosed and went into that laminar air flow room. As a younger sister, I did not see his pain as an adult would. And, to be honest, I think I have repressed a lot of what I did see, because it was traumatic.

He had special qualities which enabled him to survive, to be sure. But he suffered. He definitely did. He needed mercy.

I remember the IVs, which were ever present, it seemed, and how he got teary when they set the drip too fast and they stung. I remember seeing the ice hammer kept in his room to drive the needle into his hip for bone marrow samples, and wondering how the hell he could stand it.

I remember spates of irritability, and impatience, and anger, particularly with me, because, hello, I was his younger sister and built for that role. I remember an incident, I think when his blood counts were rising, and there was hope he’d get out, and then they plummeted again, when he threw everything out of his room.

I would like to think he was super human and above having suffered because of his circumstances. I would like to think this because it would be nicer to think that he did not endure emotional pain. It hurts to think of his pain.

In fact, one of the new griefs of his loss, as an adult, is to have to realize how much he must have suffered. When each of my sons turned 9, I thought…this was the age…and then…but he was just a baby.

The fact is that he became bigger than life, amazing, is not because he started that way, but because he managed to endure some pretty hellish situations and somehow still come out of it with a sense of humor and hope and an unquenchable curiosity about life.

I hope I have not white washed his story.

Back to mercy….Part of the reason Ted survived as well as he did was due to the mercy, and compassion, shown by others….friends, family, doctors, and nurses. Looking back, with that song in my ears, as I wandered around the grocery store, I was filled with gratitude, as I often am these days, for the mercy that others showed him.

But it also occurred to me that my brother gave as good as he got. His version of mercy was to…how can I articulate this?...to allow others to experience the discomfort of his situation, and his unquenchable humanity, simultaneously. He insisted on being the main show, rather than his illness—and it was, all things considered, a pretty “showy” illness.

There was a lesson in this.

I think one of the gifts that others, including me, got from him was an ability to tolerate the discomfort of horror—disease, deformity, the horrible luck of the draw the universe can hand out to people--and see the humanity within.

Because of him, I can look someone who has lost their hair, or a limb, due to cancer, in the eye, and see the person, not the circumstances. That, the ability to show up with eyes for the human, not the horror, is the form of mercy my brother taught me.

I’m not perfect. Sometimes I choose not to show up. Earlier in the day, we were on the subway in NYC and I made my son move seats because—from my son’s point of view—there was a homeless guy asleep on the bench across from us. The real reason was that this guy was sniffling and not wearing a mask. My explanation did not sway my son, though, who thought it was mean. This guy had his back to us, so he didn’t see, but my son wasn’t wrong. Yet, faced with his humanity, and concern for my son (I’m vaccinated, he is not), I went with my son.

Suffice it to say I have work, and thinking, to do around this topic. As with many things I think should always be first and foremost in my mind—like, the fact that, even without a definitive diagnosis, we’re all living with limited time and should live our lives accordingly—I slip and got lost in the minutia of life.

But that’s the beauty of having a weird mind. If I find that I forget, I can count on my painting, or my playlist, or my Facebook feed, or one of my kids, to remind me of what I need to be thinking about, usually when I least expect it.