The Memory of a Beloved Man
Alyosha Karamazov's wisdom for the grieving
With one final click, my computer screen reflected the confirmation code. A one way flight north, return to be determined. It was a 5 am departure time. I had just over 12 hours before an Uber ride would take my blurry-eyes back to the Midwest, to the deathbed of my grandfather.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and this is one of the major reasons why. Every family has a leader, and they feel a special kind of brokenness when they lose them.
The news of my grandfather’s illness had come to me with the cruel suddenness of summer lightning. One day, it was a phone call relating that my grandfather was in the hospital. “Come up soon to visit” became “Get here this weekend or you might miss him” in less than a fortnight. The man of warmth and strength in my memories was, somehow, dying.
I purchased my ticket with one proviso: I would have to stay up all night for the Uber ride. I’ve missed many attempted red-eye flights before, and this was a 5 am call time I could not miss.
So when I returned from my Saturday evening shift (what a mercy for a distraction), I settled into my reading nook for the vigil hours of early morning. Finally I let myself feel the thought I had been avoiding for the last fortnight. My family isn’t ready. I’m not ready.
This school year has been full of grieving for so many in my community, and yet somehow each tragedy has the fresh sharpness of a stab wound. You can never be ready for death, no matter how much padding you put around your heart. Death is unnatural, the physical mark of sin which rends our reality. But there’s so much we haven’t resolved, my mind raced. How could we ever resolve it without our family patriarch?
A girl could go mad dwelling on such thoughts all night. I turned to the novel I’d been reading for months, a classic I’ve always felt guilty about not finishing: The Brothers Karamazov. It’s the story of a fractured Russian family - the scoundrel Fyodor and his three sons Dmitri, Ivan, and Alexei (affectionately called Alyosha). As I read through the 796 page beast, I had come to love the Karamazovs, despite all their faults. I leapt over shrubbery walls with the passionate Dmitri. I sunk under the weighty questions which Ivan, the Grand Inquisitor, asked of God. I wept with Alyosha at the violent bickering of his loved ones.
I had only four chapters left that vigil night, just enough to fill the hours before my ride arrived. I usually read books at a brisk 1.5x audio on Audible, eager to devour and move on. But when I began The Brothers Karamazov in January, I felt strongly that I should restrict myself to one chapter a day. Every night, I ended the day with the Karamazovs until it brought me to that final evening - the night before my flight.
Providence, it seems, had laid its hands on my reading list.
For those who don’t know, there is a death in the last chapters of Brothers Karamazov. Alyosha - the naive, loving youngest son of Fyodor Karamazov - stands at the gravestone surrounded by a crowd of boisterous, naughty school boys, who admire him far more than they admit. Moved by the moment, Alyosha addresses the boys - but the words were meant for me.
Gentlemen, we shall be parting soon…And so, first of all, let us remember him, gentlemen, all our lives. And even though we may be involved with the most important affairs, achieve distinction or fall into some great misfortune - all the same, let us never forget how good we once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us too, for the time that we loved [him'], perhaps better than we actually are. (pg. 774)
As Alyosha predicted, when my family assembled at the bedside of my grandfather, many would become better in that moment than we actually are. I would see my grandfather’s smile in my cousins’ faces, hear his sarcastic comments in the gruff voices of my uncles, witness the softness of his spirit in my siblings. Perhaps no distinction I receive in this life will be more important than loving them in that moment the way I love my grandfather. That will always be a good thing.
Good, not because losing the dead is good - it is a terrible thing, the real horror of every genre. Good because the love we feel even after someone has moved on can make us good, even if just for the hour of our grief.
Perhaps remembering my Papa means remembering these things in others after the immediacy of our sorrow has tempered.
Just remember him, Alyosha told my fearful heart. Even the painfulness of the final moments. Remember your Papa.
You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory from childhood, from the parental home. You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation. (pg. 774)
Alyosha’s assertion is a humbling, disturbing notion to a culture obsessed with achievement and merits. We look for salvation in our accomplishments. Define our lives by the bullet points on our resumes.
But in moments of grief, when the spirit and body cry out for relief from the pressure of sheer brokenness, achievements will do nothing to save us. The dark night of the soul does not care what GPA I earned or how many marketable skills I have.
What do you remember, Alyosha’s words dug deep into my subconscious. You have sacred memories with your Papa. Find them - those moments exist to save you.
Because of Alyosha’s words, I went straight to the old stacks of family photos tucked away in my grandma’s closets. As my family gathered round our patriarch in his final moments, we dwelt on every joyful memory he had ever given us. The man who danced with his toddler granddaughter in a kitchen and “turned on the rabbit” movies I still love to watch. We looked on the young man who brought his young bride to Egypt to ride camels into their new life, and his young family to the shores of Okinawa.
People often say now not to stop to take photos - to live in the moment and commit it to memory instead. They’re wrong. There are more memories of love and happiness with my Papa than I could possibly count. Many of them had passed from immediate memory, but they had not disappeared from celluloid.
In that week to come, each picture was for my salvation.
Perhaps we will even become wicked later on…and yet, no matter how wicked we may be - and God preserve us from it - as soon as we remember how we buried [him], how we loved him in his last days, and how we’ve been talking just now, so much as friends, so together, by this stone, the most cruel and jeering man amongst, if we should become so, will still not laugh within himself at how kind and good he was at this present moment! Moreover, perhaps just this memory alone will keep him from great evil, and he will think better of it and say: ‘Yes, I was kind, brave, and honest then…’
Well, and who has united us in this good, kind feeling, which we will remember and intend to remember always…Let us never forget him, and may his memory be eternal and good in our hearts now and unto ages of ages.
The truth is, not everything was resolved that week. When the dust cleared and the airplanes home left the runway, there were still conversations to be had. Wounds to be addressed and healed. All of our human pettiness didn’t disappear in our grief.
Isn’t that what we all fear? We know deep down that we will go back to the mediocrity of our daily lives, with our little concerns and cruelties. We fear that because of our human smallness, we will someday desecrate the memory of the dead.
Alyosha reminded me of one blessing of grief: it helps us to remember. Remember how we buried him. Remember how we loved him in his last days. A memory like that is powerful enough to bring us back from the brink of our human selfishness.
Have faith, that holy innocent spoke at the stone inside my chest. No cruelty or great evil will be a match for your Papa’s memory, because his memory is eternal.
“Hurrah for Karamazov,” shout the boys who crowd round Alyosha in the novel, and as I closed the final chapter on that vigil night, I joined with them. Hurrah for Karamazov - and hurrah for my beloved Papa.