Living Memento Mori Part 3: Falling Down

In my last post, I said that living memento mori means facing and accepting the reality of our situation, the burden we carry. After a period of time, we may get used to it, build a coping system that works, and move forward with our life. Our new normal begins to feel normal.

And then… something unthinkable takes place.

Ernest Hemmingway is one of my favorite authors. Early in his career, his day job was that of a  journalist. At night, he worked on his novels and short stories. Working away from home and his young wife while  covering the Lausanne Peace Conference, he asked her to join him. She packed up all the manuscripts he was working on too. She placed them in a single suitcase to bring to him.

Just before boarding the train departing from Paris, she left her luggage briefly to get a bottle of water. Returning moments later, the suitcase containing his work was missing. It had been stolen. His entire life’s work was gone!

When his wife arrived in Lausanne and told him what had happened, he left for Paris immediately. Arriving at their apartment, he thought he would find the carbon copies of his work. They too, though,  had been packed in the suitcase. This unbelievable event slammed him, knocking him down.

Emily DeArdo tells of her falling down while carrying her cross of cystic fibrosis. After four years, three new symptoms began to present themselves: increased fatigue, coughing, and loss of appetite. After diagnostic testing, she was diagnosed with non-infectious tuberculosis.

Suffering is an inevitable fact of life. Some of us are going to experience a lesser to greater degree of it. It may knock us to the ground. As Emily points out in her book, Living Memento Mori, Christ fell three times. He also found a way to get back up to embrace God’s will for his life.

Living memento mori means understanding that life can and will likely become hard at some point. We can expect to suffer.  It also means that if we fall down, there is a way to get back up.

 Thanks for reading!

Curt Bumcrot, MRE   

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