Last week I attended the funeral for the nephew of a friend. Franco was just 4 ½ when he left this world after many months of battling an inoperable brain tumor.
The thought that my daughter is just 6-months older than Franco kept poking up into my mind while I sat on the hard bench of the Catholic church waiting for the service to begin.
Questions came up: What if this happened to Ella? How would I react? What would I feel right now if it was Ella in that tiny casket? Could I handle it with the dignity and grace that Franco’s family was bringing? Why did Franco have to die? Why did a beautiful 4 ½ year old boy who brought such joy to his family and to the world have to die?
As if reading my mind – and probably the minds of many people in that church – the priest began his service in a surprising manner. He said that he didn’t have the answer. He said that he could stand up there at the service of the 95 year old grandmother and say that she had lived a “good, full, long” life. Why is her death “right” but not Franco’s?
But he couldn’t tell us “why” Franco had died.
Are there answers to that question? Of course there are.
You could say, “There is a reason for everything,” or “It was his time,” or “His death opened the possibility for those he left behind to grow and evolve,” or “Death is the natural flow out of life.” Or, as the priest said, “He is with God in heaven now.”
All of those may be true. But they are not The Truth. We just don’t know why a four year old has to die.
We just don’t know why thousands of people had to die during the attacks of 9/11.
We don’t know why babies are killed in wars.
We don’t know why anyone is killed in wars.
We don’t know why people are murdered.
We don’t know. We can’t know.
In the days following Franco’s funeral, I sat with the thought of Franco’s death and the priest’s acknowledgment that there are some questions that cannot be answered. And I began to play with the idea of letting go of the need for answers.
What if Franco just died and there is no reason, no answer? What if we are just meant to be with the experience and release the need for an answer?
I felt a huge surge of energy as that thought moved through me.
You see, we all have unanswerable questions about our own lives: Questions that occupy far too much of our time and energy.
For me, as an adopted child, the question that I have asked throughout my life is, “Why did my mother give me up for adoption.” And when I have been in a less positive space that question has been, “Why did my mother abandon me.” Or, “Why didn’t she love me.”
For the first 23 years of my life I sought the answer on my own. I would find an answer that felt “right” for a while, only to discover some new twist or hidden place inside of me that did not fit into that answer.
When I met my biological mother over 20-years ago, I began probing for information that could help me find THE answer. The question was no longer hypothetical. There was an actual person to ask and I was able to hear her answers. I could ask, “Why did YOU give me up for adoption?”
And in these last 20-years we have talked and cried and done healing work together, including rituals of forgiveness. And while her answers make “sense” to my mind, they can never satisfy the questioning of the wounded part within me.
That part of me, the wounded part within, will never hear THE answer because there is no answer that will satisfy that part of me.
The question itself is unanswerable.
How much time and energy have I have spent seeking that answer, the answer that does not exist? I could never even begin to measure how much of my life has been spent (wasted?) seeking that answer.
You could say that the answer to that question has been my holy grail. And now, with the help of a Catholic priest and a beautiful 4 year old boy, I see that the only way to find the grail is to release the question.
And I believe we all have a question like that.
You have a question that is unanswerable, a question that takes your time, saps your strength, and drains your energy.
Your question may be:
“Why did my father leave me?”
“Why was I abused?”
“Why didn’t my mother love me as much as my sister?”
“Why did my parents wish I was a boy?”
“Why did my brother have to die?”
You know your unanswerable question. You know the question that drives you, that directs your life. Are you willing to accept that this question cannot be answered?
To leave the question unanswered does not mean that you are denying what happened. It does not mean that you are denying the pain of the experience.
No. In fact, just the opposite. When you let go of the question, when you accept that the question can never be answered, you allow yourself to embrace the experience fully. You allow yourself to feel it fully. And in doing so, you open the doorway to the possibility of releasing the charge that this question and this past experience holds over you.
How much energy would you gain if you could release your unanswerable question?
As I move more fully into accepting that I can never answer the question, “Why did my mother give me up for adoption,” I feel more and more energy flowing into and through me. The energy I have been using to seek that answer, both consciously and unconsciously, is now available for other pursuits. Now, I can focus that energy in new and powerful ways.
So what is your unanswerable question?
And is it possible that the time has come for you to accept that this question can never be answered?
I hope so.
And I wonder, could it be possible that Franco died so that those of us left behind might begin to understand that some questions have no answers?
Or is that just another attempt to put an answer on what is essentially unanswerable?
