January 23, 2021
ALL MANNER OF GRIEF
THE PROMISE
How time will heal
Make me forget
You promised me
Time will heal
Make me forget
You promised me
Love will save us all and time will heal
You promised me…
How love will save
Make me forget
You promised me
Love will save
Make me forget
You promised me
Time will heal us all and love will save
You promised me…
I trusted you
I wanted your words
Believed in you
I needed your words
Time will heal
Make me forget
And love will save us all
You promised me another wish
Another way
You promised me another dream
Another day
You promised me another time
You promised me another life
You promised me…
So I swallowed the shame and I waited
I buried the blame and I waited
Choked back years of memories
I pushed down the pain and I waited
Trying to forget…
You promised me another wish
Another way
You promised me another dream
Another day
You promised me another time
You promised me…
Another lie
Oh you promised me…
And I waited… And I waited… And I waited…
And I’m still waiting…
This song leapt out at me for a number of reasons. One is, do you know how Charles Dickens is famous for his “nutshell portraits” of minor characters in his books? Here’s a few examples in an excerpt from Great Expectations:
Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, and comprehension,—in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in the large, awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as he himself lolled about in a room,—he was idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker than most gentlemen.
Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home when he ought to have been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her, and admired her beyond measure. He had a woman’s delicacy of feature, and was—”as you may see, though you never saw her,” said Herbert to me—”exactly like his mother.” It was but natural that I should take to him much more kindly than to Drummle, and that, even in the earliest evenings of our boating, he and I should pull homeward abreast of one another, conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle came up in our wake alone, under the overhanging banks and among the rushes. He would always creep in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature, even when the tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and I always think of him as coming after us in the dark or by the back-water, when our own two boats were breaking the sunset or the moonlight in mid-stream.
Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with a half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming down to Hammersmith; and my possession of a half-share in his chambers often took me up to London. We used to walk between the two places at all hours. I have an affection for the road yet (though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the impressibility of untried youth and hope.
When I had been in Mr. Pocket’s family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs. Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket’s sister. Georgiana, whom I had seen at Miss Havisham’s on the same occasion, also turned up. She was a cousin,—an indigestive single woman, who called her rigidity religion, and her liver love. These people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon me in my prosperity with the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they showed the complacent forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket they held in contempt; but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily disappointed in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon themselves.
Dickens is a master at summing up people in brief but evocative descriptions, and I think The Cure have a similar talent for summing up emotions and situations in (relatively) brief but evocative pieces of music. The Promise is a vivid portrait of deep disappointment and grief, and it instantly took me back to the last time I’d heard someone express these emotions, to the same painful extent. The fact that this was also on my iPod and in the garden probably helped to link the two; the brain does things like this…
I listen to a lot of podcasts, including some very unusual ones. Some years ago one of the topics that interested me is people who were brought up in religious communities undergoing a faith crisis. This happens to a fair few people born into serious organised religions when they start to get a higher education which exposes them to other world views. There’s a guy in America called John Dehlin who has been podcasting for years about faith crises coming out of Mormonism, and who organises support and social groups for post-Mormon and post-religious people – because one of the problems with people from tight religions losing their faith is that they then not infrequently lose their whole communities, or at least see them very differently after their crisis.
Mormonism isn’t quite as bad with that as, for example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Brethren, who totally shun people who cease to share the same world view. If a Mormon gets excommunicated, it doesn’t mean they can’t socialise with their tribe anymore – or that they can’t attend church, even – it’s more like a formality. There’s no directive to shun and exclude, like in the other examples I gave – but that doesn’t mean people don’t change, when someone starts to question the very things they hold dear. (And this is all really interesting because it translates to so many situations in the world in general, when people, and particularly people who grow up in “silos” of similar beliefs, have different opinions about religion or politics or other matters to which they become terribly attached emotionally and/or intellectually – often these differences aren’t handled particularly constructively, as you can currently observe with the fierce ideological rift lines in the US).
But, Mormonism is a particularly good example of how you can get your heart broken losing your faith, because they’ve constructed a particularly wish-fulfilling afterlife. Ordinary Christianity (and Mormonism falls within the fringes of Christianity, and leans strongly towards fundamentalism and literalness) has various portraits of the afterlife, depending on the “brand” and the imagination that got to dominate that brand, but mostly the general public gets these vague notions of an old white bearded guy on a throne and various cloven-hooved devils chasing the undeserving into a fiery hell with pitchforks, while the deserving get to sing hymns of praise forever with the white-winged angels brandishing harps. That version of heaven, by the way, would make me run… can you imagine the tedium?
