In my personal pantheon of spiritual masters, I fondly include a Unity minister from Alabama. I heard Rev. Edwene Gaines speak at a Unity center near my home four years after Maya died. I now see that 45-minute talk as a turning point in my grief. That was the day I learned to laugh again, an essential skill in my resilience toolkit.
Rev. Gaines is a “woman of a certain age” with a big blonde mane of hair and a warm southern drawl. She’s like the Paula Deen of “New Thought” ministers. That morning, she flicked on her microphone, winked at us, and said, “Dontcha just feel like God is messin’ with ya sometimes?”
Everyone else giggled politely. I broke into a loud guffaw. The question struck me as hilarious on many levels.
First, I recognized the stark truth that, sooner or later, most of us do feel like God, or the universe, or some power greater than ourselves is reshaping us like so much silly putty. We expect life to be fair, and it isn’t. As if God should be always attending to our needs and smoothing our way like an indulgent parent. Ha ha!
I found these words coming from the mouth of a minister oddly liberating and refreshing. Edwene instantly put all fellow humans on the same level. She wasn’t talking at us; she was sharing her own life experiences.
She went on to tells stories that made the slapstick hilarity of an “I Love Lucy” episode pale in comparison. The time she traveled to London for a speaking engagement but couldn’t get her hot rollers to work on British electricity and had to go out with her hair looking like a fright wig. Or the day she was slathered in mud at a Mexican health spa and then escorted outside by the attendant to be rinsed off in full view of the other guests.
She even mined her failed marriages for laughs. “My friends say, ‘Poor Edwene. Always a bride, never a bridesmaid.’ ”
Beneath the humor I latched on to some deeper truths about the tension between maintaining control and the challenge of letting go. I had gone kicking and screaming toward surrender, but Edwene showed me that it was the only sane choice. Maya’s death had shattered my illusion of control. It broke my porcelain-figurine ego in a million pieces. God definitely seemed to be “messin’ with me.
That day, laughter opened a space in my grief. Through that small window I saw that I was getting better. Years of grieving, and of listening to other bereaved parents pour out memories of their children at The Compassionate Friends support group I attended, had forced me to grow up. Random tragedies happen by the thousands every day. No one is immune.
After four years of mourning, my heart and mind opened to a stunning and simple truth: Disaster isn’t personal. Maya’s death, ultimately, was not about me – it was an accident that could have happened to anyone. For the first time, I realized that Maya’s death belonged to her. I recount this turning point in Swimming with Maya.
My destiny and my daughter’s were separate. She was her own person. We hadn’t finished letting go of each other in life – she was torn away from me – so I was left with no other alternative: I had to complete the process on my own.
Maybe I would be less hurt and angry if I released my obsessive need to know why my daughter had died and gave up my insistence that life should be fair.
Laughing at Edwene’s stories – and at myself – helped me create enough space between myself and Maya’s death to breathe and see clearly again.
No joke. Laughter is healing. Give it a try!
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