Silent Night, Lonely Night - Abandoned

My Dad died on January 3rd, 1995, 15 years ago, and until this year, I couldn't find a Saint assigned to the day of his death.  I learned last spring during Lent that St. Paul of the Cross was born on January 3rd;  a patron who founded the Passionist Order came into the world on the same date my Dad left it and brought me directly into Our Lord's Passion, even though I didn't understand it at the time. He is a fitting Saint for such a terrible loss.

It's usually a hard day for me and I never know how it will hit me. Sometimes I just experience a general sense of unrest, while at other times that bitter sword of grief reminds me that time means nothing and it was only yesterday that I stood at Dad's casket, looking upon him for the very last time this side of the veil.

A few years ago I wrote of my first Christmas, nearly a year later, without him, and republish it here for you all:

**************************

My Dad passed in early January 1995, and it took me MONTHS to really grieve. I didn't know what to do, what to say, how to act, so instead, I was just angry. And sad. And desolate. All those things, and more, yet I lived my day to day life, losing my faith along with the rest of the world.

Even though my parents had been divorced for many many years, for some reason I dreaded Christmas that year with a strange sense of horror. We wouldn't talk to Dad on the phone. We couldn't buy Dad gifts. Nothing was coming from Dad - no cards with his familiar handwriting.

It was Christmas...without Dad.

I couldn't bear to be around my family, for his absence was even more absent, and because I hadn't seen him at all since my high school graduation, about 3 1/2 years prior, my guilt just ate away at me, burrowing into my soul and penetrating even more deeply than the strongest concentration of acid found on earth.

I had graduated early and was working for the college that winter, so I made sure I was on the Christmas schedule. Prior to Christmas I had gone home, celebrated "Christmas", stayed overnight and then headed back to the school. It wasn't that I really wanted to be alone...I just didn't want to be around family.

Then again, I DID want to be alone because when I was with them, I felt even more alone; Dad's loss was that much more painful, and I couldn't handle it.

It was so painful it was like a burn; it left my nerves deadened; I was numb. It was a grief so deep I could not express it to anyone, not even to myself. So I fled civilization for the haven of the school from which I had graduated and I enclosed myself into the darkness of my grief, trying to understand.

I've never felt so incredibly alone in my entire life.

On that Christmas Eve, I couldn't even stand the very room I was in. No one was at the college; no one was anywhere. The dorms were abandoned, the bluffs were silent.

And it was into the bluffs I fled, under the Christmas Eve stars, into the shadows of the trees and the confinement of the snowy creek banks.

I just walked, alone in that darkness, tramping through the snow, wishing I could cry, wanting to scream, wanting only relief from this terrible, terrible pain. I wondered if I was depressed? I considered that seriously, but no...I knew what depression was, I had all the symptoms indexed in my mind for professionally I had worked with truly depressed people. No; I was far too functional to be depressed. Dysthymia? Nope...not that either.

Intellectually, I knew that this was grief, I knew I was not handling it well, and whenever I confronted myself with that reality I shoved it aside in favor of wallowing within the pain, wanting to understand it, needing to purge myself of it, but not wanting to go to anyone else for help to do it. I was far too independent for my own good.

But I didn't care; I just wanted to be alone. Alone with God, seeking my faith again, seeking the God I had grown up knowing. And yet I didn't know Him.

So that night as I walked, I spoke to God. I berated him for this pain, I berated him for taking my Dad away from me, and I cried out to him about my own guilt.

I remember sitting in the snow at the side of the creek, suddenly realizing that I felt completely alone; completely abandoned.

Abandonment.

In the middle of the cold winter wildnerness, surrounded by the frozen forest, unable to even hear the waters gurgling under the ice and snow.

I was numb; I was abandoned. I cried out to God, but He did not answer me, nothing was revealed. Nothing was changed, nothing purged, nothing healed.

I realized that I had gone out to seek God because the futility of my own actions had so far gotten me nowhwere. And yet I was still rejecting the Church which had always been my solace before. Even as I sought God, I was running away from Him.

I remember that terrible, terrible numbness; not just from physical cold, but this strange spiritual numbness; Abandonment.

I remember a couple of tears fell...and froze on my cheeks.

Frozen just as I was inside.