The Mormon concept of the afterlife is far more attractive – first of all, no devils with pitchforks, but levels of closeness to the light, so to speak, and people allowed to visit “down” in case they have a relative or friend residing in a lower echelon for the time being – and these levels are able to be progressed from, much like re-sitting a failed exam after more study so you can have another go at passing and going up a class. Hell exists, but is more a self-inflicted thing; a soul in the painful realisation of the horrible things it did while in corporeal life, with all the consequences and pain for other beings completely in its face, and this is particularly sharp because of the juxtaposition to light and love and beauty, which were its other choices, and from which it can no longer hide either.
In the Mormon afterlife, you’re not singing in some kind of celestial choir forever and ever, although you can do that part-time if it’s something you’d enjoy (and just maybe, the music is a bit better up there). Mormons have a concept of perpetual relationships with those closest to you – for instance, marriage isn’t just for the corporeal life, but can be for the afterlife (and that’s OK because they have bodies of sorts, so I suppose there can be sex of sorts as well, so you don’t have to be platonic ever after with a person with whom you’ve been closer than that during your life on earth, ‘cos that would really suck).
And additionally, Mormons have this concept of infinite progression, infinite learning ever after, which is incredibly attractive if you’re inclined to nerdiness, like I am. What’s not so attractive is the idea of getting more and more power, to me anyway, because I actually don’t want to be a god/goddess, nor do I want to create planets and life forms of my own in this kind of infinitely repeating, infinitely expanding pattern. And really, with that, you’re philosophically back to the same problem as with the idea of there being a God, in order to explain the existence of the universe – then you have to explain the existence of God; and it’s a cop-out to say, “Oh, but God has always been there!” – why can’t the universe and its preconditions have always been there, then?
Because people want a big wizard with a magic wand. Just like a big Daddy. I’m not being facetious; it’s an inbuilt part of human psychology – we’ve got a brain with different levels, like the cerebrum versus the “reptile brain” – and we’re pre-programmed to find patterns even when there aren’t any, and to think in terms of cause and effect, which really gets in the way of thinking about the origins of the universe. We’re also tending subconsciously to look for familiar patterns, and if you look at Transactional Analysis, many people’s relationship with their God is very similar to the early-life patterns of having a big all-powerful daddy who knew everything and you depended upon for your life and who could lavish you with affection or punish you for your misdeeds – and the Second Coming is really an extrapolated case of, “Wait till your father gets home!” – it’s all very child-parent, thou art greater than I, and I must believe and obey or else, just like in a patriarchal, authoritarian family. (Hippie gods are a bit more laid-back, because people create God in their own image.)
People simply have a subconscious tendency to bring their unexamined patterns up again and again in various ways, and also to project their own images on concepts of God, and on other people (which is a real problem).
What’s that got to do with that Cure song? – I’m giving necessary context for a person’s story which I was immediately reminded of by The Promise, and digressing a bit because it’s so much fun to take the scenic route – all sorts of things to discover there! Hopefully, you can now imagine a little of what it’s like to grow up being fed this idea that death isn’t final but only like a metamorphosis from caterpillar to everlasting butterfly, and that unresolved earthly injustices will be made right in the hereafter, and that there’s a perfect parent sitting up there in another marvellous dimension who’s not flawed like everyone else you’re encountering, and who loves you with a perfect undying love and is completely invested in your learning and progression as a person ever after, and who understands you when nobody else does, and who aches when you ache, and will comfort you now and hereafter – and to grow up believing that all the people you love and lose will be re-united with you, and that your marriage can be forever, and that you will learn and progress not just for your fourscore years or so on Earth, but infinitely after…
…and then to have it dawn on you that fourscore years or so is all you or anyone else has got, and that your life and love and learning then turns to dust, and that you’ll never see the people you’ve lost again, and that injustices don’t get righted beyond the grave, nor is there any kind of compensation for a being’s agony and suffering on Earth no matter how awful its life was, and that neither your love nor love in general is forever, nor is anything in your life, and that you’ll never learn every language there is and read all the worthwhile books ever written and get proficient at all the musical instruments and visual arts techniques you’re attracted to, etc etc.
It is actually possible to become reconciled to these things, and to learn to live with these realities, but if you’ve come from that kind of wonderland-in-the-sky background, there’s a hard shock at the realisation, and a lot of pain and grief to work through – as there is with any major loss, real or perceived – and it takes time.
