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Those Whom Nobody Loves
Colleen M. McDonald
October 26, 1997
"And now may the truth that makes us free, the hope that never dies, and the love that casts out fear, lead us, and those we love, and those whom nobody loves, forward together, until the dayspring breaks, and the shadows flee away."
This benediction has been Dave Weissbard's closing words for about the last ten years; Dave created it from two different sources. This year, he has amended the phrase, "Those whom nobody loves," to, "Those who thinks nobody loves them." I don't think he should have done that...
My grandfather died last month, at the age of 97. Normally, this kind of loss is appropriate to include in church family Joys and Concerns, but I decided against announcing it in that way. To have done so would have felt like I was setting you up-- asking for sympathy only to wind up protesting it with a "yes, but...": "Thank you, but I have to tell you I wasn't close to him. The fact that he's dead now doesn't mean much to me, really. I can't say I'm grieving-- not like you'd expect. You see, I didn't love him."
I didn't know my grandfather well. The obituary I shared with you earlier describes an interesting person who led an exciting life-- someone I could have been (should have been?) proud to claim as family. It paints a fairly glowing picture of a worthwhile life characterized by achievement, recognition, fame, and success. Yet the man I knew was a failure, both as a father and as a grandfather.
He was bright, talented, articulate, a character. But he was also self-centered, domineering, and sharp-tongued-- someone who was continually disappointed in you and by you and only too willing to point out your inadequacies. (Typical of his attitude was this jibe I elicited years ago, when I wrote to him following a stream of complaints that he never heard from me: "I received your note," he wrote back. "I call it a note, because it was much too short to have been a letter.")
My grandfather wasn't a criminal. He didn't beat his wife (although he did discipline his kids with a belt); he didn't gamble (though he probably drank too much). He was "among the best known, most respected American sportswriters." Yet he became an unwelcome stranger within his own family, as, over time, his son, daughter-in-law, and both grandchildren decided, "Who needs him?" I don't remember whether I sent him my wedding invitation. (I don't think I did, because I didn't want him to come.) On hearing me mention him, for the first time, only after he had died, one of my girls said, "You mean I had a great grandfather, and I didn't even know it."
I doubt I would have attended his funeral, had there been one. But I feel a lack of closure. In my fantasy life, I see myself gathering with others who knew him, many of whom are dead now. Perhaps Dave Weissbard is there, or maybe I'm the one writing the eulogy. (I think my grandfather knew I became a minister.). Anyway, there we all are, telling stories, laughing and crying, lifting up the good as well as the bad, seeking some kind of understanding, if not acceptance, of who my grandfather was, and why.
I t is only now that I can look back on my grandfather's life and feel sympathy for the tragedies in the man's life: His first wife, my dad's mother, was killed in a car accident which Grandpa survived-- the story is that he fell asleep at the wheel. His second wife died of cancer. And his daughter suffered a nervous breakdown in her twenties, had part of her brain removed through a lobotomy, and as a result, became retarded. How tragic that none of these traumatic events seemed to bring him closer to his son-- who died of cancer at 61-- or to his grandchildren. Though I have no reason to believe his parents mistreated him, perhaps there is something in his childhood that would explain his punitiveness, his rigidity, his incapacity for intimacy; I wish I knew. I cannot say goodby to my grandfather with any feelings of love, even of memories of having loved him once; but, at the least, I want to feel some compassion.
As I was beginning to sort through these feelings after Grandpa died, an uncomfortable thought crossed my mind-- was my grandfather among those wretched souls Dave Weissbard used to identify in his closing words-- those whom nobody loves? It's hard to accept the idea that there really are such people, for it taps into some of our deepest fears, I think-- that we could somehow do something to cause our loved ones to reject us; that we might wind up dying alone; or that we could die and no one would grieve for us. We want to believe that no one is unloved, that there are only people who think that no one loves them. Similarly, I yearn for evidence that someone mourns for my grandfather, even if I cannot, or at least that someone, at some time, loved him.
I take comfort in the myth or metaphor of a deity who loves all people. And yet the notion of being loved by a divinity, in and of itself, is about as helpful as the belief that we should feel good about ourselves simply because we have inherent worth and dignity. We feel lovable not because we are in touch with some abstraction but because someone actively cares for us. We are noticed, affirmed, nurtured, cherished. At best, we grow up within the security of a family who value us, and our kin, above all others.
Ana Guttierez, described by Lillian Rubin in a book called The Transcendent Child, was born to migrant farm workers who had entered the United States illegally, from Mexico. She began working in the fields as a young child, and by the time she was a teenager, knew her family relied on her for their survival. Ana's father was authoritarian and physically abusive-- vague memories and nightmares suggest he sexually abused Ana, as well-- and Ana's mother, also, demanded "immediate and unquestioning obedience from" her children. "My parents couldn't really give to anyone," Ana recalls. "I'm not sure if that has to do with their economic situation or if it's something that goes way back to when they were children and weren't given love either. All I know is that they couldn't give us anything, not even a little comfort when we needed it." The family moved so frequently, it was hard for Ana to maintain friendships. Her father wouldn't let her leave the house to play with classmates, and she was stigmatized at school, both as a migrant farm worker and a Mexican. The Gutierrez children fought among themselves. Ana explains, "There was no one I could turn to. My siblings and I didn't know how to communicate with one another. How could we? There were no models around us of how to be good to each other, so we were modeling how my parents were to each other and to us. We were pretty much at each other's throat, each of us taking care of ourselves and not concerned about the other." Forbidden to go to college, and desperate to get out of the house, Ana, at 18, married a man who would turn physically and sexually abusive.
