Brand Matters
Some Pain Is Painfully Painful—Yet! -By Swandy Banta
I recently attended a court session on a matter involving a very good friend of mine. He had been incarcerated for some time and his bail was to be decided that day. The judge declined his bail request.
Right at that point I wished I was the judge himself, Attorney General, President, Governor or Antonio Guterres.
I just wished I had the power to overturn the judge’s ruling. I wished I could make a phone call that will change the course of proceedings.
I felt helpless.
All I could do was watch with painful unease as the prison warder led him out of the courtroom.
There is this kind of pain. It’s a different kind of pain. It’s a kind of pain which hurts so bad and consumes your whole being.
It’s this kind of pain; it’s paining you but you just can’t locate the pain, yet it’s very painful.
It’s the pain a man feels when his wife is in agony of childbirth and there is absolutely nothing he can do to ease her pain.
It’s the kind of pain a mother feels when her child is sick, hungry or dying and the circumstances are beyond her. After doing and giving her best, all she can do is pray, watch and wait for a miracle.
I recently visited a boy in the hospital who had a terminal illness. When I left the hospital I couldn’t erase the memory of his mother’s scared frame. She had literally shrunk in the fear of the inevitable. She never left his bedside in the hope that as long as she stayed close by she could avert his death. The boy passed away days later.
When faced with these situations, we desperately want to help but are incapacitated. Worse is the fact that we are forced to watch while our loved ones languish in agony.
David and Marie Works experienced this kind of pain when they watched their two daughters die when a gunman suddenly showed up outside the Newlife Church, Collorado Springs, December 9, 2007 and began to shoot at people.
David said, “I stretched out my arm in Rachel’s direction, trying to will my body to move, even crawl. It simply hurt too much. She needed her father, her protector, her protector… and I couldn’t get to her side. ‘I’m so sorry Honey I can’t reach you,’ I said through tears”.
‘That’s okay Daddy’ she whispered.
I kept lying on my stomach looking sideways towards Rachel. The moment was almost surreal, like an old western movie where all dialogue stops and you can only hear the wind blowing a few tumble weeds across the prairie. “God don’t let us die here on a cold parking lot”, I prayed.”
For Marie Works, the mother of the girls, her account was even more disheartening. She had tried all she could as a mother while they waited for the ambulance and the medical team to arrive.
“The more I saw her eyes closed, the more it began to hit me that she was unconscious.”
Marie recounts how deep down in her heart she already knew her daughter Stephanie was gone.
Incapacitation can be as painful as the pain experience by the victim of the situation. David Works had been shot alongside his two daughters, Stephanie and Rachel. He had to watch his little girl gradually ebb away because he was in too much pain to help her.
The family lost Stephanie on the spot and Rachel later died around 10:15pm the same day.
I can say same about my dad during my IVF experience, being incapacitated was tough for him too. He was pained because having done all, to make the procedure a success, it just didn’t work. I can imagine how he may have wished he was a Doctor or had some magical powers to grant my desires. He just couldn’t. It was beyond his capability at the time.
I also felt this kind of pain when my brother in-law called on that fateful night at 3:07am telling me that my Dad had suddenly died in his sleep. I was painfully confused. I was helpless and felt so bad that I could not do anything to save him that night.
What I realize now is that situations like these remind us of how limited we are in the real sense of it. Most times we never realize this until defining moments such as the ones described happen to us.
There is no telling the extent to which life can and sometimes will throw incapacitating situations our way.
It could be a failing relationship. You have done all that you can and should do and yet the relationship seems to be slipping out of your grip.
It could also be a wayward child. You have loved, nurtured, provided and done all that is expected of you as a parent and yet you have to watch your child making poor choices you know so well will only end in pain and turmoil for them.
Here are a few tips to help us when faced with incapacitating situations:
1. Ask yourself if you have honestly played your role in the relationship with the individual or situation at hand.
Incapacitating situations come with less guilt when we have honestly played our role.
2. Ask yourself yet again if there is still something that can be done asides that which you have done already. This is very important because there may be another way that you hitherto had not considered until you gave the matter a closer consideration.
3. You also need to realize that worrying or fretting about the situation cannot and will not solve the problem. Instead of worrying maybe it’s time to pray, seek help or at best have a clear enough head to think things through.
4. Do not resort to excessive behavior such as drowning yourself in alcohol or narcotics so that you can forget the situation. You may just be endangering your own life and thereby complicating issues. After all, excessive alcohol and narcotics would only keep you out of radar for a couple of hours after which you will have to face the situation at hand.
5. Finally, as painful as the situation may be, you need to learn the lessons that came with it. No matter how incapacitating a situation is there are always deep lessons to learn from it. You need to calmly note all the lessons that came with the experience and apply them as a safe guard against future occurrence.
When my Dad suddenly passed away, I painfully learnt that I was only human and limited. I realized that as human beings there are things that are just beyond us.
One thing I know we owe is to love deeply and sincerely so that when those limiting times come like Rachel Works, they would be able to understand and look at us and say, “It’s Ok”
In local parlance we say the pain sometimes fit pain pass pain but God pass and GOD-wins and you, I mean you reading this will be OKAY!