Which brings me to the story that I was immediately reminded of when listening to The Promise. It’s this guy’s story:
Eldon Kartchner grew up with Mormonism, wasn’t heterosexual but was made to believe he was, got married to the person who actually was the love of his life and in her case it actually worked for him that she was female, which is not usually the case with people who mostly identify as gay – you get the impression that sometimes it doesn’t matter what gender a person is, you’re going to love them that way because of how you love them. This couple had children, and then his wife Heather got cancer, and they were led to expect a miraculous recovery, but she died. With her death, his belief system came crashing down around his ears, and the pain of that part of the story has stayed with me since I first listened to it nearly ten years ago, and came back to me the moment I heard that song – it could be written for him. Of course it’s not, strictly speaking – but then in another sense, it is; because I think songs like this are ultimately written for any situation that fits them well, and this fits oh so well. The ache and the grief and the desolation this man went through is encapsulated in that song, and the words echo so many of his words, about his loss of belief in God, and in the entire belief system he grew up with, and how he could never see anything the same way again, not people, not the universe, everything was turned upside down, just like that and no going back, and having to work through how all of those beliefs ever got established in the first place, and what if anything you can possibly put in their empty aching place.
If anyone is interested in the particulars of his story, the long, long, harrowing four-part podcast is found here: https://mormonstories.org/podcast/eldon-kartchner-losing-heather-to-cancer-grief-and-impact-on-faith/
…and if anyone out there does listen to his story, play the song afterwards and tell me if it’s not one and the same in its raw grief and its grappling with existence.
This story also brings to mind another song, of a person grappling with their faith, at around the same life stage as Eldon Kartchner in the podcast:
I personally don’t care which way people go in cases like this, whether they stay with a faith of some sort or become agnostic / atheist. Personally I’m agnostic, but I’d never want to sever someone from a benign religious world view if they find it helpful. We’re all finding our way and I don’t want to look down on anyone. Admittedly I have problems with diehard fundamentalists and with conspiracy theorists, and my patience for those things is continuing to thin, considering how much damage that does in the world – events in the US over the last few years haven’t helped, and I’m thinking there has to be a limit to our tolerance. Where to draw the line is a complex question.
♦ ♥ ♦
Let’s look at a live version of The Promise:
I think this works fine live as well, but this is one of those rare cases I actually prefer the studio version to the live version, with this band. If you go back and listen again to the studio track at the start of this post, the vocal there is brimming with electricity and doing all sorts of acrobatics that can be very difficult to replicate live, because they’re so one-off and coming off the emotion of the moment more than technique, I would guess.
There’s a few songs like this in my collection… here’s one, by another band, where the vocal in live versions I’ve heard of this track has actually ended up disappointing:
♦ ♥ ♦
I want to come back to the lyrics of The Promise before finishing, because I’ve chiefly written about a story the song took me back to, rather than the song itself. The song would fit so many scenarios – it would fit Eldon and Heather Kartchner’s story to a T, but so much else as well.
Because the lyrics are so far up in this post, I’ll “reprint” them and do a little annotating – however, not in the traditional sense where you’re specifically looking at language and literary techniques etc, but more as free-flowing thoughts in response:
THE PROMISE
How time will heal
Make me forget
You promised me
Time will heal
Make me forget
You promised me
Love will save us all and time will heal
You promised me…
Something unspecified and terrible has happened to the narrator, and someone else has made promises about things getting better down the track. Which of you hasn’t done that, when you’ve had a friend down a black hole who can see nothing but pitch blackness and pain? I know that’s one of the things I do, apart from sitting with and acknowledging the feeling – something we generally have to train and remind ourselves to do, because there’s this instinct to try to stop other people expressing such feelings and to try to cheer them up instantly – but you can’t cut this stuff off, it will only go underground and it’s actually good for a person to be able to talk about it to someone else, and to air the despair; otherwise they’re alone with it. So, sometimes to be a friend means to sit in their darkness with them together, and to let them get some of this horrible stuff out of themselves, instead of instantly trying to switch on the light.
Brett still has overwhelming instincts to “fix” things, and I do to a lesser degree (these days), instead of sitting with this stuff – but allowing someone to express such difficult feelings is priority number one – unless the house is on fire. Obviously, there are many times when we have difficulties with things when it can be helpful to hear various strategies that we may not have come across before, that other people have tried – and remember, what may work really well for you may not work at all for someone else – or to be reminded of things we can try under the circumstances. But while we can support, we can’t and shouldn’t attempt to “rescue” or “fix” etc – the person we’re supporting is in charge of what they’re going to do.
So, the most important thing is to hear and acknowledge a person. Only after we’ve done this, and if they want it, we can brainstorm next steps, strategies etc with them – and we can share any insights we might have to offer.
