The Road to Empathy

The Road to Empathy

February 17, 2019

An empath takes on the pain and suffering of others.  Empaths can't bear to see anyone in pain for that would mean feeling it and living it.

I remember many times when the suffering of others became my own.  I was the tender age of 10 years old when I first watched the mini series "Roots" by Alex Haley with my dad, mom, sister and brother.  As I watched the men and women ripped from their families being whipped and beaten, I looked around my childhood living room.  I couldn't understand what I saw... or rather didn't see.  As I felt the stinging of my salty tears coursing down my winter-chapped cheeks, down my neck and under my sweatshirt, I noticed no one else in the room was crying.  

Quickly and quietly, I escaped the fortress of uncrying eyes into my bedroom where I buried my sobs into my pillow.  Those tears would not be lonely long.  Each night as the mini series continued on our only television, I would repeat my actions from the night before.  How could humans act so inhumane, so cruel to another living, breathing being?  The tears of an empath never cease, so my pillow barely had time to dry before I felt another soaker coming on.

Then came my 11th summer.  The summer I found my mother's Bible.  I was so curious about those petal-thin, almost see through pages.  And why were some of the words typed in black while others were red?  As I flipped thoughtfully through those delicate pages of the black leather bound Bible, I thought about my mother doing the same many years ago.  I was touching the same pages my mother's loving hands had also touched.  I found great comfort in that, until.... until I didn't.

I had thumbed through the last page of the New Testament and found a note written on the inside of the back cover.  The handwriting was strangely familiar and the words shook me to my very core.  I still feel my throat tighten from the tears I cried oh so many years ago.

The beginning was nondescript and benign, a simple prayer - one any young teen girl may have written.  But the final sentence would change everything.  My course as an innocent 11 year old suddenly took on a depth of suffering from which I still don't think I've fully recovered.

In a beautiful and lilting cursive script, I read the words - "Bless Mama and Layne in Heaven.  Amen, Linda."  

My mind raced as I tried to unread it, unfeel it, unknow it.

I had to flee!  I had to process!  I had to be alone!  But where and how?  It was summer and it would be dark before long.  I came out of my bedroom not yet crying and calmly looked my mom in the eyes and said, "Mom, I'm going to go for a walk around the block before it gets dark, ok?"

Patting me on the head in her cobbler apron and smelling of dish soap, she sweetly responded, "Okay babe.  Don't be long."

I started out the back screened in porch, then turned instinctively to hug her then ran out the door and continued to sprint further than around the block I had promised.  I had never run faster - I was running away from those thoughts, those truths, those words.  After about 20 minutes at that pace, I felt my heart pounding, so hard, as if it may burst from my chest.  Each of the words made my heart beat harder than the last.

"Bless mama", "Bless mama", "Bless mama in Heaven."  My mother HAD been a child and I had proof in  her own handwriting.  It was known to my siblings and I that my mother's mother died from complications of pneumonia when she was young, but it had finally sunk in, it was when my mom was 11, the age I was right now.  Would my mother die in my 11th year?  And who was Layne?

I lost myself that summer.  As I immersed myself in activities like catching lightning bugs, playing kick the can with neighbors and going to the pool with friends, I walked a path of fear and anxiety.  It would take 30 years to re-tell this story and a lifetime of regret for my actions upon returning home from that pivotal run.  I couldn't tear that page out of my mother's Bible as it was attached to the back cover.  Instead, I  took a sharpened number 2 pencil and for half an hour, I methodically scribbled out each and every word my mother so lovingly had written.  I was being irrational, thinking if I could no longer see the prayer, I could forget about it.  

All I had really done was taken a memory and forced it to beg to be known and understood.  It spoke to me then in the darkness of night and continues to speak to me today.