And Best Laid Plans of… God?
Three years ago today my best friend died. He was 47 years old. It was a terrible and agonized experience for him and dreadful for all us who loved him.
Blake had Marfan’s Syndrome, an inherited genetic disorder that severely weakened all of the connective tissue in his body. Since the connective tissue didn’t restrict him as much, he grew tall, but throughout his entire life, he sprained ankles and pulled muscles more easily. Pain and suffering were always with him, far worse than anything most of us have suffered. By far, the most dangerous factor in this disease is the weakening of the heart wall and every artery in the body. Fatal aneurysms are very common and the leading cause of death. Blake was no exception here. His mom died this way when she was 29. He was only eleven.
By the time I met him, he’d already undergone his first major surgery replacing his aorta with a synthetic from the aortic arch down near the base of his spine. He nearly died in that first operation and spent several weeks in intensive care. Slowly, he recovered. Other surgeries followed, one every three years or so as some part wore out and needed to be replaced. Another stretch of his aorta, two heart valves, a pacemaker, reinstalling a pacemaker with a defibrillator after his heart stopped, reinstalling it again after it started giving him shocks every time he lifted his left arm. Finally, all that was left to replace were small portions of the aorta at the arch and the very base of his spine. My family and I spent a lot of time with his family in surgical waiting rooms waiting for news. We all grew close.
He was the toughest person I knew, and everyone could not help but admire him for it. After every surgery, he would struggle heroically to get back what he had lost, and oh, what a struggle it was. I like to think I’m tough, that I can handle a lot of suffering and pain, but I’m certain I couldn’t have endured what he did. I’m just not that strong. At first, it would be a battle just to get out of his chair then he would walk five feet then ten. By the end of the week he would be going to the end of the block, sweat covering his face, legs trembling. Sometimes, he would have to sit down three times to make it. But however great the battle was, he fought it and fought magnificently. Within a couple of months, he would be back to walking five miles a day, shooting archery and hunting.
Blake always knew that he could die at any moment. The thought lingered in the back of his mind, and often, not that far back. But instead of living in fear and letting the looming darkness hold him back, he lived every day like it was going to be his last. Blake excelled at life better than any person I have ever known. He enjoyed every day he still breathed. He lived, and that was good. He worked enough to survive comfortably and spent the rest of his time doing what he loved. He was always optimistic and happy. Always looking for the better side of people, he often found it. Blake never had an enemy. In the fourteen years we worked together, I’ve never heard anyone speak badly of him. He was universally liked and respected.
He was an avid hunter, fisherman, camper, canoeist and hiker. The more time he spent outdoors, the happier he was. He loved the idea of getting back to nature, the simpler the better. When our families camped together, which was often, he started our campfires with flint and steel and later sticks and string. Part of this process involved blowing on a spark resting in a handful of tinder, and my young son was convinced for years that Blake could breathe fire. He thought Blake was a god. In different ways, we all did.
Please don’t think him barbaric, but he loved to hunt. As he got older, he kept altering his preferred technique to make it harder, more challenging, making him spend even more time outside. So he started hunting with muzzle loaders then archery finally just with simple bows and arrows of a Native American design he had lovingly crafted in his basement. To him one of his greatest accomplishments was taking a moose with completely handmade equipment. He loved being unique.
Blake was also an artist. Everything he did, he did flawlessly. He painted and drew. His hand made bows were a wonder to behold and painted in Native American hunting scenes. I have one hanging above me as I write. His flintlock rifles took 400 to 600 hours of work apiece and were museum quality, carved with roses and inlaid with silver. They were beautiful even to a non-hunter like myself. On or off the job, everything he did was near-perfect. He disliked the phrase good enough. He always said good enough was only an excuse for doing something poorly and being willing to accept it.
So we canoed. We camped. We worked side by side. There were times on our long commutes home that we would laugh so hard that my stomach would still ache hours later. Without strings, without demands, his friendship was always there. He was closer to me than any of my brothers or sisters. He was beautiful.
But then another surgery came due. His aorta at the arch and base of the spine had expanded dangerously, and the doctors said surgery was the only option. Without it they gave him less than a year. This was tricky because so many people become paralyzed as a result. At first, he opted to not go through with it and had decided he would just die. Blake could take a vast amount of agony, but paralysis frightened him more than anything else. The thought of not being able to do the things he loved most bothered him more than dying. When it came, his death would have been over quickly with little pain. He accepted that. For a while.
