Chris Jepson: 'You mean this hour?'

I recently spent six sorrowful hours in a hospital emergency room tending to someone I care deeply for who had come in harm’s way. As the nurses and doctors practiced their professions, I observed from a distance the constant sorrows that make-up so much of life. Behind the ER curtain to my left was a young man who experienced a deep stab wound to the thigh, to my right a gunshot victim incoherently bemoaning his predicament. I listened intently, anonymously, as law enforcement teased-out his account of the shooting.

Five hours into “my” ordeal — during a lull in the room — I asked the attending nurse how she dealt with all of life’s misery and sorrow? Earlier I had listened to an exchange between she and volunteer. They talked of her two young children and of a recent long weekend away to the coast with her husband and yes, the children had gone, too, and it was simply marvelous. She laughed, my nurse, at my question and asked, “You mean this hour?”

When I arrived at the hospital that morning there was only one patient in the ER. Three hours later gurneys of the sick and hurt lined two long hallways. I stood in a corner, book in hand (ironically, nay, appropriately Lapham’s “Quarterly on Disaster”), quietly observing the intake staff expeditiously dealing with the pain and misery of those who, no doubt, wished to be anywhere but a hospital. I, on such occasions, find myself muttering Horace Walpole’s sentiment, “Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those whole feel.” Can such sentiments be experienced simultaneously?

A personal investment (of emotion) in people (family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc.) is undeniably a wager on certain pain and suffering. I know of none who escape the bad with the good. Taking the bet of living happily ever after is a fool’s wager. Even when we unequivocally understand that life is painful it is nonetheless startling how acutely it can be “freshly” experienced. Some life wounds, sadly, are of longtime scabs repeatedly ripped anew.

I’ve read little on how to cope with too much joy. Emphasis on “too much.” Is it even possible? Is there a word for such a condition? Sorrow, however, is one of mankind’s constant themes. Arguably, more thought has been devoted to understanding sorrow, to coping with sorrow, to moving-on from sorrow’s grip than any other human experience. Oh, one could contend love is the bigger theme but concomitant with love is the accompanying sorrow (loss). Hand-in-hand, one might argue.

Religious myths deal essentially with two themes: From whence we came to where we go. In between, we live and suffer sorrow. As a lifelong secular humorist (atheist if you will), I do not subscribe to supernatural explanations for either our existence or our condition. I understand religious scripture as an attempt by our ancestors to deal with what at one time was unknowable, to answer life’s “big” questions. Psalm 34:18 reads, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” I sincerely acknowledge the comfort such provides the faithful.

Each of us in our own way deals with life’s inexorable sorrows. Intellectually we understand that none are exempt. Alas, that is only marginally comforting, if at all.

Tomorrow is a new hour, a new day. Inevitably, as the French author, Georges Bernanos wrote, “Hope is a risk that must be run.”

And run we do.