Something unusual caught my attention on Bloomberg the other night, it wasn’t the usual business report, but an interview with somebody lying in a hospital bed, looking very sick. The patient was wrapped in blankets up to his neck and a cumbersome breathing apparatus on his nose made his voice sound like a scuba diver’s. He belaboured every single word with his rasping, precise pronunciation. It was the celebrated historian: Tony Judt, paralyzed from the neck down and unable to move anything, but the muscles on his face. A year earlier, Tony was struck by Lou Gehrig’s disease (or ALS), a fetal illness that systematically destroys the nervous system, switching off muscles, one by one. There was an extraordinary disjunction between his brilliant mental alertness and his powerless body, paralyzed by physical degradation – yet his unvanquished spirit fascinated me. My entire being concentrated on what he had to say. When describing imprisonment in his own body, Tony explained: “During the day I can at least request a scratch, an adjustment, a drink, or simply a gratuitous replacement of my limbs—since enforced stillness for hours on end is not only physically uncomfortable but psychologically close to intolerable. It is not as though you lose the desire to stretch, to bend, to stand or lie or run or even exercise. But when the urge comes over you there is nothing—nothing—you can do!” It’s hard to imagine a medical condition more terrible than this one.
What can we say about physical suffering we aren’t responsible for and have absolutely no power against? The great poet Emily Dickenson wrote a verse I often reflect upon, which always evokes a fresh perspective: “After great pain, a formal feeling will come.” While life for many is like taking a train to nowhere in particular, others learn that pain and suffering reveal something about themselves they were never forced to articulate before. Tony learnt that when the body stops reacting to the will, it becomes nothing more than a survival vessel – a space capsule in a physical world one is alienated from. At that point, human dignity is defined by conversation alone, the ability to keep relationships with family and friends. Nothing in the material world retains any value besides family and its bonds of love, which give us the courage to wake up every morning to face our ordeals. For many days I couldn’t help but think about Tony’s suffering, the awful disease which suddenly devastated his life and the unrelenting torture which finally took him last August. When one strips life of everything possible: work, home, health, mobility and interests, one is left with just family – if one is lucky enough to still have them around. Take that last step and what remains is a personal conversation with God, ushered in with the realization this dialogue started when we were children and patiently waited a lifetime to grab our attention. Maybe those like Tony are the lucky ones – the ones who have a chance to prepare.
My favorite Scriptural book is Job, from which I wish to quote: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. ‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk? Who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted joy? Who shut in the sea with barriers, when it burst out from the womb? Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place? Have you taken hold of the skirts of the Earth and shaken the wicked out of it? Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the abyss of the deep? Have the Gates of Death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of Deep Darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the Earth? Tell me now, tell me …"