Slowly, I stepped out on the ice, knowing where the little waterfall was. I knew I was being stupid for there was no one to hear my screams. I was not suicidal; far from it! Yet I almost hoped I would fall through a weak spot in the ice, to be partially submerged; water ran under that ice all winter. Even the harsh Minnesota winters would not completely freeze that rushing stream.

I didn't want to die; I only wanted to shock myself into feeling something again. Anything other than this terrible interior pain. Anything other than this hopeless feeling of complete and utter desolation;

Abandonment.

But the ice didn't crack. Even it was silent, refusing to give me the relief I so desperately craved.

I walked back to my room, to the warmth, still numb, still alone within my pain, still bereft of God.

Desperate for God, I tried to go to Christmas Mass the next day, the first time in a long time. Oddly, I couldn't find one! Even though it was a Catholic college, the chapel was closed and I had to find my way to a Catholic Church in town. I sincerely tried, but I must have gone at the wrong time.  I couldn't even find anyone to call to answer my questions as to WHEN I could go!

I knew of one church and thought maybe if I just showed up, even if it was in the middle of Mass, I would wait there for the next one, or find out when to go. That frigid, subzero day when my car would barely run, I found nothing but a Catholic Church with large, locked doors.

No one was around. It was only 10 in the morning but I couldn't get in and everyone was gone. The Church was empty, and it was locked and I had nowhere else to go.

Even when I finally went to find God, the door was closed and locked, sealing my complete and utter abandonment. Even when I sought Him out, He wasn't there. I'd lost my earthly Father, and that Christmas, I lost my Eternal Father as well.

I was in a ghost town, literally knocking on the door; and no one answered.

I can't remember how I got through that terrible phase in my life. Probably just fell into the routine of work, but I do know that the terrible sensation did finally ease. I do know that over time, the grief ebbed, leaving mostly only the anger...and finally, acceptance.

Grief is still painful and sometimes catches me by surprise with its razor-sharp edges, yet never since that Christmas Eve have I ever felt that terrible, terrible abandonment.

In looking back, now I see a blessing; a spiritual purging I did not understand. I chose the separation, and  now I look back and realize that it could be a shadow of what is to come. God was right there with me the entire time, likely crying the tears I could not, likely closer to me than He ever has been before or since.

It is in our abandonment, the Saints have learned and taught in their wisdom, that God is closer than ever, and we can't find Him or see Him because He is holding us so closely we are blinded by His love and compassion.

 Even in the snowy, frozen bluffs of a cold Minnesota Christmas, God is there, and sometimes, when it seems like He isn't answering, it is because He is speaking so softly that it takes years to understand His words.

*

Author's Note:   A year ago I published, in three parts, the story I wrote about my Dad and his death. The first chapter can be found here, and the other chapters are linked in sequence.  Otherwise click on the tag "Dad" below and you will be taken to all posts pertaining to this topic.

Life in a Box

It's been a strange day. Today, my friend Sr. Mary's Investiture took place, and as she died to the world, I was attending a funeral Mass for someone who had physically left the world. It was a beautiful parallel, and one maybe only another Catholic could understand.

Boxes are such a symbol...caskets are boxes, even if really fancy and expensive ones. The Pope...wasn't he buried in a pine box? A pauper's box? For he had nothing of his own...he belonged entirely to Christ.

Several years ago, when I was on light duty and working "Downtown", I was sent into the file room with some papers. I had names, and knew that I could find that name in one of the many boxes the filled the room.

It didn't take long for me to be saddened. Maybe because one of the things I was filing away had the name of a Firefighter who had died on the job; in fact, it was his last day on the Job. And in fact, he'd extended that day to cover for another Firefighter. And was killed. My hand shook a little as I found his file and put it away, wanting to offer some sort of reverence, realizing what this "name" had done.

None of what I knew was written on the page I filed. In fact, the page was something administrative that really had nothing to do with anything. But I put it away, and looked at some of the other names in the same dusty brown box. I looked around the room at all the boxes, realizing that they were FILLED with names, and stupid information about random career events.

But NONE of those boxes and files would tell us who those people were. I thought of one of the guys on light duty with me; he was a driver, was close to retirement but wanting to hang on for another couple years before he finally accepted his pension. He was sacrificing himself to help his children pay their own bills and get a better start in life. He had just adopted a small dog, whom his dear grandchildren loved, but the greatest reward of his life was really those children. He'd do anything for them. Even if it meant staying on the Job forever to help his adult children provide for them...he'd do it. His was a life of sacrifice, and even then, he knew that it was a life that might be given for even the least among us.

