News reached me this week that an old friend had died. Trey was someone I hadn't spoken to him in many years. Growing up, we lived a few houses apart, and in high school, we ran in the same social circles. He died too young and entirely unexpectedly, before he had even half-begun what he hoped and dreamed to accomplish.
Wanting to know more about where his life had taken him, I did a bit of cyber-stalking. I poured over an old MySpace page, through some old articles and notes. How strange, it seems to me, the way that the internet inadvertently becomes a cemetery. There's no one to pull the plug, and so sometimes, for years, "social networking" links us with those who have died. Dare we 'unfriend' someone who has died, fearing a kind of zombie? But perhaps the internet is simply teaching a dreaded truth: we are always connected directly connected to the dead. Unfriending makes no difference.
The most difficult emotion to face, at least for me, in the death of someone in their young adult years is the possibility of failure. By dying, through no fault of his own, my friend failed to achieve everything he wanted to accomplish. His vocation is, in an important sense, unfulfilled. Surely he contributed much to the world--my mother commented that she had been sure that Trey would become a senator, with his ability to befriend a whole room in moments. And surely in (literally) billions of other ways he contributed to our world, altering it, at least in my experience, significantly for the better. But surely Trey feels that his vocation is unfulfilled. Surely, if we asked him, he would have a thing or two to say about the terrible injustice of death come too soon. I would certainly feel that way.
There is something primal and terrifying about failing to fulfill a vocation because it is 'tragedy' in the truest sense of the word. It is real and absolute loss. I myself fear that loss not out of some sense that God, a cruel-taskmaster, demands a certain list of things accomplished for each of us. Rather, I fear it because the loss of an incomplete vocation is as real as the loss of a limb, a pain over a healthy object no longer there. I mourn the loss of Trey's vocation, its failure to come to fruition; and I fear the same loss for myself.
Rowan Williams reflects on this topic in his book on Dostoevsky. The freedom of our world means that inherent in it is the possibility of failure. Any of us may fail at our vocations--and even more than that, we may fail through no fault of our own. Living in this world of mutual dependence means both that we might fail, and that it may not be our fault. What a terrible truth this speaks to us in America: not only may we fail at doing what brings us peace and joy, but it might be someone else's fault. This would be no surprise to anyone who has ever been truly oppressed, but to so many of us, it's damn surprising.
However, we should also see one other thing, also discussed by both Williams and Dostoevsky. In Christ, in the possibility of eternal life, the promise is made to us that any of our actions may serve to change what the past actions meant. A confession, while only the first step, is a real change of life. A gift freely shared with a stranger becomes the climax of our past, turning a whole story about selfishness into one where we learned to give.
I believe in resurrection for all the reasons that have inspired me to do so, but what it means to me practically is the possibility that a failed vocation in this life is, perhaps even now, being brought into line by later action. Even now Trey continues his work and vocation as an artist and counselor, even if we won't see its fruits till the fullness of the kingdom. Even now the love of his family and friends takes that partially complete vocation and redeems it. Neither resurrection erases the loss, but both show it to be one stage on a fuller journey, a story that has room for both cross and empty tomb.
In memory of Trey and Adam
