Michelangelo, “Pieta”
I lost a colleague and a good friend last week. Andy Kozak, who taught economics at St. Mary’s, died of the lung cancer that he discovered last spring. A dedicated teacher, Andy was one of the kindest men that I knew. He tried to teach up until the very end, but ultimately couldn’t go on and others in his department had to step in and teach his classes. My heart weeps for his wife Becky in her sadness.
Then Jane Aldridge, a member of my book discussion group and my adult film course, died while vacationing in Malta. Unlike Andy’s death, Jane’s one was totally unexpected. Again, I think of the deep sadness of her spouse.
A disturbing Stephen Crane poem captures how such events, though small in the eyes of the world, hit loved ones with apocalyptic force. In “God Lay Dead in Heaven,” we are presented with the image of God dead and the earth turning black and sinking. Monsters, “livid with desire,” fight over what remains of the world.
This is how it can feel to lose someone you love. God seems to be absent, we are swallowed up in blackness, and mental monsters are unleashed.
Having captured our feelings through cosmic melodrama, however, the poem then changes registers with powerful effect. Suddenly we are faced with an image that is all the sadder because it is so intimate: a woman tries to shield her sleeping companion from death.
Against these odds, she seems to stand little chance. We experience the full futility of her attempts to protect.
God Lay Dead in Heaven
By Stephen Crane
God lay dead in heaven;
Angels sang the hymn of the end;
Purple winds went moaning,
Their wings drip-dripping
With blood
That fell upon the earth.
It, groaning thing,
Turned black and sank.
Then from the far caverns
Of dead sins
Came monsters, livid with desire.
They fought,
Wrangled over the world,
A morsel.
But of all sadness this was sad —
A woman’s arms tried to shield
The head of a sleeping man
From the jaws of the final beast.
If you have a friend who has lost someone close, know that this is what he or she is going through. Nothing you do or say can banish those feelings. What you can do is acknowledge how bad your friend must be feeling. Tell your friend that you are there in support.