With the possible exception of a dog named Woowy-- "He was the only one of the family who had any real connection to me or who seemed to understand me," says Ana-- Ana's story is about as loveless as you can get. It is truly amazing, and nearly unimaginable, that by age 33, she seemed to have escaped her past: completing her PhD in Psychology, making a go of a second marriage, and helping to raise three children-- "his, mine, and ours." The little girl deprived of caring influences became a mother determined to do things differently with her own child; Ana took parenting classes, enrolled in a two-year program in healing arts, and, as she puts it, learned to love herself. But many who grow up in loveless homes, neglected and/or abused, wind up like Frederick or Gus.
Frederick began living on the streets of New York City after his mother's boyfriend raped him; Frederick was twelve. His mother was addicted to alcohol and heroin. Frederick lived with homeless men in cardboard shacks before going to a foster home, where he was raped by his foster dad. At fourteen, Frederick was one of the so-called "Mole People," living in an abandoned subway tunnel. He became a gay prostitute. Before he was twenty, he was dead of AIDS-related pneumonia.
At the age of 24, Gus Webster was sentenced to death for first-degree murder. His punishment having been commuted to life imprisonment, he has been in jail for almost fifty years. "It was three years all told I was on death row... and in that time I felt like I aged a hundred years," Gus told an interviewer. "Nobody knew me or came to see my except my attorney; I was sort of an unknown person to everyone, sitting there waiting week to week and from month to month. The attorney was... pro bono,... and I expect he thought my case was a lost cause." Gus' father was an alcoholic and a drifter. Gus' mother was schizophrenic, and Gus was born in a mental hospital. He was immediately sent to an orphanage, lived in state foster care for sixteen years, and subsequently spent a year in a juvenile correction center. Recalling his childhood, Gus says, "I've always had a feeling of not belonging anywhere... Not with anyone at all did I ever have what might be called an exchange of affection; I never knew what it meant, and I still don't now. I came across the word loner in a magazine article not long ago: I looked it up in the dictionary.. . it said a loner was a person with a preference for being independent and staying on his own. I was a loner all through my life, but it wasn't a matter of preference; I wasn't offered no choice, I never knew there was an alternative. Another word I looked up one time was 'happiness': it said it was a state of having or giving great pleasure or joy. That's something I've not experienced either. For me, happiness is just a word."
To be unloved may be an accident of birth-- a function of inheriting a dysfunctional family-- or it may be a consequence of one's choices or behavior-- the crossing of a line into the unacceptable. Frequently, the two go hand in hand: Those who are raised without love come to think of themselves as both unlovable and unloving; they isolate themselves or act in destructive, repellent ways which seem to prove their own defectiveness and even call into question their basic humanity, their inherent worth and dignity.
It is tempting to speculate about what Frederick, Gus, or even Ana might have accomplished, achieved, had they received even the average amount of care and nurturing most parents bestow on their children. It is also tempting to blame messed up offspring on messed up parents.
The story of Hank Sullivan is included with Gus', in Tony Parker's book, The Violence of Our Lives; Interviews with American Murderers. Hank is serving consecutive sentences totaling more than three hundred years, for murder, attempted murder, and robbery with violence, among other crimes. "I'm from a white middle-class Catholic family, perfectly ordinary," Hank notes. "We were well raised and wanted for nothing... My father was a [factory] production manager and my mother was a teacher.... they were nice people and good. They were very happy with each other... They believed in family ties and values, and all that kind of thing." I wonder, did Hanks' parents ever asked themselves, "Did we give Hank enough love?"
"All you need is love." "You're nobody till somebody loves you." "Love makes all things possible." The power of love to mold and transform, even to "conquer all," is widely affirmed and celebrated. (How many of us have heard the story of the velveteen rabbit, the toy made real by a child's love? the Tin Man, befriended by Dorothy, who finds his heart? the Beast, and the frog, whose sweethearts turn them into princes?) Love is a fundamental teaching, a moral imperative, of all the great religions. Countless social service programs and professionals rely on the hope that even one person's caring can turn a troubled, or needy, individual around.
In The Limits of Hope, adoptive mother Ann Loux tells a story which, she warns, "will frustrate those who believe that love and a sound environment can change everything." Four-year old Margey was adopted into Ann's family out of a background of neglect (and, come to find out, suspected abuse). As a preschooler, she was shy and fearful. She failed repeatedly in school, displaying poor impulse control, difficulty in concentration, and an inability to follow directions. Margey lied and stole. She broke rules and crossed boundaries over and over again, despite warnings and consequences. In adolescence, she did drugs and alcohol. She was kicked out of a therapeutic residential school. By 18, she was in a mental hospital. Today Margey is a cocaine addict and a prostitute.