But after some time, he had second thoughts. He and his wife prayed about it, talked to their pastor and the doctor, agonized over the decision for month and finally, heartbreakingly, decided to proceed. They felt that it was in their God’s hands now. After looking back on it, perhaps it was.
I remember the last time I talked to him. I finally managed to tell him how much he had meant to me, how important he was. He and his wife drove to Peoria, Illinois the next day. There was a week of tests before the surgery and he called me the night before he was to be admitted, but my wife and I had tickets to a performance and were on our way out the door when the call came. I thought then and think now that he was calling to say goodbye in case anything happened, but I had to go. At least, I felt I had to go. I cried all the way to the auditorium. I don’t regret much in my life. I generally make it a point not to, but I regret that. Oh, how I regret that! I did manage to talk to him a few minutes the next day, but things were in motion. There was no time.
The surgery was a disaster. His aortic arch ruptured when they opened him up, and due to this, the whole procedure was far longer and more stressful for him than the doctors had anticipated. He slipped into a near coma and hovered on the brink for quite awhile. We kept in touch through a website, then one afternoon his wife called. She was down there with her sister, frightened and exhausted. I asked her if there was anything we could do, and she replied “It may be a good time for you and your family to take some vacation.” We left for Peoria the next morning calling my boss on the way. We stayed a week. He pulled out of it slightly, but it became clear that there would likely be some permanent damage among them, some paralysis.
The seven weeks he spent in the hospital were a blur. They managed to get him back to Bismarck, but things went poorly. He couldn’t regain enough strength to be taken off the ventilator. He had bad days and then worse ones. In agony constantly, he faded in and out. After they cut his pain medication was the worst. For week after week, tears welled in his eyes as the pain became unbearable. He didn’t want to go on. The friend who seemed capable of taking anything, the man who was tougher than anyone had reached his only too human limits. He was on a respirator and back off. He hallucinated. He cried. I visited nearly every night for an hour or so. It was terrible. My words are inadequate. As much as I respect the power of language, I cannot convey to you the sense of hopelessness and suffering so prevalent in the room and everyone who visited it.
Finally, his breathing seemed to stabilize, so after seven weeks, they moved him out of the ICU. I visited him that day and he was conscious enough to speak though very slowly and weakly. I had to cover the tube in his trachea with my finger to allow him enough air to speak. His daughter was getting married that Friday and he asked me if I was going. I said I wouldn’t miss it for the world. “Do you think I would?” he replied and smiled. After that he drifted off to sleep.
We got the call at about 10:30. He had stopped breathing, and being out of the ICU, no had noticed it for a while They got him breathing and restarted his heart, but things were bad. After seeing him back in ICU, spasming and twitching, we suspected that this was the end, and the neurologist confirmed it the next day. He had been without oxygen for too long, and his brain was severely damaged. There was no hope left. He was gone.
They pulled the plug at 4:00 that afternoon while 19 of us stood in the room when he died. I was honored and grateful to be included. So I watched my best friend slowly stop breathing, gasping and shuddering. I watched as he slowly turned gray. It only took five minutes but they were a very long five. I need to say here that though I would not have missed it for anything, it was the single most terrible thing I have ever been through. I felt as if my own heart would stop. I was crushed. I went back to my wife and son and the three of us lay in bed holding each other. We cried for a long time. From time to time, we still do.
He was the best man I knew. I will not forget him. Ever. He stands as an example of how to live life, now, well and fully.
And then the religion apologists started. God has reasons. There is a plan. Blake’s in a better place. After his death, I heard so many tired cliches. I wanted to argue. I wanted to rage. Instead, I just clamped down my own tongue and comforted and took comfort from the people who loved him. But still! I understand that these things were said to help but do these people ever take their beliefs to their logical conclusions.
God needed him in heaven… As part of his plan? Huh? Was he building a patio? Re-roofing the divine mansion? Was a toilet backed up? An omnipotent God needed him? It would seem his family needed him more. Did he have to suffer so much to get there? Didn’t just being the most decent man I knew pay for the ticket?