Sometimes, a situation isn’t “fixable” anyway – like when someone has died, or someone has a terminal illness. Then the best you can do is come to terms. It’s amazing though how many people who lose a person they love or who get a terminal diagnosis find that people they thought were friends just disappear from their lives. This is usually because they are “fixers” and unfixable situations make them extremely uncomfortable. They think, “There’s nothing I can do,” but that’s only true for the loss or the terminal illness and not at all true in other ways. A friend with terminal cancer was saying to me, “They don’t even have to talk about the cancer to me. We could just talk about our hobbies, do things together.” But many people tend to avoid this stuff, whether by avoiding affected people or by frantically avoiding mentioning it if they can bring themselves to socialise with affected people (as if you can make it go away by putting your head in the sand).
In my circle of journalling friends, there’s a huge amount of support around loss – of people, of animals, and just general loss. These people don’t avoid, they actively seek you out when they know you’re confronting something tough. We all do that for each other, and we’ve all had loss (because most of us have animals and they tend to be short-lived compared to us; and because most of us have by now lost people we know, and people in our families). It’s quite amazing to see it in action. When we had to put down a 34-year-old, much-loved horse a couple of years ago, I had backup from the moment I began thinking about having to make this decision – both at home, from my husband, and from these amazing people. We all hate having to make decisions like this, but we make them because in the end, it’s how you can best serve an animal you love – when you can physically see the road ending, you can give them a quick out instead of letting them die by inches.
They all knew what day the veterinarian was coming, and on the day I found “thinking of you” messages in the morning – and photos of fields of flowers, etc. This time around, I was able to for once leave things in the competent hands of the veterinarian and my husband, and wasn’t personally needed – the horse was having his morning nap and already comfortable with the vet, plus my husband was feeding him peaches. So this time around, I don’t have memories I can’t erase and which the horse didn’t need me to have. Brett came in five minutes later and just hugged me, nothing needed to be said. And later on, my friends sent me another flood of supportive messages.
Good support is a marvellous thing and helps you see the bigger picture, and other people. Also, it continues to set an example of what to do when it’s another person’s turn for grief, so that it becomes the natural response, instead of something you’re feeling your way with.
How love will save
Make me forget
You promised me
Love will save
Make me forget
You promised me
Time will heal us all and love will save
You promised me…
…and it’s this sort of thing that can backfire, even though often it’s true… like I said, generally after someone has shared something really terrible, I’ve reassured before parting, “But it won’t always be this dark or feel this bad; gradually these things get better” – and usually that’s true, and I think in the vast majority of cases it’s good to offer some hope. For instance, when loner students from emotionally difficult home backgrounds have told me how sad it is that they feel alone in this world and how they’re trying to make friends, I could always say to them that I was in that situation myself in the past (when newly arrived in Australia as a middle schooler; and later when I went to university; and to a lesser extent when I travelled and lived in different places), and that I’d hate to go back to my teens and 20s, but that gradually, a core set of friends I didn’t lose to geography or differences started to accumulate, and now I don’t feel like this – so my message was, “It’s hardest when you’re young, it gets better when you get older” – which for many reasons besides this was my experience, and the experience of a lot of my own friends (but isn’t going to be everyone’s experience).
I trusted you
I wanted your words
Believed in you
I needed your words
Time will heal
Make me forget
And love will save us all
…and in this case, it clearly didn’t work out that way. I’m assuming this is a human-human situation, but at the start of this post I discussed it as also fitting a religious loss of faith scenario – because the emotions are the same. I think one of the reasons people are attracted to religion is because it offers “fixes” for the unfixable: Death, inevitable suffering, injustices that aren’t getting addressed on this planet, plus prolonged loneliness that’s for various reasons difficult to get out of for many people – things like this. So if you think these things are now “fixed” with your new world view, but then you lose your faith down the track, you have to mourn the crash back to reality, and come to terms all over again.
These words would make equal sense being spoken to a friend who promised things would get better and then they didn’t, as they would to a person who took the Gospel of John literally speaking them in despair (and like a sort of aside) to the God they’ve stopped believing in.
You promised me another wish
Another way
You promised me another dream
Another day
You promised me another time
You promised me another life
Is anyone else noticing that we’ve come across some of this imagery before? On Bloodflowers, in various songs; for example, in Out Of This World. A lot of this is also central imagery in Christianity and other religions – because it’s so central to the human struggle with life.