After living with her for only two weeks, Ann suspected there was something seriously wrong with Margey; she did everything she could to try to help her adopted daughter, despite the fact that the system repeatedly minimized Ann's concerns and told her to hang in awhile longer. When Margey was 18, she was diagnosed as having a personality disorder (known as borderline personality), believed to be genetically determined and established fairly early in life. "Could anything be done [for Margey]?" Ann asked the psychiatrist. "Probably not much." "Could anything ever have been done?" "Probably not much." Ann writes, "At last I had to give up hope that things would go my way. I had to give up trying to solve Margey's problems and learn to relate to her in a whole new way... [but] Giving up hope did not mean giving up love."
Though people like Margey tend to burn all their bridges, Margey is not among those whom nobody loves. Ann no longer argues with her daughter about her lifestyle or tries to change her. She visits her during Margey's revolving door trips to the county jail. She listens, and sympathizes with Margey's problems. She lets her know she's there for her. But Ann admits, "I am far from satisfied that I have been able to love... [Margey] enough by any standard, certainly not by the measure of how much I love... [my] biological children." It is incredibly painful when we have difficulty loving those we believe we should love. And yet, there are people for whom no amount of love is ever enough-- enough to save them from inner turmoil, rage, dysfunction, destruction. Shortly after Margey had joined her family, Ann remembers, "It didn't feel like I was loving [her]... I wanted to love [her]... I kept waiting and hoping, but love was not coming. If anything, I was beginning to feel the opposite of love-- not wanting to look at... [her], not wanting to touch... [her], not wanting to be around... [her]... I didn't want to kiss Margey.. good-night when I went into the other children's rooms and that made me feel guilty." Whether because of brain chemistry, particular trauma, or some other unknown, there are people in this world who are not easy to love.
"Love is patient.. [and] kind... It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Ann's love for Margey is as close to being unconditional as one can manage without becoming like the giving tree, sacrificing nearly everything and ending up a stump. But unconditional love may not be all it's cracked up to be-- who among us really wants others to relate to us with almost no expectation that we will be receptive, responsive, reciprocating? Relationships with people like Margey are hard to sustain, because they are largely a one-way street. Normal, healthy, satisfying relationships involve authenticity, give and take, mutual accountability, honesty tempered by charity, and a common willingness to risk being vulnerable. Margey was not capable of the love which is not "envious... or arrogant or rude... [which] does not insist on its own way... is not resentful." Neither, in my experience, was my grandfather.
While he was alive, I largely lost sight of my grandfather's "worth and dignity." To me, belief in the "inherent worth and dignity of every person" does not mean that these qualities will be obvious, manifest, in everyone we meet; rather, they represent a perspective and a potential we must never fully ignore. In most cases, we mourn the dead out of a sense of who they were. In others, we might mourn for who they might have become. Maybe I should have read my grandfather's memoir which he gave me; at the least, I now regret having thrown it out. But if I'd kept trying, my relationship with him probably wouldn't have been any different. If I grieve for my grandfather now, I grieve not for what I lost in his death but for what he, my family, and I never gained through his life; not for what was, but for what will never be...
Those whom nobody loves... Perhaps it wasn't valid to have introduced the list with my grandfather, who was, after all, appreciated in some circles during his lifetime. But I am convinced that there are truly unloved people in this world-- the foster child who has become an "orphan of the living"; the little girl who sits in the back row of your child's or grandchild's public school classroom; the drug addict who's never heard of Harm Reduction services; the lesbian woman who cannot imagine our church would welcome her. More broadly, "those whom nobody loves" can be a metaphor for an even larger group of people-- the neglected, who don't matter to anyone in particular; the rejected, who, by misfortune or logical consequence, have been marginalized; and the ejected, whose behavior or actions have been judged so unacceptable they have been locked away, in institutions. Our church is a place for bringing personal pain and for facing the pain of others. It is our obligation, as religious people, to let ourselves be touched by the larger suffering in our world, at the least to cultivate our own gratitude, at best, to become vehicles for healing.
Our Universalist forbears believed in a God who loves all people; saves every one; has room in heaven and in this world for us and our near and dear ones; my grandfather, Ana's parents, and Ana; Frederick, Gus, and Hank; Ann and Margey; Mother Theresa, and Adolph Hitler. Dave's closing words, in their original form, can be interpreted as a more worldly and humanistic rendition of this theology. "The dayspring breaks" is a poetic way of describing daybreak, or early dawn. Basically put the sentiment of the benediction is that our highest values-- truth, hope, and love-- will guide the whole human family into a new day. Our vision encompasses not only us and those we value most but the whole spectrum of humanity, including those who are valued least-- the unloved, the unloving, the unloveable. Before commitment and action, even before caring and compassion, come awareness and recognition-- by casting our circle widely, to include those whom nobody loves, we bring the forgotten, the invisible, the cast away out of the darkness, where we can at least see them and feel even a tenuous connection. The better world to which we aspire is one of wholeness and oneness, one in which all people are esteemed, all people have a place. The sun gives life to all of us, extends itself to everyone with the promise of morning light...