I wished I could go through the files and open them not to see useless insurance or random information, but stories of their lives. Of who they were, who they loved, and who loved them.

The memory of that file room has never left me, and I hope it never does.

Living to Work, or Working to Live?

Before I went to Mexico, we were introduced to the Mexican answer of the question, "What do you do?"

In America, if someone asks us that, we offer our careers. We tend to define ourselves by our work, what we have studied or apprenticed to become. In essence, we hand someone a dusty old box filled with random dry documents that really offers nothing.

In Mexico, and, I suspect, other parts of the world, the answer no matter what the career, would be, "I am a mother". "I am a father, and devoted to my family."

They define themselves not by what they do...but who they are. In a short conversation, you can come away knowing something about them as human beings. Their great gift is that of building relationships. I've never met someone from Latin America who was not like this.

One of the custodians in my last position used to spend time in my "cube" telling me, in Spanish, of his country, his people, his family. My Spanish was very bad, but he was patient and helped me to make connections, find words, and in this, he introduced me to his own struggles. He told me of El Salvador, how Christmas isn't joyous because of the violence that takes place there. He lamented about his family, still in that country.

And we spoke of Catholicism and religion. His family was being evangelized by Jehovah's Witnesses, and he didn't see the difference between our faith and theirs. Even in my forgotten, rusty Spanish, I tried to convey our belief in the Trinity and the reality of Christ as both God and Man...and the JW's denial of these truths. He had to know that our religions are NOT the same and their understanding of Christ was not the same. Even though they were nice and meant well.

In the end, I gave him a few Miraculous Medals blessed by Pope John Paul II, asked him to pray to Our Lady for her intercession, and to remain faithful. He was amazed at the gift, and when I've handed those over many people have been amazed. But he didn't come talk to me because I gave him sacramentals...he spent time talking to me because he wanted SOMEONE here to know his family, to know him through his Vocation, not by his job. His job didn't define him.

I'll never forget Jose. (That was his real name. Please pray for Jose and his family in El Salvador).

The Problem with America

We have all heard the catch-phrase "American Dream". This varies, but it has to do with materialism to some degree which leads to a house with a stereotypical Art-Deco white picket fence and a limited number of children, or none at all. We learn of the sacrifice of our ancestors who came here, but in riding on their coattails, we aren't expected to have to offer any sacrifice for ourselves. We are a country of plenty and with that plenty, we have lots o' criticism for people who don't agree with our ethnocentric ideals.

We've gone from being separatist and racist to "tolerant", which, in current American parlance is actually a more extreme and diversified form of separatism, racism, and discrimination guided by elitist relativistic principles.

Our ancestors were staunchly nationalistic in their hope in America, even while they clung to their ethnic identities. Their sufferings were things we can't imagine, but today, we persecute the mirrors of our own grandparents. Today, they come from different countries arising from different conflicts. And in 30 years, their children will be lamenting our generation for the treatment of their own parents.

In the end, none of that matters, for we don't define ourselves according to our ancestral hopes; we define ourselves by the silver platters that have been handed to us. We are guided by "careers", not the idea of "Vocation", and we look to our own invented yardstick and timeline for definition in our lives, never bothering to ask how God defines us and what He has called us to become.

What happiness He has in store for us, if only we would be willing to divest ourselves of the culture of plenty long enough to see how poverty-stricken we really are.

American culture is like the dusty file room downtown, and we are all choosing to define ourselves only by dry details that belong only on the peripheral.

We place our lives in boxes, and when it contains what we think it ought, we brush our hands together, but can't understand why the dust won't go away, or from whence the musty scent arises.

We need a new perspective. We need to see ourselves not in terms of career, but vocation. We need to first understand to what we have been Called, and only from that point can we ever discern what to do with our gifts.

We are not the boxes we create for ourselves. But if we can't see what God has designed for us, that is the location to which we will be relegated, left only to gather dust and be forgotten unless someone has another document to file away.