Another was God never gives you more that you can handle. WTF? Then please tell me why the world is absolutely littered with the shattered remains of once happy people. Have you never walked by a lonely old widower on a park bench or some homeless man muttering to some imaginary friend and thought, “Holy shit! God certainly gave him more than he could handle?” We are all broken in some way. Many are crushed. They couldn’t handle it. It was a lie.
So I guess my question here is do any of you see sign of a divine plan? Where was God through this ordeal? What was the plan in extending strands of hope only to snatch them away? Where was the mercy in the smashing of people against the rocks over and over? Where was God? How does a theist hold on to his or her faith through all the unnecessary sufferings, all the useless and soon smashed hopes, all the pain? Blake was a believer, the quiet non-pushy type, but by all evidence, his God helped him not a whit. Can anyone say that the agony he experienced in his last days had a purpose? The seven weeks of horror? In Darwin’s name, how can anyone believe that their God has a plan for them?
A better question: how could anyone who went through this believe in God? How could they forgive him?
The truth of the matter is that this was random and unplanned. Blake died because he inherited a genetic disease. He died not because a God was testing or a Devil was tormenting him. He died because of a series of cause and effect situations that gave him Marfan’s and eventually killed him. He died because of arbitrary and meaningless chance. In a cosmic sense, his death meant little, just one more death amidst trillions of others.
But it meant a lot to me. I’ll never forget you buddy!
Wow I must say this is a great post. I felt the pain you felt and can understand the pain he felt. I am wondering if you have any photos of his handmade bows and muskets? Like you I’m not a hunter but I do like seeing the works of someone skilled at these types of things.
I can’t see a being that exist that would do something like this so it could test someones faith. I could see some people who would do something like this to test other people but one that is billed as being merciful and just I can’t. I think I can understand someone holding onto the belief in a god even though they are suffering beyond what most of us can imagine. I knew a girl that had a genetic problem that caused her to not produce white blood cells as she should. She kept her faith in a god even though she knew she wouldn’t even be able to graduate from high school. She died when she was just 16. It is sad to me that so many said the same stuff about her and yet she never really had a chance to live life. She spent at least 4 of her last 6 or 7 years of life in a hospital bed. I figure it is the only way some people can make any sense of life. If they really look closely at their beliefs they will feel lost and I am glad I have grown past that phase of ignorance.
Hello. I am terribly sorry that you experienced this; but I also realize how empty my words may sound to you, so I won’t take too much time trying to console you. Just know that I am empathetic.
I want to impose a question. You know what you have been told about God, that He is omnipotent, omnipresent and righteous. Do you understand the full implications of having the power to do anything, knowing how everything was and how EVERYTHING is? Do you know how to think of everyone, in everything everywhere and love it all? I have prejudices, and I’m not talking about race. So simple as thinking that people who believe pro-choice is a good thing are ultimately motivated by hate. So I can tell you that I cannot fully understand His being. But I don’t want an answer to that question, because the answer is negligible.
You may think something like, “how can a god with all of these highly exalted attributes allow suffering like this?” Before I impose the question of concern, let me validate the empathy that I spoke of earlier. When I was seven my aunt died. She was married to a wealthy man and didn’t have to work, when my mom did. During the summer I stayed with my 2nd cousin and my aunt a lot. She was like a second mother and my cousin even still like a brother. My feelings regarding why are no where near my cousin’s, who has OD’d 4 times, 2 of which his body did shut down and he was revived. Why was this allowed?
At thirteen my dad was hit by a drunk driver leaving Stennis Space center. It took him out of work, destroyed my family, medicine ruined his marriage to my mother, and he went out of town with another woman ON my 18th birthday. I sure would like to see the puzzle completed!
When I was 20 I had an excellent job. I was saved when I was 12, just eight months before my father had his wreck. After that happened I kind of let loose. Done some things I’m not proud of, but like you, I regret nothing. It has made me who I am now. Well, I took the job in spite of feeling like I needed to move somewhere else. By the way, these feelings are the Spirit giving guidance, but realize that the devil is best at fooling us using “feelings”. It’s one of the best tools he’s got. However, because I am saved and I do have a personal relationship with the Lord, regardless of the sin I committed in the past, I can discern good and evil. Most of the time when it is selfish, it is evil. But I digress.
