UNTEACHABLE LESSONS - Carl McColman

(An extract from Unteachable Lessons: Why Wisdom Can’t Be Taught (And Why That’s Okay) - published today!)

The days following our daughter’s death were a blur. At our pastor’s urging, Fran and I left Atlanta to spend several days with friends in Asheville, leaving as soon as the funeral arrangements were made. It was a lovely respite, but we hit the ground running when we returned, putting together a slideshow for Rhiannon and writing our eulogies, or “words of reflection” as the priest called them. The vigil and funeral were, likewise, kind of a surreal kaleidoscope— hundreds of people at each event, with out-of-town family vying for attention with friends we hadn’t seen in years. It was beautiful, wonderful—and for two introverts, exhausting. Rhiannon was the extrovert in our family—she would have just kept going, but Fran and I had to be mindful of our limits. We carefully designed the funeral to reflect music and readings that embodied Rhiannon’s joyful, playful spirit. From the lyrical beauty of “All Creatures of Our God and King” and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” to the exuberance of an upbeat workout of “I’ll Fly Away” (probably Rhiannon’s favorite go-to-heaven song), every detail of the Mass was designed to emphasize celebration before mourning, joy before lamentation. Given who Rhiannon was, it was an easy liturgical feat to pull off.

Then, on the Monday after the funeral, Fran returned to work, and so did I—although for me that meant adjusting to a new sense of silence and emptiness that surrounded my home office since Rhiannon and her many nurses and caregivers were no longer there. I threw myself into my work, trying to find distraction from my grief rather than allowing it to overwhelm me. I figured I’d just as soon encourage the grief to come in waves over time, rather than all at once. I wasn’t sure that was even possible, but it was my preference. As a strategy, it worked for about two months, and then I hit a wall. But maybe for those first two months, distracting myself was just what I needed.

What surprised me more than anything else was how grateful I felt in the midst of the grief. I knew enough about grief—and about how I grieve—to expect feelings of being overwhelmed, of sadness simply swallowing me whole, a sense of emptiness that seemed like it would never subside. Yeah, all of that rolled over me. But in the middle of it all, I just kept feeling wave after wave of appreciation, gratitude for the privilege of having been part of Rhiannon’s life for over twenty-two years. For how much she taught me, about playfulness, about humor, about zest, about dignity in suffering, about letting life be imperfect, about forgiveness.

When I was working on the slideshow for Rhiannon’s wake, I found a picture from her middle school years. At the time she was a cheerleader for the adapted sports program, supporting the wheelchair basketball team. She did this for two or three years; and each year she had a homecoming game with the usual half-time festivities. Twice, she asked me if I would escort her (and both times Fran, worried that I might not see how important this was to Rhiannon, spoke privately to me to make sure I would do it). This picture was from one of those years. I was smiling in the picture, but she was radiant. Such simple joy. I gazed into the picture and sobbed and sobbed.

I soon realized that all the talk about “stages of grief ” was, at least for me, largely meaningless. Denial, anger, depression, bargaining, it all slammed me at once. I don’t know how many days—certainly a few weeks, maybe longer, maybe even the first few months—I just kept walking around in a daze. I cried a lot, of course. I got sad. And then I also felt that luminous gratitude, for the amazing gift that my daughter was (is) to me and so many others, gratitude for how much I learned from her, gratitude for all the people who did and still love her and her mom and me.

Well-meaning friends and loved ones would say things like “At least she’s in a better place now” or “She’s no longer stuck in a wheelchair” or “Well, her suffering is over.” That’s all true and I believe it (thank heaven for my faith). I don’t mean to criticize the genuine love and concern from the many people who cared. But every time I heard a comment like that I wanted to scream, “I’m not crying because I don’t have faith or because I don’t trust God. I’m crying because I miss my girl.”

So maybe I still had a little bit of Charlie Babbitt in me, after all those years. Maybe, I suppose, grief has a self-involved quality about it. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Because it all pointed to this: Rhiannon taught me more about living and love and spirituality and compassion than just about any person or any relationship I ever had—including Fran, including the monks and spiritual directors I’ve worked with, including the countless books I’ve read over the years. And one of the things I’ve learned from Rhiannon, and our journey together, was just how messy it all is. I was pretty much self-centered when I first met Rhiannon. And somewhere along the way, that diminutive girl, whose mind was compromised by a stroke and whose body was diminished by paralysis, taught me how to love.

I wish I could explain it. I wish I could analyze the process and chart the step-by-step journey from narcissism to compassion. But it isn’t anything neat and tidy, and there’s no making it tidy, either. To begin with, I wasn’t entirely heartless, even at my Babbitty worst. And even during Rhiannon’s final weeks, I was hardly cured of my narcissism, even if on most good days it seemed to be in remission. But there’s no boiling this down to “Seven Steps to Learn Compassion” or “Action Plans for a Post-Selfish Life.” The lessons I learned from Rhiannon are simply unteachable lessons.

It’s been several years now since her passing, and I tell her (our) story from time to time. Almost at every telling, I meet someone who has a similar story to tell, of the unsung perseverance of caring for a sick child or grief that felt like gratitude or slowly discovering that love blossoms in our lives even when we’re not expecting it. I’ve come to see that unteachable lessons are available to just about all of us—and I suspect that the more we need these unteachable lessons, the more likely they are to show up in our lives. Maybe they don’t always entail suffering and loss, but I suspect they always involve some sort of deep interior transfiguration that is messy and unchartable and just can’t be put into words. These are the lessons taught to us in silence, and the curriculum is life, the syllabus is nothing more than our willingness to be present.

Carl McColman is the author of Befriending Silence, The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, and Answering the Contemplative Call. He lives near Atlanta, GA, where he is a member of the Lay Cistercians of the Our Lady of the Holy Spirit, a contemplative community under the spiritual guidance of Trappist monks. https://carlmccolman.com/