*

Clutching at Straws...and Still Falling

Terry has a post on this yesterday, and it gave me the courage to post this. I have put this up three times...and I have taken it down three times. But here it is, finally, and maybe this time I'll keep it up for good. Given the gospel account of Lazarus, and our hope for resurrection, although I am not "grieving" so much right now, the post below is sometimes my lived experience. But as Jesus says en route to Calvary, "Do not weep for me, but for yourselves, and for your children."


If there were a theme song to my life, that would be the title: Clutching at Straws...and still Falling.

Grief is a strange thing. Most of the time, now, thirteen years after the fact, it remains at bay. It's always there, normally filed just above "nostalgia" but at times, it takes the forefront, and I am undone. January is especially strange, as it contains the anniversary of Dad's death.

I still remember the words of my mother when I got home from work as she came out of her bedroom to meet me.

"Your Aunt K. called me. Honey, your Dad died at 9:30 tonight. He never woke up."

And sometimes that memory cuts more sharply than a knife.

Slice to the scene at Dad's casket in the Funeral Home. There was no Mass; Dad was Lutheran, and his funeral did not take place in a church. I still remember the dress I wore for the occasion. It was dark forest-green with a floor-length skirt and had a clasp that formed a heart-shape just below my throat. In fact, a green heart-shaped pendant dangled from the clasp, forming a heart-within-a heart.

I also wore the onyx unicorn necklace he'd given me a few years before. Dad had indulged my love of horses whenever he could.

The visitation and funeral took place on the same evening, and not many people came. I wondered if that's why we didn't have his funeral in the local Lutheran church; was it because the funeral home made it look like more people cared about Dad and what had happened to him?

As the family, we were seated in the front row on the left side. I couldn't take my eyes from my Dad in the casket. The last time I'd seen him was nearly four years prior, when he had attended my High School Graduation.

And now he was dead.

I didn't handle grief well; I did not let anyone know how I was feeling. On one hand, my Mom was staring at me constantly, waiting for me to "crack" and if I showed any sign of emotion she was all over me. I couldn't stand it. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to cry on my own terms but I didn't have a single moment to do this, and so I was forced to constantly squeeze back the tears.

I still remember standing in the "receiving line" at the funeral home, greeting those coming to offer their condolences. They asked what had happened. Was it a heart attack? Was it a stroke?

My brother made an attempt at telling the truth: "Well, the short of it is...he was an alcoholic". That was the last time he spoke this reality.

The person having made the inquiry stared at him, silenced, stony-faced, not wanting to empathize with or condemn the result of the behavior of which he had offered his acquiescence and direct cooperation in the time he had known the deceased. He didn't want to look at his own belly or smell the liquor on his own breath, and then look upon the demise that awaited him.

We are all mortal.

How mortal?

I stood next to my brother all evening. Amazing. The sibling that had tortured me throughout my childhood had become my rock. I think it was that event that truly made us friends. It bonded us, because we both realized that we'd have to go through this again someday, hopefully not so tragically. Hopefully with more answers and fewer platitudes, more reality and fewer soundbites to please the visitors who really didn't want to know the truth.

On the way home from the funeral, my brother gave me a tape of a group that he'd recently found, and he made a copy of it for me. The words they sang were disturbingly about Dad. And my brother had printed some of the lyrics for me, and when I began that semester at college (which began the day of Dad's funeral), I hung the lyrics on the wall, and to this day, they, and the tune, reverberate throughout my life.

And if you ever come across us don't give us your sympathy

You can buy us a drink and just shake our hands

And you'll recognise by the reflection in our eyes

That deep down inside we're all one and the same

We're clutching at straws

We're still drowning

Clutching at straws

...and still drowning.

Sometimes I think we're still drowning, and I KNOW there's a look in our eyes, I know there are others who suffer the same thing. It's a tragic loss, but right afterwards I returned to school and delved into my studies, trying to live life.

That was the semester I lost my faith. Clutching at straws, wanting to find God, but finding the only straw offered was the one heresy that made me let go.

Within a few weeks, I went to the computer lab and began writing, because it's the only thing I could do. A couple friends stopped by while I wrote, and finding me in tears, they wandered away, not knowing how to respond or what to say or how to help. They couldn't have done anything to help me; the best thing I could have done, I was already doing. I was writing. Maybe I'll post the story I wrote. Maybe I won't.

It holds nothing back, and there are those who can maybe identify. But it doesn't tell the whole story, because it's a story that has continued, still affects me, still taints who I am, and perhaps that's the way it's supposed to be.

