14
March 19, 2019 | The Valley Catholic
COMMENTARY
Unfi nished Relationship s
By Rev. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Theologian, teacher, award-winning
author, and President of the Oblate
School of Theology in San Antonio, TX
A colleague of mine, a clinical therapist, shares this
story: A woman came to him in considerable distress.
Her husband had recently died of a heart attack. His
death had been sudden and at a most inept time.
They’d been happily married for thirty years and,
during all those years, had never had a major crisis
in their relationship. On the day her husband died,
they had gotten into an argument about something
very insignifi cant and it had escalated to where they
began to hurl some mean and cutting words at each
other. At a point, agitated and angry, her husband
stomped out of the room, told her he was going shop-
ping, then died of a heart attack before he got to the
car. Understandably, the woman was devastated, by
the sudden death of her spouse but also by that last
exchange. “All these years,” she lamented, “we had
this loving relationship and then we have this useless
argument over nothing and it ends up being our last
conversation!”
The therapist led off with something meant par-
tially in humor. He said: “How horrible of him to
do that to you! To die just then!” Obviously the man
hadn’t intended his death, but its timing was in fact
awfully unfair to his wife, as it left her holding a guilt
that was seemingly permanent with no apparent
avenue for resolution.
However, after that opening, the therapist followed
by asking her: “If you had your husband back for
fi ve minutes what would you say to him?” Without
hesitation, she answered: “I’d tell him how much I
loved him, how good he was to me for all these years,
and how our little moment of anger at the end was a
meaningless epi-second that means nothing in terms
our love.”
The therapist then said: “You’re a woman of faith,
you believe in the communion of saints; well, your
husband is alive still and present to you now, so why
don’t you just say all those things to him right now.
It’s not too late to express that all to him!”
“If you had your husband back for fi ve
minutes what would you say to him?”
He’s right. It’s never too late! It’s never too late to
tell our deceased loved ones how we really feel about
them. It’s never too late to apologize for the ways we
might have hurt them. It’s never too late to ask their
forgiveness for our negligence in the relationship, and
it’s never too late to speak the words of appreciation,
affi
rmation, and gratitude that we should have spoken
to them while they were alive. As Christians, we have
the great consolation of knowing that death isn’t fi nal,
that it’s never too late.
And we desperately need that particular consola-
tion … and that second chance. No matter who we
are, we’re always inadequate in our relationships.
We can’t always be present to our loved ones as we
should, we sometimes say things in anger and bit-
terness that leave deep scars, we betray trust in all
kinds of ways, and we mostly lack the maturity and
self-confi dence to express the affi
rmation we should
be conveying to our loved ones. None of us ever fully
measures up. When Karl Rahner says that none of us
ever experience the “full symphony” in this life, he
isn’t just referring to the fact that none of us ever fully
realizes her dream, he’s also referring to the fact that
in all of our most important relationships none of us
ever fully measures up.
At the end of the day, all of us lose loved ones in
ways similar to how that woman lost her husband,
with unfi nished business, with bad timing. There are
always things that should have been said and weren’t
and there are always things that shouldn’t have been
said and were.
But that’s were our Christian faith comes in. We
aren’t the only ones who come up short. At the mo-
ment of Jesus’ death, virtually all of his disciples had
deserted. The timing here was also very bad. Good
Friday was bad long before it was good. But, and this
is the point, as Christians, we don’t believe there will
always be happy endings in this life, nor that we will
always be adequate in life. Rather we believe that the
fullness of life and happiness will come to us through
the redemption of what has gone wrong, not least with
what has gone wrong because of our own inadequa-
cies and weakness.
G.K. Chesterton said that Christianity is special
because in its belief in the communion of saints, “even
the dead get a vote.” They get more than a vote. They
still get to hear what we’re saying to them.
So … if you’ve lost a loved one in a situation where
there was still something unresolved, where there
was still a tension that needed easing, where you
should have been more attentive, or where you feel
badly because you never adequately expressed the
affi
rmation and aff ection that you might have, know
it’s not too late. It can all still be done!