Crossing the Bridge of Sighs

Bridge of Sighs

Everything about the friends who have left us was miraculous; we salute the way they lived the gift they were given and the grace with which they walked boldly across their own Bridge of Sighs.

             

Recently, two friends were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and in a very few months were gone from us. In both cases, the medical profession was able to do what is possible to relieve suffering, but no more. 

               I thought about that this week when I photo-shopped, enlarged and printed a view of the Bridge of Sighs for framing. That bridge spans the canal between the ancient courthouse and the prison in Venice and has small windows through which the condemned get their last glimpse of the world before being thrown into the dungeon’s darkness . . . sometimes for forever.

               A few weeks ago, a Canadian woman ended her struggle with Lou Gehrig’s disease voluntarily . . . in Switzerland, choosing to cross her Bridge of Sighs on her own terms.

               In Jonas Jonason’s novel, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared, a character muses at the stupidity of fighting wars when with a little patience, the combatants could all die naturally and without all that expense, fuss and discomfort. Only half true.

               All my friends know that I suffer emotionally and psychologically whenever it becomes necessary to board an airplane. I’ve been smiled at a lot over this, and reminded that flying is probably the safest way to travel . . . statistically. Statistics be damned, I say. It’s not about statistical safety or danger. It’s about the queasiness brought about by knowing that when airliners fall from the sky, there must be anywhere from a few seconds to minutes of knowing that the bridge you’re crossing is a Bridge of Sighs, your last glimpse through the window very definitely your last. (Please note that I still board airplanes when necessary; some would call that courage.)

               An Easter Reflection by Jack Dueck in the Canadian Mennonite, April 29, 2013 quotes Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. I have chosen to live my life as though everything is a miracle.” (If you can find it, read Jack’s essay; it’s amazing.) It’s not surprising that Einstein’s exploration of the vastness of the universe against the minuteness of a quantum would lead him to say this; there are those for whom incidents of recovery, a reprieve at the gates of the Bridge of Sighs constitutes a miracle. The very fact that in this cold and vast universe, life and human consciousness exist on one of billions and billions of stars and planets, is miracle enough for me.

         Everything about the friends who have left us was miraculous; we salute the way they lived the gift they were given and the grace with which they walked boldly across their own Bridge of Sighs.  

       

A bridge we will all cross, hopefully with the courage they showed us is possible.

Dueck also quotes Gerard Manly Hopkins: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God./ It will flame out like shining from shook foil;/ It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil/Crushed.” And the Psalmist wrote long, long ago: “the heavens are telling the glory of God . . . Day to day pours forth speech.”

Meanwhile, there are Dylan Thomas’ words written at the death bed of his father: “Do not go gentle into that good night; old age should burn and rave at close of day./Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Not to “burn and rave at close of day” would, after all, be selling the miracle of our existence cheap. 

Not to fear the Bridge of Sighs, however, is a blessing devoutly to be wished.