And across the years, I can still remember riding home in the back seat of my uncle's old Lincoln Continental, crossing Wisconsin in the dead of winter, my head against the cold pane of glass, watching the world go by. And I couldn't help but hear my Dad's lament through the headphones, and I blamed myself. And my unfallen tears became ice behind my eyes, and those crystals turned to anger that didn't leave me until the following October.

Because, if Daddy could take a raincheck, so could I.

'Cos I know what I feel, know what I want I know what I am

Daddy took a raincheck

' Cos I know what I want, know what I feel I know what I need

Daddy took a raincheck, your daddy took a raincheck

Ain't no one in here that's left to blame but me

Blame it on me, blame it on me

Well the toughest thing that I ever did was talk to the kids on the phone

When I heard them asking questions I knew that you were all alone

Can't you understand that the government left me out of work

I just couldn't stand the looks on their faces saying, "What a jerk"

So if you want my address it's number one at the end of the bar

Where I sit with the broken angels clutching at straws and nursing our scars

Blame it on me, blame it on me,

Sugar mice in the rain, your daddy took a raincheck

Do I blame myself now? No. But I hear the echo of my Dad's own broken heart, and I question what happened to my family, and why. Only God knows. Only God was present, and only He is present now.

But sometimes, in the depths of the night, the memories come back, they haunt me, and my grief returns as though it all happened yesterday. And my tears are no less meaningful now than they were 13 years ago.


** Clutching at Straws, Marillion, 1987

** Sugar Mice, Marillion, (1987)

Abandonment

Every so often I pick up St. John of the Cross and read "Dark Night of the Soul", just a few paragraphs at a time. I have not yet tackled the entire book. I have Father Dubay's "The Fire Within", but haven't finished it, and here and there I come across St. Therese of Avila and references to her work. Throughout many of the writings of the saints are descriptions of "abandonment", and it gives me pause; I have to wonder what it means. The thought terrifies me. It's not that I recieve so many consolations from God, but the very thought of spiritual abandonment simply makes me quake. In reading the Saints, I realize that whether I recognize them or not, the fact that I experience consolations really means I'm just an infant in the spiritual life; and I have to admit that the thought of holiness to the degree experienced by these Saints doesn't sound like something I want to pursue.

It's not that I don't want to be holy; rather, I'm terrified of the sacrifice required in order to be like Jesus, in order to walk in the shadow of His cross, and of the rigorous training course established by God to purify our souls to such a degree.

More often than not, I read about consolations, affirmations, the comforting presence of God, knowing that He is there, recognizing His will in so many things. I read about ecstacies experienced by the Saints, their experience of God, and certainly it would be awesome indeed to attain this level of sanctity, but it does not come without a price.

And even then, after they come...there is ABANDONMENT. The sensation of abandonment; God withdraws all consolations. Such utter spiritual dryness and seeming desolation that the one affected must carry on simply as an act of the will; it is a desert, a purification. And yet, in spite of this seeming desolation, God is even closer to that particular soul; it is a special sort of suffering, beyond true description.

And it terrifies me.

This morning as I walked my dogs in the utter darkness of the early morning, shivering in the cold, dreading my workday, I considered the concept of abandonment and thanked God that I am not anywhere near that point in my spiritual life.

And then it came to me; while I have not experienced what the Saints describe, I have experienced something that gave me at least a little perspective.

My Dad passed in early January 1995, and it took me MONTHS to really grieve. I didn't know what to do, what to say, how to act, so instead, I was just angry. And sad. And desolate. All those things, and more, and yet I lived my day to day life, losing my faith along with the rest of the world.

Even though my parents had been divorced for many many years, for some reason I dreaded Christmas with a strange sense of horror. We wouldn't talk to Dad. We couldn't buy Dad gifts. Nothing was coming from Dad. It was Christmas...without Dad.

I couldn't bear to be around my family, for his absence was even more absent, and because I hadn't seen him at all since my high school graduation, about 3 1/2 years prior, my guilt just ate away at me.

I had graduated early and was working for the college that winter, so I made sure I was on the Christmas schedule. Prior to Christmas I had gone home, celebrated "Christmas", stayed overnight and then headed back to the school. It wasn't that I really wanted to be alone...I just didn't want to be around family. It was odd.

