Below the Surface

            Twenty-five years ago today my cousin David died after a car accident in a snowstorm. We were 19 at the time—sophomores in college, not required to even declare a major yet, let alone know what we wanted to do with our lives. David had put his wallet between the seats of his car, so the paramedics couldn’t find any I.D. for him when they rushed him to the hospital. He was a John Doe patient in the E.R. as they got him stabilized on life support and moved him to the ICU. When the police searched the car again and found David’s driver’s license, they were finally able to contact my aunt and let her know what had happened. Not long after that, the phone rang in my dorm room.

            Over those next hours, our extended family made their way through the storm to the hospital. It took a group effort to reach David’s three brothers that night, since it was before the days of cell phones. They all made it to David’s bedside in time to hope and pray and talk and hold his hand before the test results came through: David was brain dead. We were able to say goodbye to him before he saved or improved multiple people’s lives as an organ, tissue, and eye donor.

            During the hours David spent at the hospital before they knew his identity, he wasn’t alone. The hospital chaplain sat with him and held his hand. That brought my aunt great peace in a situation that was nearly unbearable, discovering her child had been in the hospital without her or any other loved ones by his side. I would never have imagined that 25 years later I’d be serving as a hospital chaplain. David and I would have laughed at the ridiculousness of that idea—the seriousness of it all. Last spring I sat for hours with a young man while his parents flew across the country to be at his bedside, to hope and pray and talk and hold his hand until that terrible moment when brain death was declared. I sat with the parents in a little room while the gentle man from the transplant organization explained the organ donation process to them. I sat with them after the man left the room, held them as the wave of emotions crested and crashed, stayed with them until the waters calmed enough for them to be able to go back and spend their last hours with their son.

I won’t ever see those people again, in all likelihood. They don’t know that I still think of them, pray for them, cry for them sometimes. I don’t know how well we’d get along if we were neighbors. I don’t know whom they’re planning to vote for or where they stand on the issue of gun control. And that’s exactly why I still have faith in humanity, even when the media and social media make me feel like we’re hopelessly divided. When our lives are going fairly well and our basic needs are being met, we can get really passionate about our ideas. Our beliefs about guns, immigration, religion, race, or political candidates can bring us to such a high of being “right” (and those other people being wrong) that the ideas in our heads become more sanctified than the life of another human being.

But when I have to call a mother in the middle of the night because her child was in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . When I wait with her until her child is out of surgery . . .  All our opinions about the world fall away into utter insignificance, and the heart shows itself to be the most powerful force by a long shot. We are family for those minutes and hours, regardless of whether we agree on things after the sun comes up.

I remember the philosopher Joseph Campbell telling about a young man in Hawaii who was about to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. As he jumped, a policeman grabbed him and was about to go over, too, when another officer grabbed them and pulled them back. When a reporter asked the first officer why he was willing to die to try to save the man, he said something like, “If I had let that young man go, I could not have lived another day of my life.” We see this phenomenon when someone’s car goes into a river and a stranger dives in to help or when a natural disaster or violent event happens. We risk our own life to help a stranger, without hesitation and certainly without knowing which news channel the person watches.

There is something in us that knows, at such a core level, that the life force in me is bound to the life force in you, that in an extreme moment, without thinking, we override the most ancient impulse we carry in our brain: the instinct to survive. Your survival is my survival. We may not understand it as a concept, but in life or death moments, we act it out in a supreme demonstration of our interconnectedness. We may have trouble loving our neighbors on an ordinary day, but if their house catches fire, we may find ourselves risking our life to help get everyone out safely, including the dog that barks and wakes us up at midnight. This gives me hope for our species.

If my cousin David were still alive today, I have a feeling we’d disagree on a lot of things. But I know he would do anything for me, as I would for him. He’s there with me at the hospital when I'm supporting a family whose matriarch has just had a stroke or when I'm holding hands around a bed as a father’s life support is withdrawn. I don’t know you or know whether we share a perspective on environmental policies, but if I am on duty at the hospital when the unexpected happens to you or your loved one, I will be there for you. I will bring you a drink of water, or listen to your story, or pray with you, or sit silently with my hand on your back. I will do all of those things and more, or none of those things, if that’s what you need. And I will be doing those things for you, but I will be doing them for me, too. Because I want to live in a world where I can see and feel and know that below the surface of our painful divisions, we all share the same human heart.

Me and David. I guess I don't have to say this was the 1970s. : )