I was working this job and one night in 05 I was driving home. That’s it. I could tell you what I have learned about the event, but let me just say that I don’t remember 2 months of my life. I broke my neck. I woke up with screws in my skull. While I was in the coma the staff told my family that I would need to learn how to read, write, walk and talk again. Through God’s grace and the power of prayer, I woke up, freaked out and shoved my father down trying to get out of there. I signed myself out. But why did this happen?
Now comes the questions. Why did God let me through my party phase practically unscathed? I had been bragging about not breaking a bone not a month before the wreck. Well that was foolish. I was in a good job, doing well, tithing like I thought I should.
And why did God let my dad smoke weed and escape time with his family because of pain from his sister dieing? Why wasn’t something done at that time instead of when he started going back to church and doing good?
And why did God let the sorry punk who killed my aunt get out of town free of charge? There seems to be so many other ways that God could have done these things.
Now let me ask the question that no one wants to pay attention to. Why doesn’t God just let us all suffer in hell than sending HIS OWN SON to hang on a tree to save us? If we want evil to stop, where do we ask God to stop it? Do we stop it a murder? Abuse? Disease? Getting drunk and acting a fool? Lieing? Or do we get him to get the root of the problem: thinking? If we want God to destroy these things in this world we have to ask Him to destroy us, cuz we are the source of the problems. It’s our choice to sin. Did sin cause that disease? I don’t know, maybe a chemical someone was testing at some time did, but why was it tested? Sin probably!
Man was given kingdom authority at creation. No we didn’t evolve to the top, God set us up there because He wants the best for us. When Adam and Eve ate of the tree they handed the serpent, the devil, the rights to kingdom authority. The devil is roaming the earth, seeking whom he may devour. The worst thing we can do is BLAME God for what humans set in motion. And if you can’t perceive these things as truth it is because the devil has hardened your heart to the truth, not because you have gained intelligence that brings you past the thought.
I am working on my second Master’s degree now. Five years after it was thought that I wouldn’t have any basic motor skills due to brain damage. As far as a plan, you will never figure it out. I will never figure it out. I do know that it is centered around love. He loves you, he loves Blake. You read right, and no it’s not error. I don’t know what Blake’s response to the love of Christ was, but regardless he still loves him. God’s goal doesn’t include pain for anyone. I hurt every day, but I praise God for getting me away from the negatives that were in my life. I just hate that it took him allowing me to break my neck. I do know that I’m not paralyzed like most people who have spinal injuries. God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, we just have to realize that if we are in His will we can handle anything, if you don’t mind another cliche (French=expression) as you will probably call the verite (French=truth) in this.
They had become ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE AND OF GOD…
you pushed too much and *CROSSED THE LINE*
and for the rest of you on this GOD FORSAKEN site…
degenerates (PZ) or children (HEMANT) – ATHEISTS!
youtube.com/watch?v=bRRg2tWGDSY
do you have anything to say, you STUPID LITTLE F*CKER?
Now let’s listen to this *GENIUS*
youtube.com/watch?v=eUB4j0n2UDU
how about I tell you, Mr. Shermer, EVERYTHING YOU THINK ABOUT THE WORLD is
*WRONG*
…
you cannot SILENCE ME… for the idiot called *
FROM NOW ON:
*******************************************
EVERYTHING YOU SAY I WILL DOUBLE ON YOU…
*******************************************
Atheists,
you are going to learn even to TALK about GOD the way you do is going to cost
you your lives…
the writing on the wall…
f*ck you very much!
THE BOOBQUAKE – 911!
dissidentphilosophy.lifediscussion.net/philosophy-f1/the-boobquake-911-t1310.htm
Nice rant. Now have you got any cogent arguments or are you just a moron?
Do you ever read any of these posts? or do you just post the same drivel on every page of every website to do with atheism?
I hope the other theists who visit here are ashamed to be associated with you. this man has spoken movingly of his friend’s life and death.
A little compassion wouldn’t go amiss.
He asks why would this be part of God’s plan. If you don’t think we should be able to talk about God like that, how can you ever speak meaningfully of God at all?
If you have a belief in God perhaps you could state why you think that this could be his plan, or why you think it is outside of it?
If name-calling and threats is the way to show you faith in God I wouldn’t have a part of it even if the facts were true.