But I DID want to be alone because when I was with them, I felt even more alone; Dad's loss was that much more painful, and I couldn't handle it.

It was so painful it was like a burn; it left my nerves deadened; I was numb. It was a grief so deep I could not express it to anyone, not even to myself. So I fled civilization for the haven of the school from which I had graduated and I enclosed myself into the darkness of my grief, trying to understand.

And I've never felt so incredibly alone in my entire life.

On that Christmas Eve, I couldn't even stand the very room I was in. No one was at the college; no one was anywhere. The dorms were abandoned, the bluffs were silent.

And it was into the bluffs I fled, under the Christmas Eve stars, into the shadows of the trees and the confinement of the snowy creek banks.

I just walked, alone in that darkness, tramping through the snow, wishing I could cry, wanting to scream, wanting only relief from this terrible, terrible pain. I wondered if I was depressed? I considered that seriously, but no...I knew what depression was, I had all the symptoms indexed in my mind for professionally I had worked with truly depressed people. No; I was far too functional to be depressed. Dysthymia? Nope...not that either.

Intellectually, I knew that this was grief, I knew I was not handling it well, and whenever I confronted myself with that reality I shoved it aside in favor of wallowing within the pain, wanting to understand it, needing to purge myself of it, but not wanting to go to anyone else for help to do it. I was far too independent for my own good.

But I didn't care; I just wanted to be alone. Alone with God, seeking my faith again, seeking the God I had grown up knowing. And yet I didn't know him.

So that night as I walked, I spoke to God. I berated him for this pain, I berated him for taking my Dad away from me, and I cried out to him about my own guilt.

I remember sitting at the side of the creek, suddenly realizing that I felt completely alone; completely abandoned.

Abandonment.

In the middle of the cold winter wildnerness, surrounded by the frozen forest, unable to even hear the waters gurgling under the ice and snow.

I was numb; I was abandoned. I cried out to God, but He did not answer me, nothing was revealed. Nothing was changed, nothing purged, nothing healed.

I realized that I had gone out to seek God because the futility of my own actions had so far gotten me nowhwere. And yet I was still rejecting the Church which had always been my solace before. Even as I sought God, I was running away from him.

I remember that terrible, terrible numbness; not just from physical cold, but this strange spiritual numbness; Abandonment.

I remember a couple of tears fell...and froze on my cheeks. Frozen just as I was inside.

Slowly, I stepped out on the ice, knowing where the little waterfall was. I knew I was being stupid for there was no one to hear my screams. I was not suicidal; far from it! Yet I almost hoped I would fall through a weak spot in the ice, to be partially submerged; water ran under that ice all winter. Even the harsh Minnesota winters would not completely freeze that rushing stream.

I didn't want to die; I only wanted to shock myself into feeling something again. Anything other than this terrible interior pain. Anything other than this hopeless feeling of complete and utter desolation;

Abandonment.

But the ice didn't crack; even it was silent, refusing to give me the relief I so desperately craved.

I walked back to my room, to the warmth, still numb, still alone within my pain, still bereft of God.

A small miracle...I tried to go to Mass the next day, and oddly, couldn't find one! I must have gone at the wrong time, and there was no one to call to answer my questions as to WHEN!

So even when I finally went to find God, the door was closed and locked, sealing my abandonment.

I was in a ghost town, literally knocking on the door; and no one answered.

I can't remember how I got through that terrible phase in my life. Probably just fell into the routine of work, but I do know that the terrible sensation did finally ease. I do know that over time, the grief ebbed, leaving mostly only the anger...and finally, acceptance.

Grief is still painful and sometimes catches me by surprise with its razor-sharp edges, yet never since that Christmas Eve have I ever felt that terrible abandonment.

In looking back, now I see a blessing; a spiritual purging I did not understand. I chose the separation, and now now I look back and realize that it could be a shadow of what is to come. God was right there with me the entire time, likely crying the tears I could not, likely closer to me than He ever has been before or since.

For it is in our abandonment, the Saints have learned in their wisdom, that God is closer than ever, and we can't find Him or see Him because he is holding us so closely we are blinded by his love and compassion. Even in snowy, frozen bluffs of a cold Minnesota Christmas, God is there, and sometimes, when it seems like He isn't answering, it is because he is speaking so softly that it takes years to understand his words.