Mayo Clinic. 1973. She was twenty-one; I, a year older. We had been married less than two years. We had associated the tingling, the numbness, the double vision, and the loss of balance to the stress of maintaining a perfect academic record while wearing herself out as an accomplished pianist and vocalist. Instead, she was on a slowly debilitating path that – in spite of a valiant fight -- ended fourteen years later with her paralyzed, withered, dead tissue around pressure points, disoriented, stripped of dignity. She died at home early one Monday morning in September 1987, her body having drowned in its own fluids.
Job’s wife haunted me from the start. She withdrew from her spouse in disgust. Would I? I read somewhere that most divorce spouses with multiple sclerosis. Would I? I had vowed to remain present “in sickness or in health”. Would I? Or would I plead ignorance and excuse myself? Or would I learn to appear present with her, but in my mind stay safely distant from her?
Just as constant water pressure against a small crack will cause a huge dam eventually to collapse, so it was with my attempt to be for my wife the missing character in the story of Job – i.e., the sort of person who can be present, without regard for spiritual or theological cost, with individuals who are experiencing the worst in life. All the motivations I brought to the task – e.g., “be like God” . . . “imitate Jesus” . . . “stick to the Golden Rule” . . . “mimic the Good Samaritan” . . . “keep that Boy Scout character” . . . “meet the expectations of family and friends” . . . – eventually gave way. But the resolve to be truly present with her and other innocent sufferers she symbolized did not give way. Why? I think it was because the day-to-day realities kept demanding a verdict from me – “Will I or will I not remain present with her past the point of existential, spiritual, and theological risk?”
I had little time to consider tragic human suffering from an abstract or theoretical perspective. As with Job’s closest friends, my wife’s illness made my own vulnerability to random illness/injury unmistakably clear. To withdraw to a safe distance from her – as the three friends did from the ‘scrap heap’ Job -- would have been to opt for a way of being that imposed rigid limits on every other human relationship. If I could not be unconditionally present with someone I had invited in marriage to trust me to be with her “for better or worse”, then I would not be so present with anyone else. My scores were not always high. But this was the test to which I held myself accountable.
Since her death, my attention has centered on the question raised about Job’s integrity. Job’s behavior had certainly been exemplary. He had gently held feeble hands. He had steadied the weak and fatigued. He had contended in the public square against purveyors of injustice. He had encouraged the dying. He had been eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. He had championed abused foreigners. He had collared street thieves. He had made sure poor families were not left to shiver in the cold; no stranger, left at night on the streets.
But did Job live this way unconditionally? for nothing? for no reason other than the inherent rightness of it? No. Would he be chivalrous to life’s end if his was an ignoble end? No. His gestures toward the weak and the exploited had been calculated. He had done good deeds for others. But he had not genuinely been with them. The drama offers no indications to the contrary. Instead, you hear Job pine –
“Where’s the strength to keep my hopes up? . . . What future do I have to keep me going. . . Isn’t it time to call it quits on my life? . . . My spirit is broken, my days used up, my grave dug and waiting? . . . . My life’s about over. All my plans are smashed, all my hopes are snuffed out. . . . Oh, how I long for the good old days, . . . those golden years when God’s friendship graced my home, . . . when everything was going my way. . . . When I sat with my friends in the public square, I was honored by everyone in town. When I spoke, everyone listened; they hung on my every word. . . . After I spoke, they’d be quiet, taking it all in. . . . I thought, ‘I’ll die peacefully in my own bed, grateful for a long and full life, a life deep-rooted and well-watered, a life limber and dew-fresh, my soul suffused with glory and my body robust until the day I die.’ . . . Now my life drains out. . . . What did I do to deserve this? . . . Haven’t I wept for those who live a hard life, been heartsick over the lot of the poor? But where did it get me? . . . If I’ve ever used my strength and influence to take advantage of the unfortunate, go ahead, break both my arms, cut off all my fingers! The fear of God has kept me from these things.”
