PAINFUL SEPARATIONS

I experienced painful separations from inadequate and neglectful biological parents at the ages of five (my father) and seven (my mother), which most psychologists consider the worst possible timing.    There are three separation scenes in my memoir, Children of the Manse. The first two describe separations from my biological father and the third the even more traumatic separation from my biological mother.   In the first scene involving my father, he is in the custody of two sheriff deputies and in handcuffs.  He has tried to hug me goodbye but can’t because of the handcuffs and the sheriff’s deputies refuse to remove them.  He is about to be driven away to a state prison and I can still see him seated in the back seat with one of the deputies as the black police car sped away.   I cried all night that night an aunt told me.  I was inconsolable.  In the second separation scene involving my father, he surprised me by returning two years later from prison and we spent a precious hour or so alone together.  Neither of us knew then that we would never see each other again. 

The last time I saw my mother was in the orphanage to which I and three siblings had been committed a year before.  She rarely visited us but on this occasion arrived with a new husband and -- worse to my mind -- a new baby.  I suddenly knew the end had come. The sustaining belief that I had nourished since entering the orphanage – my mother had promised that all six of us would soon be together again -- was a lie.

                Loss of Parents is Not a New Development

The loss of parents is hardly new in human history.  In most cases throughout the ages parents were lost through death.  Today it is more likely orphans are orphans of the living.  But however the separation occurs, the fundamental result is much the same; the loss of those we most love and the consequent death of innocence.  To lose parents profoundly alters the course of a child’s life and causes the child to be reflective.  Such thoughtfulness in turn leads to asking the fundamental philosophic questions. 

            Most of the world’s great spiritual leaders experienced such separations.   Mohammed’s father died near the date of his birth and his mother when he was seven years old.   Moses, according to the Bible, was surrendered as an infant by his mother and then adopted by an Egyptian princess.  The Buddha’s mother died when he was seven days old.  He was raised by her sister.  Though he could only be attached to his mother by what he was told about her and the knowledge that she was gone, as a young adult the observation of sickness, old age, and death set the historical Buddha on his spiritual quest.  

Also in the East, eminent religious figures such as Honen, Myoe, Dogen, and Shinran all experienced separation from their parents by age ten.  Dogen was the founder of Japanese Zen Buddhism, Shinran the founder of much more widely followed Japanese Shin Buddhism.

The same pattern can be seen among members of that other reflective tribe, the philosophers.  In a book in which he relates the lives of 22 modern western philosophers (Descartes to Sartre) to their philosophies, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, the former head of the philosophy department of Tel Aviv University, concludes:

”Painful separations are no doubt common in early life, but it seems nevertheless notable that at least twenty of the twenty-two philosophers may be supposed to have undergone them.” 

I’ve come to believe that my own intense search for meaning in the universe is in  part caused by those early traumatic separations.  I am not suggesting that only those who have such experiences have to cope with the fundamental philosophic and religious  questions; those, it seems to me,  arise more or less naturally out of the human condition.  But I am suggesting that the search for meaning in the universe is more intense among those who have personally experienced traumatic separations from loved ones when they were very young.   

The following quote from Wayne Muller’s book, Legacy of the Heart, sums it all up:

“I have noted that adults who were hurt as children exhibit a peculiar strength, a profound inner wisdom….Deep within them…just beneath the wound…lies a spiritual vitality, a quiet knowing, a way of perceiving what is beautiful, right and true….

The persistent questions that occupy the heart of the wounded child …are the same questions pondered by the saints, seekers and spiritual teachers of the world.  What is most important in our lives?  How can we know what is beautiful and true?  How may we be joyful?  How do we learn to love?