Forgiveness
03.17.2013
Street Art (c) 2013 Martin Whatson; photo (c) 2013 Richard Beban
The strangeness of today. I’ve been thinking about forgiveness lately. Wanting to be in a state of soul without anger, grudges, in which there is no one I need to forgive. Several weeks ago I forgave the last person I needed to forgive.
This story is one I can only tell in full through writing it as a novel. I can’t begin to do it justice here in this small space. I will just say that years ago, in my 20s, he and I were romantically involved. I wanted, needed to end the relationship. He threatened my life, said if I left him, he’d kill me. I resolved to withdraw slowly and date no one else to give him time to accept us ending. And then after six months, I realized I was in real danger.
I disappeared. I flew from Sausalito to my family in Arizona, then traveled around, looking for a place to live, to hide.
I chose Cambridge, Massachusetts. I completed a B.A. there while working at a bookstore, discovered Nietzsche and Lou Andreas-Salome, re-discovered Yeats, Rilke and Pound, and wrote poems. But mostly I lived in a state of fear that he would track me down.
A year and a half later he did. He broke into my family’s home, and found an address book under the telephone, and called me at 3 in the morning the day after the tall ships arrived in Boston harbor for the Bicentennial.
I reached for the card of the FBI agent my father had given me to contact if the need should arise. But then a voice inside me said, Talk to him. And I did. The rest of that night, and many nights afterwards. We made peace.
But the story gets more complicated. Later, in Key West, Florida, he escalated the same kind of obsessive behavior with another woman, and he went to prison for rape.
When he was released after ten years, he returned to the Bay Area. I still had some residual fear of him, did not respond when he tried to get in touch with me.
Today I received an e-mail from his daughter saying he had died last week.
I e-mailed her with empathy and questions.
She told me when he was released from prison, he was wiser, but had many regrets and wasn’t short on saying so. He lived on a small sailboat on the edge of his favorite city, San Francisco. He had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and died a week later while his daughter was in town, before he could go to the hospice she had arranged. She described a dinner after he died, attended by many close friends. And in gathering up his clothing to give away, a friendly sea gull sat on the boat near her the whole time, one she thinks her father befriended. She entertained the idea that maybe he was watching over her somehow. When her friends came to pick her up, the gull flew away.
Then I heard the news about the Higgs Boson discovery being confirmed. How fitting that it happened on Albert Einstein’s birthday. I read a quote from a letter he wrote to H. Zangger, March 10, 1914:
Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself.
I copied Einstein’s words into my Quotes folder and found some Friedrich Nietzsche quotes. I wanted to find one to include in this essay, but which to choose of so many that resonated? This one:
There is always some madness in love. But there is
also always some reason in madness.
Forgiveness has two sides. I have asked two people this year for forgiveness, for things I’d never have held against anyone to begin with, but that I knew they held against me. One sent back a toxic message attributing malice and dark intent to something I had done out of love. Nothing is worse than someone who does not look within at his/her own darkness (of which we all have our share) and projects it out on others. Her e-mail response was cold, harsh and unforgiving, her own nature projected back on me.
But I also received a beautiful e-mail message from a friend in Paris, and another from a poet in Los Angeles, loving tender messages that balanced out the toxic one.
And then this news. I felt relief when I’d learned he had died. Not that he’d died, but relief from the only source of fear I had. After much thought, I wrote him a letter and cried, remembering what was lovable in him. I shed tears for the girl who’d been terrorized, for the man who couldn’t control himself, the man who sat in prison for years. I shed tears for the end of fear. He was the last person I feared.
Of course it had been lung cancer. The lungs, in Chinese medicine, are grief. He died of grief. He had grievous faults, but he also taught me to tell the emotional truth (that is, to balance my tendency to be too kind with truth-telling), and he was warm, funny and far too intense for life on this earth.
Life is so complex, so woven with bright and dark; we are all struggling to get it right.
If I have ever hurt anyone who reads this, please forgive me.
If there is anyone reading this who has someone they need to forgive, please find a way.
