A Happy Marriage and a Lonely Death

I have been spending time reading Rafael Yglesias’ novel A Happy Marriage. The novel, loosely based off the author’s own experience of meeting, falling-in-love, and marrying his own wife only to lose her to cancer 30 years later. The novel alternates between the characters Enrique and Margaret’s few weeks of courtship and the last few weeks of her life. Told entirely from the perspective of Enrique, we are given a first hand look into the emotional anguish he experiences as he faces the death of his beloved. In this paragraph, we see the true solitude in facing the death of a loved one:

He could not and did not ask Margaret or his boys for comfort. His father was dead. His mother too old and too self-pitying to be a solace. His in-laws too frightened and too bereft themselves. His half brother, Leo, to anxious and too selfish. His male friends too distant from the realities and too uncomprehending of the experience. Margaret’s best friend, Lily, too preoccupied comforting Margaret and herself. His half sister, Rebecca, who had been present and understanding and so great a help, could spell and reassure him, but she could not provide, no one could provide, what he had forsaken for nearly three years, what cancer had taken from him, and would soon take from him forever: Margaret’s attention.

Thank God I do not understand Enrique’s suffering. How could I? For each person’s suffering is unique is his own way. The best I could offer is my own sufferings.

But more to the point, thank God I have never had to face the loss of Lindsay. I do not think I could cope. It is something I do not wish to face, nor think it particularly helpful or healthy to speculate on what losing her young to a drawn out terminal illness might do to my psychological state.

What strikes me about Enrique’s pain is the solitude he faces. For thirty years Margaret has been his life and he is now facing a life without her, he is alone. Sure, he has children. Sure, he has family. He has friends. But there is no one to enter into his suffering. To know it as their own.

As I’ve read through this book and glimpsed into the mind of a tortured soul, I can’t help but think of Jurgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God. At it’s heart, it is a profound theological reflection on Jesus Christ’s final cry from the cross: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.”

Traditionally, theologians and pastors have interpreted this in a number of ways. Most link it to a doctrine of the atonement similar to that of Anselm’s satisfaction theory where Jesus Christ made restitution on the cross for the sins of humanity. Or closely related is the penal theory where Jesus Christ is punished for the sins of humanity. In both theories there is a transaction between God the Father and God the Son where either Jesus incurs the wrath of God or makes a payment to God.

What Moltmann did was flip the transactional theories on their head and address the cross of Jesus that lead to his death as a death within the life of God. So not only did Jesus Christ suffer and died and experienced the throes of a godforsaken existence, but God the Father suffered in the real loss of his beloved Son. Thus, Moltmann argues, there is mutual suffering within the life of God in the death of Christ. This, of course, would frustrate those whose who deny the passion of God the Father.

But, I ask, what God has something to say to the suffering of Enrique? The God who punishes his beloved Son? The God who pours out his wrath upon the cross? Or is it the God who has foolishly and riskily loved and lost? The God who knows the solitude of death?