Guest Voice: A Response to the Deaths

The call reached me in Denver at 11 p.m.  My brother Dave had died in Twin Falls that afternoon. The first hours of knowing and still passing from unbelief to belief came with numbness. It was as if a huge part of my life had been ripped from me. The graduate community around me treated me with great compassion. At the time I didn’t understand the compassion. I had never been around death before. Sure, there had been courses on death and dying, but those were about old people, not about a young, vibrant brother with a young wife and baby daughter.  After the funeral at St. Mary’s Parish, Boise, a group of us Vandal graduates stood silently in a circle staring at our booted feet. One friend said, “They are made of clay.” 

We, the immortals, who held our degrees and were on the cusp of the great lives of which we had dreamed, were smashed by the truth of our mortality. The realization that we are not immortals caused confusion and pain. This, too, is part of grief. The pain gets masked with anger. Sometimes the anger can be directed at whatever caused the death or even may have tangentially contributed to the death. 

While intense grief may be brief, grief isn’t over and past. It will linger. One can be overwhelmed without notice over a little thing that one wants to share with the departed. Others often stand by helplessly because they do not know the current pain nor understand it. Hugs seem to be the best comfort, hugs without words. Hugs seem to say, “You are alive. I am alive.  There is a future.”   

These deaths at the university have sent waves through a larger community of parents and friends. Worried parents need reassurance that their child is still safe. Friends need to know that friendships continue. The national news shot out with little knowledge. Little knowledge that all major news media tended to share. The lack of knowledge generates fear and dread. We, the living, need to reach out to give reassurance to those locked in dread. It becomes our way of having compassion for others and receiving their compassion in return. 

On campus there is a need for healing.  The university has opened counseling centers to assist. Most of the healing is done through friendships. Some students will need motivation to continue with their studies. Some students will need motivation to continue with life. These students will look to the lives of those around them for meaning and purpose. Fellow students will become the healing presence of compassion, the lives that reach out to those in grief. For the most part words will fail. A reassuring touch can go a long way in the healing process. For many there is a need to do “something.”  The university is suggesting a candle lite procession. 

At St. Augustine’s Catholic Student Center the news of the deaths reached me just before the Sunday evening’s Mass at 7 p.m. The names of the students were placed on the altar, and we offered the Mass for the students, praying for the larger university community, for family and friends. On Monday students were being encouraged to call home. Our weekend Masses will be offered for classmates, family and friends.  

– Fr. Tom Loucks 

Abouts the Author: 

Tom Loucks has been a Catholic priest for 45 years serving over Idaho.  He is semi-retired, and currently helping Fr. Chase at UI and in Potlatch. He is a native Idahoan and graduated UI in 1970.  

Guest voices can be submitted at [email protected]