“I see dead people…” The Sixth Sense

You remember that scene in the movie, The Sixth Sense.  Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Willis) and Cole Sear (scary kid actor) were sitting in the bedroom, the air so cold you could almost see their breath. 

“I see dead people,” the kid said. 

I remember the chill that went up my spine when I first saw that scene.  My husband claimed to predict the twist in the movie but I sure didn’t (if you haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin it for you).  Of course, any child or adult, for that matter, who claims to see dead people walking around every day must surely have some mental affliction.  But I would disagree.  We see dead people all the time.  We see them on television, we see them on YouTube, and we see them alive and well in our memories.  You can’t escape them.

Death has played such a prominent role in our culture in the past several weeks with the death of pop star Whitney Houston (used to love her when I was kid, before she went to the Dark Side and married Bobby Brown) and the horrendous shootings at the school in Chardon, Ohio – 15 minutes from my house.   The faces of those unfortunate children are displayed on our television screens almost every hour of the day, it seems. 

We see dead people.

There are both positives and negatives to the 24 hour news cycle we “enjoy”.  Historic events around the world are delivered to our homes within a moment’s notice of their occurrence.  Ridiculous little factoids about ridiculous people are blasted into our living rooms with seemingly equal importance.  But in situations like the tragedy in Chardon, we come to know the poor victims of these shootings and other horrific events as if they were our next door neighbors. 

I can’t imagine how the families of those students cope with the constant coverage.  I remember thinking of this when Whitney Houston died – I immediately thought of her daughter, Bobbi Kristina.  I remember some news reporters saying she looked “wasted” at the funeral.  Well, duh, her mother was dead!  Idiots. 

My mother also died suddenly at the age of 48.  I’ll never forget the details around it.  It was Monday, January 30, 1995.  I was a sophomore in college and had just returned to my dorm room after a choir rehearsal and saw that I had a message on my phone.  It was one of those phones where you had to stare at the red light until your eyeballs dried out to tell if it was blinking at all because it was so fast.  Just one message that day, and I was excited because I rarely had one.  I listened, and I was surprised to hear my paternal grandmother’s voice in her slow, Southern drawl.

“Nicole, this is Nana, your mother’s very sick, call home right away.”  Click.

Red flags went off everywhere because 1) my mother and paternal grandmother weren't exactly the best of friends so I couldn’t figure out why she was making the call and 2) my mother never got “very sick”.  My stomach immediately started to jump, and my body went into heightened-awareness mode.  I called my dad and he told me my mother was in the hospital, unconscious, and that he had arranged a flight for me because I needed to come home right away.  Ok, now this is serious.  Last minute flights cost serious money, and we didn’t have any.  This was doubly bizarre because the people of my family live FOREVER, with a few fluky exceptions.  Both my maternal great grandparents lived well into their 90’s, and my paternal grandfather lived well into his 70’s at least, I believe.  Both grandmothers were still alive and kicking in their 70’s at the time and my maternal grandfather died of a heart attack in his 50’s – a rare occurrence in my family.  My mother’s brother died tragically in a fire when I was in 5^th grade – I believe he was only 43.  But in general, we just hang on forever, getting more ornery and stubborn as the years go by, eventually succumbing to some stroke-like malady or pneumonia from the complications of some stroke-like malady.  Little did I know, another fluky exception was on its way. 

After a few phone calls to the siblings, I learned that my mother had collapsed while my father was out, and he returned to the house to find her.  She’d suffered from a brain aneurism, and never regained consciousness.  I travelled home that same evening to Philadelphia, and by the time Wednesday rolled around we made the decisions to take her off life support – there was no hope. 

These memories always come flooding back after hearing of the sudden, tragic death of people far too young to die.  I can only imagine that poor teenager, Bobbi Kristina, constantly having to see pictures, videos and the sound of her mother’s voice all around her.  I wondered if that made it easier or more difficult – I did not dream of my mother for many months after her death and I craved it like you wouldn’t believe.  When I finally did dream of her, it was more of a nightmare-like scenario – she was slowly walking down the main highway by our house at night and I kept calling to her but she wouldn’t respond.  Just my brain’s “creative” way of replaying those final scenes in the hospital.  Nice.

I can imagine the families in Chardon are also bombarded by having to relive the events – not that they could ever forget them.  I wonder how helpful it is to constantly be surrounded by activity, whether it be nosy reporters or supportive family and friends.  The company sometimes makes it easier.  In my experience, one of the worse times is after everyone leaves, and life “goes back to normal”.  But of course, there is no more normal for those poor families.  Life is forever changed, and they are stuck with having to figure out a way forward with the crushing weight of grief pressing down upon them. 

At my mother’s funeral my Godmother told me, “It doesn’t get better.  It gets easier.”  THAT is the gospel truth.  It doesn’t get better, because that person will always be gone.  But with time, the love and support from family and friends, and perhaps a little therapy and some helpful drugs on the side (legal ones!) it does get a little easier, little by little, until you finally learn how to cope with the jagged hole that is left in your life.  It never gets filled, but eventually your life begins to move again and the hole gets surrounded.  We step around it for a while, and sometimes we fall in it and have dig ourselves out.  But it’s always there, and you know what?  I wonder if that’s not a good thing. 

That paralyzing, stupefying pain that makes it seem impossible to will yourself to take the next breath is the polar opposite of that paralyzing, stupefying joy that causes you to catch your breath in surprise and wonder before you let it out in yelps of joy and laughter.  I think those two realities are different sides of the same coin.  The awesome magnitude of one deepens your appreciation of the other.  Not that one ever wants to appreciate pain, but pain is unavoidable, and often it is devastating.  Surely Lord, there is another way to learn appreciation!  I do think, though, that part of our job as human beings is to help people through the devastation.  Sometimes we do it by just being present, other times by doing something practical.  Sometimes people just need to be left alone.  In those times, we can help in absentia by offering all the prayers and good thoughts we can manage. 

As for those families in Chardon, and that whole community – they will need our prayers and support for a long time to come.  There are many vigils being held in various places in addition to opportunities to donate to funds to help defray the cost of the psychological support that will be needed for the community.  I hope we will all do whatever our parts are in the cause to support them and to support each other.  It’s far too easy to return to our “normal lives” after such tragedies because it’s just too painful to bear or too hard to understand why such things happen or because, hey, we’ve got our own lives to live.  But perhaps the most important thing we are supposed to learn from such an event is to be selfless in our love and support for each other, whether it be a time of paralyzing, stupefying pain or paralyzing, stupefying joy.  One of the best directions given by the Chardon law enforcement throughout this tragedy was “go home and hug your family.”  After these events, let’s do it every night, if we aren’t already.

Be good to one another.