The World Is Too Much With Us

I don't remember bad things happening to people when I was a kid.  Did they still, and I just didn't know it?  I don't think my parents sheltered me from much, or maybe it didn't register, but I just don't remember the tragedies that have occurred within my children's circles of life.

When I was a kid, I didn't really know anybody who died young.  I only personally knew one man who died of cancer, and he was old and unmarried and lived with his mother.  All my friends still had their grandparents mostly, and if they didn't the grandparents had died long ago, and the ones they did have were still pretty young and hung around throughout our formative years.  My best friend's dad had died when she was four, two years before I met her in first grade, so he was just this person who was.  I don't even think I ever saw a picture of him.  Another classmate lost his dad when we were in second grade.  My mom took me to the funeral mass, and I felt very small.  Several months later when we were in third grade, and I remember it like it was yesterday, the boy turned around when we were in line waiting for lunch, and said, "Thank you for coming to my dad's funeral."  I wondered how long he had wanted to say that.

But nothing, nothing happened to me like what my children have experienced.  Is life just more now?

Our tragedies started with the death of my mom from cancer when my kids were 9, 6, and 3.  She had had her first surgery for cancer (whose mom had cancer in our day?) when my son was born.  She lived well with it until the last couple of years when it "woke up" and made her life miserable.  When she died that sunny September Saturday, it began a sequence of sad events that have tagged along behind us like a pesky dog that won't go away.

My middle child, Claire, was introduced to loss three times during her first grade year.  First with my mom, then with her teacher, who she loved, who died suddenly of an asthma attack that February.  Then over Spring Break that year, one of the sweet little girls in her class and on her soccer team died from the flu after going in for surgery for recurring cancer (and what kid did you ever know who had cancer?).

Claire was clingy and sad and a Mama's girl for a long time after that, when she realized that death is real.  That it can claim you if you are sick or healthy or young or old.  It didn't matter.  Nobody was safe, and that was hard for her to get her mind around.

A year or so later, my husband's 37 year old sister, our kids' sweet Aunt Krissy, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.  She had surgery and despite all of the doctors' best efforts, Krissy died two years later.  We made the best of the time we had with her, going to visit, spending time at their cabin, going on a dream trip to Disney World, but she still died, leaving two children my kids' ages behind, once again, reinforcing that death can call at will.

In 2008, my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's Syndrome and began his slow decline.  My children watched him loose his independence, his house, his ability to drive, his will to live.

The week before he died, my son, then 15, was on a mission trip in Appalachia and watched a healthy, athletic 17-year-old boy drown in front of his eyes, never dreaming that what he was seeing was actually happening.  By the time he realized that the boy was not coming back up, it was too late, and he was gone, my son wracked with guilt that he watched somebody die and couldn't do anything to help.

Three days later, my dad ended up in the emergency room in respiratory distress after aspirating intestinal fluid that had backed up in his stomach, causing him to vomit uncontrollably.  Five days later, he died.

Two of my daughters' friends have inoperable brain tumors.  We know two sets of parents who have lost 20 year old daughters in car accidents within the past year.  My children have witnessed at various ages and stages of understanding:  hijacked planes fly into buildings, destroying our collective sense of security; multiple mass shootings in schools, movie theaters, and shopping malls; major earthquakes; a tsunami; hurricanes; tornadoes; war.

And it's all there, all the time, always.  Amplified in 24-hour news cycles and Facebook and texts and emails sent to our iPhones that we keep on so that we never miss a thing.

The world is too much with us.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

                                        ---William Wordsworth