You promised me…
So I swallowed the shame and I waited
I buried the blame and I waited
Choked back years of memories
I pushed down the pain and I waited
Trying to forget…
You promised me another wish
Another way
You promised me another dream
Another day
You promised me another time
You promised me…
Another lie
Oh you promised me…
And I waited… And I waited… And I waited…
And I’m still waiting…
Yeah, that’s tough.
Imagine if it’s not like this:
But, I’ve always loved these sorts of reflections – here’s more Leunig…
When the Heart
When the heart
Is cut or cracked or broken,
Do not clutch it;
Let the wound lie open.
Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt,
And let it sting.
Let a stray dog lick it,
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell,
And let it ring.
What’s the Use
What’s the use of this little hand;
What’s the use of this little eye;
What’s the use of this little mouth
When all the world is broken?
Make a cake with this little hand;
Make a tear with this little eye;
Make a word with this little mouth
When all the world is broken.
Peace
Peace is my drug;
It stops the pain.
In safe reflecting rooms
Or in a lane,
Or in a park,
I will lie
And have some peace
And get high.
If it’s pure
And there’s a lot of it about
I overdose
And pass out
And dream of peace:
My favourite thing
When nobody wants me
And nothing’s happening.
Also I’m reminded of this little excerpt from Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow:
YOU CAN TRY TO COVER UP depression in various ways. You can listen to Bach’s compositions for the organ in Our Saviour’s Church. You can arrange a line of good cheer in powder form on a pocket mirror with a razor blade and ingest it with a straw. You can call for help. For instance, by telephone, so that you know who’s listening.
That’s the European method. Hoping to work your way out of problems through action.
I take the Greenlandic way. It consists of walking into yourself in the dark mood. Putting your defeat under a microscope and dwelling on the sight.
When things are really bad – like now – I picture a black tunnel in front of me. I go up to it. I strip off my nice clothes, my underwear, my hard hat, my Danish passport, and then I walk into the dark.
I know that a train is coming. A lead-lined diesel transporting strontium-90. I go to meet it.
This I can do because I’m thirty-seven years old. I know that inside the tunnel, underneath the wheels, down beneath the sleepers, there is a little spot of light.
It’s the morning of Christmas Eve. For several days I’ve been gradually withdrawing from the world. Now I’m preparing for the final descent. Which has to come. (…)
I’ve prepared myself by not eating breakfast. That expedites the confrontation. I’ve locked the door. I sit down in the big chair. And invoke the bad mood: Here sits Smilla. Starving. In debt. The morning of Christmas Eve. While other people have their families, their sweethearts, their blue-eared starlings. While other people have each other.
It proves effective. I’m already standing in front of the tunnel. Ageing. A failure. Abandoned.
The doorbell rings. It’s the mechanic. I can tell by the way he rings the bell. Cautiously, tentatively, as if the bell were screwed right into the skull of an old woman he doesn’t want to disturb. I haven’t seen him since the funeral. Haven’t wanted to think about him.
I go out and disconnect the mechanism. I sit down again.
Internally I begin to invoke the images from the second time I ran away and Moritz came to get me in Thule. We were standing on the uncovered cement apron that you walk on for the last twenty metres out to the plane. My aunt was whimpering. I took as many deep breaths as I could. I thought this might be a way to take the clear, dry, somehow sweet air back to Denmark with me.
Someone is knocking on my door. It’s Juliane. She gets down on her knees and calls through the letter box. “Smilla, I’m making fish ball batter!”
“Leave me alone!”
She’s offended. “I’ll tip it in through your letter box.”
Right before we climbed the stairs into the plane, my aunt gave me a pair of kamiks to wear indoors. The beadwork alone had taken her a month.
The phone rings.
“There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.” It’s Elsa Lübing’s voice.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Tell it to somebody else. Cast not thy pearls before swine.”
I pull out the phone jack. I’m starting to feel rather attracted to the thought of Ravn’s isolation cell. This is the kind of day when you can’t rule out the possibility of someone knocking on your windows. On the fifth floor.
Someone knocks on my window. Outside stands a green man. I open the window.
“I’m the window cleaner. I just wanted to warn you, so you don’t go and take off your clothes.”
He gives me a big smile. As if he were cleaning the windows by putting one pane at a time into his mouth.
“What the hell do you mean? Are you implying that you don’t want to see me nude?”
His smile fades. He pushes a button, and the platform he’s standing on takes him out of reach.
“I don’t want my windows cleaned,” I shout after him. “At my age I can barely see out of them, anyway!”
(Peter Hoeg, 1992)
And thusly will I conclude this post, if a post like this can ever be said to be concluded…