Listener to the Dead

Solidarity in our shared humanity

Looking west down Mill Creek, San Bernardino National Forest

Orson Scott Card is best known for his classic science fiction novel Ender’s Game that began the Ender Saga. I actually prefer its sequel, Speaker for the Dead. In it, protagonist Ender Wiggins devotes the remainder of his life to being a “speaker for the dead” in which capacity he tells a person’s life story to their family and community after they have died. More than simply orating a biography however, Ender speaks as the deceased, giving voice to their harbored pains and joys (and deep dark secrets) and allowing those they knew to understand the individual in their entirety, warts and all. In so doing, the community and loved ones of the deceased could forgive, mourn and celebrate the complex person who had passed instead of a eulogized caricature.

Superficially, this practice opposes my own understanding of honoring the deceased. As we remember those who have passed away, is it not preferable to focus on their best attributes and minimize their unsavory characteristics? We are uncomfortable illuminating the dark, cobwebbed corners of a loved one’s life, especially after they have passed and reasons for refraining from this are usually well-intentioned.

And yet our best intentions also reduce the deceased from a person who was beautifully complex in their layers of contradictions into a two-dimensional depiction. The hardship (and even the maladaptive behaviors) were just as much a part of the person as were their best attributes. And this idea is as true for the living as for the dead.

When speaking about a friend, I might say they are bold, intelligent and compassionate. An Ender-esque speaker might say: He grew up in a troubled home and was physically abused by his step-father and he chooses to live differently with his family, most of the time choosing kindness over yelling and volunteers at a local homeless shelter and wrestles with his worth and often fears he is not doing enough to make the world a better place.

The last little blurb is more descriptive and exposes some of my (fictional) friend’s shortcomings. Yet it is the discussion of his weaknesses and hurts that gives me an appreciation for his “good” qualities. Exposing his struggles in fact does the opposite of what one might expect; I have a far greater appreciation for my friend because I have seen where he has come from and how he continues to fight to be his best self. My response to his brief biography is “I’m starting to see him now.”

Personally, being known is far more meaningful than being placed on a pedestal. A chief joy I have experienced in marriage is being known by my wife and knowing her better than anyone else in her life. The intimacy afforded by being known and in knowing someone far exceeds that of idealization which distances us from whom we idealize. Idealization can provide a sense of knowing and of intimacy, but it is fragile. To maintain our view of our ideal, we have to censor the information we use to create our ideal. And when our idealized version of our loved one falls short (as it inevitably will), our relationship with that person is threatened because we have grown close to our ideal of the person.

Borrowing Card’s terminology, I think we all can and should be “listeners for the living and dead.” It is not our responsibility to speak about the lives of everyone we know and have known in the way Card describes the “speaker for the dead” orating the life story of the deceased. Unless you are looking for an expedient way to lose most of your friends or to mercilessly chop away at your relationships with the blunt machete of “full disclosure”, there are countless better life decisions. And yet I do think there is value in listening to the stories of the living and the dead in a way that honors their beautiful and messy complexity.

The other day as I was talking with a patient about their history of trauma and abuse, I realized that I was likely one of the first to hear their story. I was humbled. My patient entrusted me with their story. This experience gave meaning to my work as I went about writing their admission note. It transformed a normally tedious task into a sacred and deeply meaningful endeavor. I had been entrusted with my patient’s story and I wanted to tell it well. I aspired that my work would reflect the importance of the fragile life I had just encountered.

While my work as a psychiatry resident consistently places me in the nosebleed section of stories of trauma and darkness, I think we all are given small glimpses of the humanity of those around us. Perhaps I notice the little girl sitting with her mom at the bus stop on Christmas or the waiter who always greets my children with a smile and helps carry my takeout order to my car. A couple weeks ago my daughter had oral thrush and I went on a late-night trip to a 24-hour pharmacy in nearby San Bernardino. I paused when I noticed a woman who had just walked in from working on the street who was browsing the family planning section.

These moments and individuals deserve recognition. They need to be witnessed and acknowledged, even if that acknowledgement is simply reverent silence. To give witness to suffering or joy is to partake in human experience; it brings us closer to one another, and if we allow it, closer to God. Have you ever witnessed something that left you in silent wonderment? Have you ever seen a homeless woman hit herself as she walked along the road, shouting at people you could not see? Or a child dance to a song while they bobbed their head and tried to remain standing on their still-unsteady feet? These experiences, though commonplace, are profound. Suffering and joy are juxtaposed throughout our days and lives, blended in a way that is both beautiful and heartbreaking.

To be a listener for the living and dead simply means to be a witness to these experiences, speaking about them when appropriate and bearing silent witness when not. When we view our experiences through this lens, the mundane elements of life transform into opportunities of sacrament and to interact with life as a “listener” draws us to the so-called edge habitat that exists between the spiritual and the everyday.