Genetic diseases give lie to the idea of a merciful creator. I remember at one pathology meeting being shown a histological section from the aorta of a teenage girl, which in itself wasn’t of much interest; it was just very severe atherosclerosis one wouldn’t be surprised to see in someone of very advanced years. The diagnosis in her case turned out (obviously) to be progeria, in which the unfortunate affected person suffers accelerated ageing, and dies very young of an age related disease. Unfortunately, the person is otherwise normal, with normal comprehension. The presenter went on to give a short account of her story and her efforts to enjoy her unfortunately short life.
Another example of the nonsense of a beneficent creator is malaria and sickle cell anaemia. Some people seem to think that the malaria parasite has been “intelligently designed”. In endemic areas, the main defence is sickle cell trait (heterozygotes for HbS) which provides some resistance to infection. Homozygotes for HbS have sickle cell disease, a nasty disorder, which leads to crises with vascular thromboses, amongst other effects, and early death. So a caring god inflicts a nasty disease on a person at the very time of conception, that is going to be of no benefit to that person, and only of relative benefit to that person’s siblings who were lucky enough to have drawn only one copy of the HbS gene in the lottery of life?
Good post KK. I remember having exactly the same thoughts, and the same bitings of the lip at all the “gone to a better place/God’s plan” stuff, when my aunt died.
My condolences.
KK that was incredibly powerful. You are an amazing writer. I, like other commenters, feel the pain you describe so well.
My condolences on your loss.
And I know what you mean about how those platitudes annoy …But there’s nothing you can do. Not then, not to those people who are saying them, who are doing so to try to grasp a tiny straw of meaning from the whole horrible situation.
I cried reading this post–it really hit a nerve. My near neighbor just lost her 6-week-old baby boy to SIDS. A couple of other moms and I happened to be standing downstairs when her husband and father came down with the tiny casket covered in white brocade. I’ve never seen a Japanese man cry before–it was awful. At least in japanese there is a set phrase you say when you bow in that situation, and it’s not religious. That was at least easier than all the silly religious memes that are repeated in English (“he’s in a better place now”, “it’s all part of God’s plan”, “God wanted to call him home”, blah blah, blah). People say those sorts of things because english speakers are not known for their ability to know when silence might be preferable. We have a tendency (not really sure how those particular memes have evolved, and why anyone imagines they are comforting to the grieving) to rush in with words and platitudes in the face of grief, death, and pain. It’s horrible to feel so helpless before someone’s anguish. With the advent of morphine and other pain-killing drugs, we seldom anymore are witness to the writhing pain of disease, surgery, death. I think those platitudes are somehow meant to function as a sort of verbal morphine–that we need not witness raw grief, so that it won’t draw out our own mirrored grief in response, about which we can do nothing.
Grief demands respect, that’s why it felt somehow comforting to me to bow low to my neighbor as he put that tiny casket in the car to drive back to their home town for the funeral.
You are lucky to have had such a friend in your life.
I bow in respect before your grief.
Amy
I never really thought of it as a comparison of one culture to the next. I’ve always focused on the Christian culture in our country. Your view opens up some great discussion possibilities. Most people just want to show that they understand or respect your pain in some manner. It’s just that the typical Christian response to this tends to cause harm rather comfort to the non-Christian. It may be a bit immature, but I just have trouble taking religious comfort for a loved ones loss from a person who a week before thought we deserved to be tortured throughout eternity.
A nonverbal way of showing that respect would be far better. I could take comfort from a respectful bow. In fact, I really like that idea.
Thank you.
I just want to let everyone know how much I appreciate all of your thoughts. Blake was a great man and I will never have another friend like him, not even close. My wife, son and I have grieved several times while writing and editing this post. In our family, May 21st is a difficult day. But it’s cathartic to bring these feelings to the surface and express them. It’s also respectful. The dead need to be remembered not prayed over or to.
Thank you. You all have comforted me. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.
That was a wonderful tribute to your friend. A terrible loss. Not gods, spirits, spooks or saints can take the sting out of that. But your tribute can sure help.
Well written.
A photo would have been cool — in hunting gear, of course !
Your friend is better than any god ever created by the minds of humanity. And morons like dmb will never see that.
My condolences