Dying of a Broken Heart

My mother was a character. She observed people, noted things others usually missed, and seldom kept them to herself. Being rather outspoken, she often ruffled people’s feathers – not exactly socially correct, but honest. Some of us loved her all the more for that.

In her last years (somewhere around the age of one hundred), she unexpectedly told me that she blamed their church for my father’s death. He’d passed away some 20 years before from a massive heart attack at age 80.

His church was very important to him. He poured his heart, time, talents, and money into that church. He served his church in the choir, at the lectern, on the board, and in various other activities.

The church building had little parking space of its own, leaving congregants to park on the neighboring streets. The time came when some members moved to buy adjoining properties to turn them into a parking lot. This meant razing the homes of the less-privileged people who lived there. This was the crux of the matter for my father: that the church would turn people out of their homes to make room for more convenient parking. This, according to my mother, was what caused his heart attack. He apparently believed that sheltering people was more important than having a space for cars. By her account, the church betrayed his deeply-held principles, and it broke his heart.

I don’t know what happened to the people the church unhoused, but I do know what happened to my father. My mother saw that pain in him until his death, and she kept her observation to herself for all those years. I feel privileged that she shared it with me.

I think I know how my father felt. My heart aches at the suffering some agencies of our government is inflicting on children and vulnerable Americans and others within our borders. I let my mother’s revelation be a warning and I work to not go down the same road he did with his heartache. I know I’m not alone. Many people feel the heaviness of being betrayed, of hurting, and of experiencing the vicarious traumas we think are too big to address and too atrocious to believe.

We would all do well to protect our hearts, not by numbing them or by denial, but by staying centered in our hearts and in the values we commonly share – values untouched by ideology, political tribalism, and the stresses of the life we’ve all helped create. Having a heart does not have to mean living in jeopardy if we are mindful and stay rooted in the things that make our hearts come alive. Anyway, that’s how I do it. So far so good.

I miss my father and his big heart with his love for this country, his respect for the military in which he served, his care for people of all kinds, his devotion to his family, his generosity, humor, and humility. His life taught me many things, but this lesson came through my mother’s observations that:

1. Care can be dangerous.
2. Because of that, it takes courage to stay open to caring.
3. And it is vital to include the health of oneself in the caring.

Stay curious, be true, and always take heart.