When words are not enough

Being 22, I don't think about death very often. This past month, however, I feel like I've encountered it wherever I turn. Jim Lears, a very good family friend, died suddenly of a heart attack on the seventh of November. His daughter Jenn was one of my best friends from high school. Our families went to the beach together in August. Jim was 55. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Jim's father died of a stroke. It was the second funeral for the Lears family in less than a month.

If you've ever been in precept with me, or spent more than 10 minutes with me, then you know that I'm not often at a loss for words. But when I saw Jenn after her dad's death, I didn't know what to say. When I saw her after her grandfather's, I still didn't have any words. Of course, I said that I was sorry. And I really meant it. But how do you communicate your sympathy to someone else? Seeing her in tears and watching her suffer in grief, I wanted to do something, to make it not true, to take away her pain. And, naturally, I couldn't.

We don't often feel too helpless here at Princeton. We're highly motivated, immensely gifted people who have the habit of achieving just about whatever we want. When something stands in our way, we go out of our way to change it. But this was not some difficult test, a complex problem set or a selective admissions standard. This was death and grief and loss staring me right in the face.

I grieve for Jim Lears. I'll miss seeing him at the beach, sitting in the shade of the umbrella in long sleeves and sunglasses. I'll miss him when I go home for Christmas and our families go to church together for the annual Lessons & Carols service. I'll miss seeing him dressed in suit and tie for work when I stop by to see Jenn.

Yes, I do grieve for him. But I think that what saddens me most is not my loss, not even my parents' loss of their good friend. I think of Jenn, her younger sister Erin, her older brother Jimmer. I think of his wife Cathy. And I think of how helpless I feel because I can't do a single thing to make this better.

Yet even as I admit this, even as I'm writing this column, I am trying to do something to ease their pain. Here I am proclaiming my grief and sympathy to a community over 100 miles away from them. But perhaps this is the only thing I can do. I can only say that I'm sorry. I can only say that I want to feel the pain for you, Jenn, so that you don't have to. To say that, if I could, I'd make this different.

This isn't enough, of course. Saying this — publishing it in a newspaper, even postering cities with this message — doesn't take away their grief, and it doesn't make it different. But I do it anyway, in the hopes that perhaps in some small, imperceptible way, it will help.

I find myself thinking of the Lears family at unexpected times: in the middle of class, late at night before I go to bed, while I'm listening to a funny story at dinner. It struck me that even if I did try to forget about their grief, the chords of sympathy ring too loud to silence them. And, believe me, my persistent sympathy does not stem from any kind of overwhelming altruism. Rather, I think, it's the common experience of life that we all share that allows all of us to feel pain with another person. So, for the Lears family now, and for anyone who is suffering ever, you are not alone, you are not forgotten. There is someone, somewhere thinking of you, trying to bear the burden of your pain with you. John Lurz is an English major from Lutherville, Md. He can be reached at johnlurz@princeton.edu.