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.

              

              

Bring them home

According to Yahoo News this morning, the family of Christian Duchesne issued a statement in which they said, “We encourage Canadians and Quebecers to continue supporting our soldiers, if only by putting a “Support our Troops” sticker on their vehicles. In our eyes, the best way to honour Christian's memory is to continue the mission with confidence and determination.” Christian Duchesne, 34, of the 5th Field Ambulance, died Wednesday when the vehicle in which he was riding was struck by what was apparently an improvised explosive devise as Canadian troops were driving the Taliban off a strategic hill west of Kandahar.

For those who oppose the war, such pleas from the families of the slain, while fully understandable, are frustrating. I can understand why the death of a young father, husband and son in the performance of his chosen career would raise such strong sentiments. Anything less would constitute acquiescence to the notion that soldiers’ deaths in Afghanistan serve no purpose, and possibly that their putting themselves in danger voluntarily was the consequence of misguided fervour, like a person dying while hang gliding. We honour such deaths (hang gliding, mountain climbing, etc.) by saying that “they died doing what they loved to do, and they knew the risks,” putting aside the fact that responsibilities to family and community were put aside in a selfish pursuit of a private obsession; to do otherwise would hurt too much. Is soldiering like this? I sometimes wonder.

Recently, George W. Bush compared the effort in Iraq to the American involvement in Vietnam, saying that the withdrawal of American troops there left that country to chaos and death, and—I think he said—genocide. Historians quoted on the news said that it was the American involvement in Vietnam in the first place that paved the way for the chaos and bloodshed. We all know the end of that story, of course. The deaths of all those American soldiers was “in vain;” they accomplished nothing of value, and the returning soldiers were not honoured by their fellow citizens, they were neglected, even vilified.

The very concept of making and using machinery designed to kill other people is an abomination. We have to keep reiterating that. War happens because we make and use weapons; the more deadly the weapons, the more deadly the war. Imagine removing all explosives, guns, knives, bombs, land mines, tanks, armoured troop carriers, etc. from Afghanistan. The civil war there (and in Iraq, Darfur, Palestine, I might add) would be over and the boys would be coming home. Conversely, if we sold deadly weapons to high school students, there would be wars raging room to room before the first recess bell. If we armed everyone in a mall, the bargain hunters would shoot at each other over the counters. That old saw of the simplistic thinkers, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” needs to be rewritten. “Guns introduce us to the idea that we can solve our disputes in an easy and permanent manner, and then provide us with the means to follow our imaginations down the road to war, and ultimately, chaos.”

Nobody knows the end of the Afghanistan story yet. We’re at the stage now where our leadership is saying that withdrawal will definitely mean failure, and continuing guarantees nothing except hope. The fact remains that we are in a foreign country with guns, and that can be a recipe for disappointment. If I put a sticker on my car, it will read, “Bring them home.”

One thing is certain: Afghanistan’s future is in Afghani’s hands. No matter how hard we try to remake that country, the people who are at home there will determine their own direction in the end. They may as well get on with it.