Simply Coping as a Calling

Posted by: Vinoth Ramachandra on: June 25, 2018

• In: General
• 15 Comments

My wife, Karin, fell asleep in Christ in the early hours of 6th May. Her funeral, two days later, was a celebration of a life lived fully and sacrificially.

Large numbers of people from all walks of life – the very poor as well as the very rich, the highly educated as well as the uneducated- turned up at the funeral home as well as the Anglican Cathedral in Colombo where the funeral service was held. It was a testament to the impact she has had on so many in this country. Not to mention the steady flow of emails and cards she received from all over the world before her death, and I have been receiving since.

Friends in London arranged a Thanksgiving Service for Karin a month later, at the church where we were married nearly twenty years ago. I repeated the tribute-homily I gave at the funeral in Colombo. You can find the audio recording of the service at:

https://youtu.be/BwOS6hiBZ9M (My tribute can be found from 41:24- 53:40)

John Donne’s famous line “No man is an island” from “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is often quoted; but few go on to give the whole section in which that line occurs. Here is the fuller quote, well worth pondering:

“The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions…
when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is
of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is
not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language;
and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several
translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness,
some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every
translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves
again for that library where every book shall lie open to one
another…
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece
of the continent, a part of the main… any man’s
death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee.”- John Donne (1572-1631), “For Whom the Bell Tolls”

A wise friend wrote me last week that “Honest grieving is your current vocation”. That relieves me from the false guilt of not being able to perform as before, whether in writing or public speaking.

I read a poem recently where the writer refers to being “ambushed by grief”. That is a metaphor which resonates with me. Just when I think I am coping well, I am blind-sided by a wave of memories that plunges me into a pit of loneliness. I know that many of you have been there yourselves and well understand what I am experiencing.

And in his book Lament for a Son, written thirty years ago, the philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote these words that I have treasured, long before my own personal experience of what he meant:

“I know now about helplessness-of what to do when there is nothing to do. I have learned coping. We live in a time and place where, over and over, when confronted with something unpleasant we pursue not coping but overcoming. Often we succeed. Most of humanity has not enjoyed and does not enjoy such luxury. Death shatters our illusion that we can make do without coping. When we have overcome absence with phone calls, winglessness with airplanes, summer heat with airconditioning- when we have overcome all these and much more besides, then there will abide two things with which we must cope: the evil in our hearts and death. There are those who vainly think that some technology will even enable us to overcome the former. Everyone knows that there is no technology for overcoming death. Death is left for God’s overcoming.”