Why does my loved one have to suffer?
Not long ago, I visited a man whose wife was dying of cancer. He retired early in life so that he and his wife could travel the country on their Harley Davidson motorcycle. He was a big man and his wife was small. But, his love for each other was deep and he knew no size or shape after 45 years of being married to each other. He shared with me many stories of his life together. He was deeply wronged.
Over the years, I have heard surviving loved ones of dying patients ask, “why does my loved one have to suffer?” I often hear that my spouse, uncle, aunt, mother, or father has been a good person. It doesn’t make sense to have to watch my loved one go through what people say. After having many years to ponder these musings, I have come to believe that there is “NO” an easy answer to this question and the accompanying mind wanderings. These expressions come from a place so deep within us that giving an easy answer would take people out of that place where they ask us to meet with them.
The place I’m referring to is the soul of a dying loved one. Caregivers are asked to meet them in a place where suffering no longer exists. Thomas Moore, in “The Care of the Soul”, refers to the soul as a place where the imagination and the heart join in a journey in which the physical body cannot move. This is the place whereby one’s thoughts, feelings, and spirit come to embrace what is beyond us.
When a loved one asks us, “Why does my loved one have to suffer?” “Why did this happen to my spouse, daughter, son, sister, brother, or others?” We are being invited to listen to your soul and offer you unconditional love. This nonjudgmental act of caring is a spatial quality of existence that allows us to care for another person’s soul. Because? Because at the deepest level of our being we know that there is no human understanding of this question, but it takes us deep into our psyche and opens us to our soul. It is a place where souls can meet and find healing.
Thoughts give rise to the ability to understand an idea. We go through a series of wanderings to make sense of the world around us. This path through the grievance process eventually leads us to realize that the intellect will not give us what we are looking for. Although our thoughts are a way of expressing our grievance, they simply lead us to more and more questions for which there are no answers.
Feelings give expression to our thoughts about a given situation, which can lead to more emotional pain knowing that we cannot understand what is happening. This is felt in the body and moves in and through us. We get tired and eventually give up using our mind and body in this way. Eventually, we get exhausted and have no energy to feel anything.
The Spirit gives us hope in the future life, but does not remove our grievance. The expression of prayer and hope in the future life allows us to bring a sense of comfort to our grievance. Funeral services include various songs and scriptures that allow us to have words to comfort us. The ability to cope through faith allows us to place some of our grievances on a power greater than ourselves.
When you combine the capacity of mind, body, and spirit to deal with grief in an integrated way, we often find a sense of peace. This is what is known in many sacred texts as “a peace beyond understanding.” To know “The Unknowable” or “Creator of All Things” is to trust the wisdom that has created us all. This is perhaps the journey to let go at the highest possible level of our being. Here, we can trust that there will be a tomorrow and the wrong will not and cannot kill the relationship we had with our loved one. Instead, we begin to relate to each other on the soul level. This is the place where our soul can create channels of expression with our dying loved one in no other way possible.
As you can see, the answer to the question of “why” my loved one is going through this is not as important as where this internal process takes us within our being. This place can be nurtured and cared for by those willing to listen carefully to the desire and need to be heard from that depth. This act of entering such a sacred space where one’s soul is healing by simply sharing one’s pain with those who care allows us to heal in places our hands cannot touch.
Here are three final points to consider when you encounter someone who asks the question “why does my loved one have to suffer?” First, listening “totally” to one’s grievance and questions about suffering. Make sure you’ve heard someone else’s complaint as described earlier in this article.
Second, since you have no control over someone’s journey to death or the timing of their passing from this life to the next, try to get the surviving loved one to express what their loved one will be released from at death and about themselves as a caregiver This step requires a large dose of honesty, and you probably won’t be able to do it unless you have fully listened to someone tell you about their grief over the loss of your loved one.
Ultimately, your ability to help someone through this grieving phase will help the dying loved one and surviving loved ones build incredible trust in you as a caregiver, volunteer, minister, social worker, nurse, and doctor.
