Lately, I have been thinking of a former classmate who died while we were in graduate school. He had gone to the hospital for a medical procedure that, I would later find out, he thought was minor in scope. He died on the operating table. The news of his death spread like wildfire on the small campus. It was not the first time that one of my classmates passed away. When I was in the fourth grade, there was a girl who kept having seizures and had one in the school’s playground on her way to school which resulted in her death.
I remember buying a card and mailing it to her home address few days after the death to express my sympathy for the loss. Then there was the guy who lived in the same dormitory as me during my senior year of college and who went home for winter break and never returned because he committed suicide. The dean of the college checked in with me (after I had learned of the death) and seemed relieved when I told her that I did not know the student (even though we would occasionally wave at each other in passing, like when he stood in front of the dormitory hall smoking cigarettes).
But it is the classmate who died on the operating table in the hospital that I keep thinking of as of late, occasioned by the fact that I will soon undergo a medical procedure deemed minor. A few days after the death, a friend of the classmate who died on the operating table tattooed the deceased’s name, along with a cross, on his leg. I remember looking at the grieving friend with the tattoo on his leg and feeling sorry that I did not share his pain. I did not express this to him, because I feared he would interpret it as me being insensitive.
All three deaths happened years ago and have stayed with me in different degrees, and perhaps shaping me in ways I do not fully recognize. What is clear is that I have not fully exorcised them, and to be honest I do not fully know how to do this. What if I did share the pain of the grieving friend with the tattoos on his leg? What shape would it have taken? Would I feel less anxious about my impending procedure? Sadly, we live in a society where we are somehow engendered to feel only for those who are in our camp. The currently bifurcated political atmosphere, although not solely to be blamed for this state, contributes to it.
Instead of a message of radical and collective love, some of our political leaders spew hatred and capitalize on it with votes. I believe that the alternative is possible, that we can capitalize on love if we know how to do it.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
