The Forces We Strive To Be

We were introduced to Thomas when he was 92.

For the past seven years, we’ve been in touch with him, listening, supporting, and reassuring him that what he was carrying for so many decades didn’t make him a bad person.

We’ve visited him several times and he’s visited us, he’s come to a number of Someone To Tell It To’s events over the years, we’ve had many phone calls, and innumerable private Facebook messages back and forth, since our first call with him.

For more than 70 years he carried trauma from his military service in the Army Air Corps, during World War II. That trauma haunted him and caused bouts of deep anxiety throughout his life.

Yet, he was proud of his service to his country during a time of global crisis, despite the demons that followed him from it.

He’d reach out to talk when those demons arose within him; he needed to hear that he was stronger than they were. We believe that he was, and we reassured him of that. We cherished the friendship we had with him and always reminded him of that. He was a treasure. His gratitude, his gregariousness, and his graciousness were gifts to us and to everyone else who knew him. We know his special friends with whom he shared mornings at his local McDonalds are missing him terribly in this week since his passing. We are, too. 

Thomas passed from this life last week, on June 11, just 11 weeks before his 100th birthday, the last surviving member of his immediate family. Having never married nor having become a father, he left several generations of nieces and nephews, and countless friends, behind him. He had a century’s worth of memories, experiences, and wisdom within him. We are so sorry that he didn’t see the 100th birthday that we all hoped he would. But his was a life of kindness and faith, of caring and goodness, of humor and connection, despite the anxieties that sometimes weighed upon him. 

He always allowed us to tell his story. He wanted others to know that they weren’t alone in their struggles, that they could find help and hope within the challenges they were living with. 

From him we learned how much pain can lurk within the human spirit, even when outwardly all seems good and well. We also learned that the human spirit is a resilient and triumphant spirit. Thomas’s certainly was! He persevered and found incredible joy in life even while carrying the weight of his anxieties within him. 

We thank God for Thomas, a beautiful human being finding goodness in this life amidst the struggles. 

We’ve learned a lot from listening - deeply, intentionally, and empathetically - to Thomas and the thousands of others who are too often considered living on the margins of society. Those, like Thomas, who have outlived their contemporaries, or who live with intellectual and physical disabilities, or who are grieving profound losses, or whose lives have been painfully upended and torn apart, or whom society deems different and therefore less valuable and deserving of dignity and respect than others.

We’ve listened to people - good, decent, honorable people - who live with pain that others rarely see. Sometimes it’s physical. Even more times, it’s also emotional and mental. 

We’ve listened to people who were going through life feeling good about their health or certain about their closest relationships and then suddenly a life-threatening diagnosis is given or a partner wants to leave them and life is torn and severed to its core.

We’ve listened to people who have never felt at home in their own families, or in their own body or in the norms of their society or community or profession or even their own expectations, and they are weighed down by shame or guilt or regret or exclusion that is indescribable. 

We’ve listened to people who are incredibly lonely, even though they seem to have a multitude of friends. People who feel relationally disconnected, not comfortable in their own skin or who our culture says they should be. People who are carrying secrets that no one else knows about, experiences and feelings they’re afraid to mention because of the fear they have about how others will judge, marginalize, and react.

Life is not often easy for any of us. We all can feel different than, marginalized, and disconnected from others - and even ourselves. There can be innumerable forces at work that cause us to feel lonely, anxious, and afraid. Forces that cause us to doubt our worth. Forces that rob us of trust in ourselves and in one another. 

Someone To Tell it To exists to remind us all that those divisive and negative forces don’t need to be the final word. The forces that cause us to feel less-than, lonely and alone, fearful, and marginalized, are strong, painfully so. 

But the forces of respect for one another, finding inherent value in one another, being kind and gracious with one another, caring about one another, and being a presence of empathy and love to one another is much stronger and more effective than anything else. These are the forces we strive to be in the lives of everyone we encounter, especially in their toughest and most challenging times..