He asked how it felt to get hit by lightning.

March 3, 2022 9:07 PM

Does my son know you?- Jonathan Tjarks from The Ringer, not talking about sports, but about his cancer diagnosis, and his wrestling both with his own imminent mortality, and his efforts to build a childhood full of family for his son.

A follow up of sorts to Tjarks writing last year, The Long Night of the Soul. Both pieces focus on his faith, and trying to reconcile his illness with it.

posted by Ghidorah (10 comments total)

I absolutely agree with him on "found family." I LOVE the idea, but in real life, those eventually die away when you don't have a reason to see people on a regular basis, bio-family trumps everything, etc. And if your own family sucks....

My dad died of a Parkinson's plus disease and I absolutely agreed that my dad was gone long before he was actually technically gone.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:07 PM on March 3, 2022 [4 favorites]

Thank you, Ghidorah.

I was struck by the lie that friends can be family as told by the modern media, and how he hopes that his friends will be around for his son, anyway.

Powerful gut punches.
posted by freethefeet at 11:10 PM on March 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

For all the criticisms of Christianity, the bible contains a lot of really insightful writing about life.

The verse that Tjarks quotes in the earlier piece just grabbed me today: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27.) And the lines that he writes about in the main link are similar: they are relevant and direct and feel true.

My kids are teens now and they complain about going to Mass, but I remember being that age and my dad telling me, "Someday when you need this [i.e., religion] it will be there for you." He'd seen his dad die when he was younger than I am now, and knew from heartache.

I often think about my dad saying that to me. It was a clear message that youthful vigor is no replacement for wisdom and experience. I'm learning, Dad, and trying to pass it on -- but the kids just aren't quite ready to hear it yet.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:59 AM on March 4, 2022 [5 favorites]

The found family thing notably differed from my experience as a middle aged queer person.. I am absolutely part of a culture where chosen family bonds are stronger than genetic ones, and that's nothing to do with Friends or pop culture formulations of friendship. But the piece is very moving and I belive the author that this chosen family thing is true for him.
posted by latkes at 8:11 AM on March 4, 2022 [11 favorites]

I was struck by the lie that friends can be family as told by the modern media, and how he hopes that his friends will be around for his son, anyway.

Church can work like this. I think it's a hard experience to capture in a megachurch. But for the particular parish I grew up in--one of my mom's best friends from my childhood was a church friend, and they still see each other regularly even though the friend now lives in a remote rural area. (The other one lived across the hall from us in a tenant-run co-op, which meant everyone was semi-up in everyone else's business all the time anyway, doing the necessary activities as well as the social ones to maintain the building. That relationship, too, has lasted.) Had my dad died when I was a child, of course we would have remained part of that church community (which included what we called "small group," aka "the most boring Tuesday night possible for small children in the next room"). That wouldn't even have been a question. My mom is still bopping around with those two ladies long after my dad fell out of the picture.

When I see you in heaven, there’s only one thing I’m going to ask—Were you good to my son and my wife? Were you there for them? Does my son know you?

This bugs me a little, though. It's not that I begrudge him placing his young son's interest highest, especially in the situation he's in. But the Bible passages he quotes: that's about societal obligations. Not just to your friend's kid. To all fatherless children. So that shouldn't be the only thing he's going to ask. The narcissism of turning universal (and thus awkward) commands into ones for your own/your immediate social network's benefit...it's a super common evangelical tactic to try to finesse the excruciating difficulty of being commanded to show universal charity and seek universal justice.
posted by praemunire at 9:34 AM on March 4, 2022 [5 favorites]

The found family thing notably differed from my experience as a middle aged queer person.. I am absolutely part of a culture where chosen family bonds are stronger than genetic ones

Agreed. I'm going on thirty years with a created family of friends, and it's been infinitely more stable, supportive and consistent than maybe all but one member of my biological family.
posted by thivaia at 10:14 AM on March 4, 2022 [7 favorites]

Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27.)

I like this discussion a lot but I feel it necessary to push back on this type of thinking. I like the sentiment. I wish life fit this feeling but it's just wrong. Yes!, prudential concern and forethought can clearly - in ways that I'm not going to be explicit about because it should obvious - extend the duration and joy of our existence.

My understanding of what it's saying is that we should focus on the here and now and the things that are likely and practicable to happen because those are, all things being equal, the things that will be. But, damn, if there aren't some temporal needles to thread sometimes. I'm afraid of people who don't worry.

It's a very Christian - be sure I'm using that in an appreciative sense - attitude to have but it's also one that only really makes sense in a world constructed around divine providence - to the detriment of Christians and non-Christians (or areligious) alike. It's one of those funny parts of Christian belief that makes me doubt its very attractive core by its implication there's something awry with the "meta" of Christianity in the "opiate of the masses" sense.

Anyways, my apologies if this is non-constructive for the discussion at hand.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 3:32 AM on March 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

My experience as a mother was shaped by my mother in law's cancer, as each milestone in my first child's life was witnessed by someone diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, and a very limited number of years remaining. My kid read his first books to her in her bed, not long before she died.

She was very religious, but in an observant Conservative Judaism sense, all keeping kosher and taking her kids to synagogue.

In the end, she struggled a great deal with her situation, asking her rabbi why God would do this to her, even though she had done everything right - raising three kids to be good people and good Jews.

She left behind a family shattered by her passing. We never fully recovered, not as a group.

But the passages in Isaiah and Exodus quoted by the author, about defending the widow and the orphan, get at the core of what I see as good religion: Social justice, compassion, taking care of those who are marginalized.

If there is a God, it's not someone who decided that my mother in law lived or died. God is found in what human beings can do for each other, at our best.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 4:01 AM on March 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

I would be very surprised if his vision of having many of his friends involved in his son's life comes to pass. In a moment of crisis, people think they're going to step up for years and years, but they rarely do, even for much shorter times. He will be very lucky if one of his friends shows up for his son in the way he wants.

My brother died young of cancer (age 31), and I have cancer now - considered incurable, but it's possible I'll live for years, though the current protocol is treatment that never stops. The people who really show up and keep showing up are wonderful and amazing, but very, very rare. And some people drop out of your life altogether. I really liked Kate Bowler's book about her colon cancer, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lives I've Loved, but it was really hard to read about how wonderful her friends have been -traveling from out of state to accompany her for chemo, while I go to the cancer center alone, even pre-COVID, week after goddamn week for the rest of my life.
posted by FencingGal at 6:08 AM on March 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

The found family thing notably differed from my experience as a middle aged queer person.. I am absolutely part of a culture where chosen family bonds are stronger than genetic ones

Also important is to remember that you can make new family at any time and age. When my mom ended her life to avoid the final ravages of breast cancer last year her closest friends and best helpers were people she had only known since my parents moved into their condo in their late seventies. Thank goodness they were there too because my brother and I were both in the US and covid-19 kept us from visiting as much as we should have.
posted by srboisvert at 7:19 AM on March 5, 2022 [1 favorite]