I want to live and die with a heart that is light with love, light as a feather, in spite of certain remaining mysteries such as why gravity is so weak and what is the dark matter that is believed to make up a large part of the total mass in the universe, and why cats sleep all day.
Reader Comments (38)
Beautiful Kaaren
Elizabeth,
Thank you! I'm grateful to you, and so is Richard.
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Wise, wise and wise. Oh God, allowed the humanity to practice the forgiveness and live a peaceful life.
Kaaren, I really appreciate your sensibility to write about life.
Richard, your pictures are so strong.
You guys represent for me a such beautiful example as a couple and as artists.
Lots of love!
Fernanda Hinke
Powerful! Every so often there comes along a piece that stays with me, that occupies my thoughts between thoughts. I'll ruminate on it in the back of my mind, while I'm driving, working... and maybe it's alive and ruminating me while I'm doing other things, even while I sleep.
While I only just read it, I have a feeling that this will be one of those, because forgiveness has been on my mind for many years. Forgiving and being forgiven. And while you were in Cambridge, I was just across the River Charles near the Fenway, first attending then teaching at Berklee. The future mother of my son and I watched the Tall Ships sail into Boston Harbor from her 30th-floor office window at One Beacon St.
I've long thought about the effects of intensity in relationships, both during and after. With someone we casually meet and then never see again, there's very little to linger on, if at all. The deeper the relationship, or the greater the love, the deeper is the potential for the abyss.
In Boston I was soaring 30 floors above the ground, got married, moved to LA, had a beautiful son, and then for 13 years the relationship spiraled downward, and I was 30 floors below ground. The divorce was painful and I was deeply hurt. It took me a long time to learn forgiveness, and in doing so, I realized I was healing myself.
I even forgave someone who used to work for me, who twice put a bullet through my car window. He was a sad case, had been abused by his parents (I later learned), and finally moved to Florida to take care of them in their final years. Now, if that isn't an act of forgiveness, I don't know what is.
A fragile, complicated lot we humans are.
Thank you for your gift, Kaaren. This will remain with me for a long time.
There's the parable of the servant who owes his lord a million dollars and is forgiven the debt — only to then go and beat up a fellow servant over fifty bucks. When the lord hears it, he throws his wicked, unforgiving servant in prison until the last dollar is paid. We Christians have forgiveness as the central tenet of our theology. We forgive freely and from the heart, because we know how much we ourselves have been forgiven.
Yeah, sure.
If the billion or so people who claim to be Christians would actually do that, what a wonderful world this could be. (To quote Sam Cooke.)
So sorry for what you had to go through, but good for you, my friend, for seeking a light heart. (And Richard! Those photographs!!)
A beautiful, thoughtful post, Kaaren - important to remember, and embrace. xox
Beautiful Kaaren!
Fernanda,
You are so loving, such a multifaceted artist yourself that you have little to learn from us. But we're grateful for your words.
Thank you and love and see you soon,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Well, Stuart, your message brought a flood of tears. You were living in Boston then? You might have come in to the Harvard Bookstore while I was working there.
Your description of being 30 floors above the world while the tall ships sailed in, and then 30 floors below ground later in Los Angeles brought back the sense of being in hell that I felt every single day in Cambridge, that I would never again know the feeling of safety in the world, that I had permanently lost my sense of freedom and adventure in life. I missed the weddings of my youngest sister and my brother because it felt too dangerous to go to Arizona where he knew my family lived.
And then when we made peace, I remembered what I loved in him at the start. That kind of violence comes from way back, in the chemistry of the person, or in childhood brutality--children aren't born that way. And the abyss, as you say, is inherent when you enter into depth with another.
Someone put a bullet through your car window twice?! You are a lucky one, and so was he in being able to turn his life around. Amazing. A fragile, complicated lot indeed.
Thank you so much, Stuart, for letting us know your own story, and how this piece affected you. It means the world to me!
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Anna,
I love this parable, and I adore your humor! You made me spit with laughter at the "Yeah sure."
Aren't Richard's photos perfection? He keeps amazing me with what he comes up with, what he has captured in Paris.
Much love, Christian and pagan and any other kind you can use,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Tara,
It's not easy, this forgiveness thing, is it. Thank you for your kind words.
Much love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Thanks so much, Ann! Happy birthday... soon!
Much love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Hi Kaaren,
I am letting you know that often I do read these. I think Richard's photos are getting better all the time. It is just being out there and doing it.
You are brave to confront someone who is threatening you. I certainly shy away from this kind of discomfort. Has this effort to clean up your past biz really made you feel lighter? Do you replace one unanswered question with another?
I just came back from a couple of weeks paddling in the swamps to rejoin the effort to keep my daily life afloat, once again thinking about all the people who depend on me and what I need to do to keep things under control.
So often we just behave in reaction to what we have been taught. I am not going anywhere with this, just reacting to your piece.
Love to you, Kit
Hi Kit,
It's wonderful to hear from you. As a talented visual artist yourself, your comments on Richard's photos are appreciated. (And spot on, I'd say.)
I didn't grow up as a fearful person, and it felt like hell to be living in fear. Confronting him wasn't bravery so much as listening to the inner voice which told me not to run, to talk to him instead.
Yes, you and I have different temperaments. There are advantages and disadvantages to all our various temperaments, aren't there?
I think it's natural for writers to want to dig deep. Natural for visual artists to shy away from all that. I just follow my own nature.
If you ask for forgiveness from someone who is harsh and judgmental, it doesn't make you feel lighter. But it does reveal human nature, and character, and that's what stories are about. But forgiving others, that lightens the heart, makes the daily tasks seem easier.
I love the elegant van you outfitted to swan around Florida in the sun while it's probably still snowing in western Massachusetts. The photos Gayle posted made your trip look so appealing.
We're happy to connect with you again.
Much love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Thank you for your honesty and the way you share your life's lessons.
Ren,
Thank you! Coming from the queen of honesty, that is something.
Now, to get back to telling the longer stories, with plenty of imagery.
Much love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
My dear Sister-in-Law,
Thank you for writing such a beautiful, honest, painful and elegant piece about forgiveness.
I have 3 people in my life (one deceased) that I’ve worked on forgiving, and it is indeed difficult. Two friends horribly betrayed me and though I have tried to forgive them, I don’t want them in my life. So, I’m not really sure if it’s forgiveness after all. I am protecting myself by not being duped, pulled in, and running the risk of being hurt again. So, though I may “forgive” them, is it really forgiveness if I admit the forgiveness to myself only and not share with the ones I am forgiving? I don’t want to reopen the relationships, and I am very clear on that. What I am not clear on is whether I have actually forgiven them. I don’t think I have.
The third person is gone. I have forgiven him for what he was and what he wasn’t, and I am at peace there. I wish we could have reached some sort of accord while he was on this earth, but it was impossible because he was a terribly broken man who blamed others and wasn’t honest with himself about the mistakes he’d made. For that reason, I chose to protect my family (mostly my daughters) from possibly experiencing the same pain I had as a child – in simple terms it was promises made followed by promises broken. It does something to a kid’s head. I forgave but was guarded.
I loved Richard’s pictures. The photos were such an important part of the story and every visual fit in perfectly with the words.
I don’t respond much to your Paris Play … and for that I hope you will forgive me. :-) But know that I love reading your articles, I’m fascinated by my brother’s pictures, and you both always give me a moment in my day where I can escape and be pulled into Paris Play.
I love you.
Julie
I would be ever so grateful he's not a menace in my life and forgive myself for my blindness in picking him in the first place.
Can't wait to see you in May.
Another thing -- it's very painful to apologize and ask for forgiveness, have the person say, "I'll get back to you," and then never hear from them again. You are left dangling and in limbo. But I guess the silence is the answer. Hard to forgive that, figure it out, and be at peace. Fragile beings indeed.
Kaaren and Richard,
Gut-wrenching beauty. Yes, I feel the pain of this, the gut-stabbing necessity in a very real way through your words. Poignant. And congratulations on your journey, Kaaren.