Purpose

Readers wrote

This post is a loose translation from Hebrew.  Recently I received the following blue text from a loyal reader of this blog:

Different philosophies/theories/thoughts claim that we arrived into this world for a certain reason.  That each and every one of us supposed to leave some sort of mark on this world (during his/her lifetime). 

And I was wondering:
Why did Liam had to go through this specific track in life, with all the associated suffering?

When you see how many people she touched;
What kind of change she made in their hearts;
The marks that she left on them;
Something becomes clear to me:  Things did not happen randomly.  It's all for a reason.

And if there's any consolation, maybe it is what Liam left here before moving on to a different world:
Simple joy.
Unconditional acceptance.
Love.
An incredible "instinct" or sense for life.    (Sorry, no good translation here...)
(The writer referred more to Liam's 14 years prior to the last, most difficult year of her life.)
My reply went something like this:

As you know, I'm not a big fan of such philosophies.  I think that since the [prehistoric] days that humanity just started people tried to find answers to the questions:
How did we come here?
Why are we here?
Where are we going when we die?
Etc., etc., etc.
And we will continue to ask those questions until, well, forever.  And, just like we didn't get anywhere with the answer in all those millions of years we're on earth, it's most unlikely, in my opinion, that we will never find answers any for them.  Definitely not in our lifetime.  (Well, never say never, but you get the idea.)  Thus, this is just a waste of time to bring those philosophies up and discuss them.  Just my opinion.

On the other hand, I realize that those who discuss such outlooks are completely equal to me both in their opinion and their knowledge.  We're equally all in the darkness of the unknown.  I don't have the right (and neither the wish) to criticize others' thoughts.  I realize that some of us "have to" feel "something" regarding our existence and find a reason for everything.  I'm not one of those.  Thus, I don't really care for these philosophies.  I simply live my life ignoring them.  And this, by the way, is MY entire philosophy about life:  I simply live them.  Period.  There's nothing to add here.  And when die, I'll simply die.  End of story.

(And in parenthesis and really not meant as criticism:   Maybe, just maybe this is how god, The God, you know, is being created?  We - human beings in general, not myself - feel or sense things that we don't understand completely or can't explain and have no way of finding out anything about them.  We make up answers and explanations and interpretations to things clearly beyond our grip.  And then we get used to our own creations and we pass them on generation to generation.  And on the way, throughout the thousands of years, some original meaning is getting lost and some new interpretations are being introduced.  And there you have it:  A new belief system, a religion. And I'm sure, oh yeah, I'm sure, that your rabbi or guru or bishop or imam (etc.) has the full explanation of what's happening in the "afterlife".  But, do they really know more than you and I?  How so?  Do you really believe so?  But, we're getting off track here.)

Back to Liam and the blue text above:
There are many people who leave an incredible mark on this world:  Napoleon, Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Kennedy....the list is long.  We don't have any answers where they came from, how they become who they were, or where they have gone (not including Ali, yet...)  Or, what ever happened to their soul (if there's is such a thing - their soul).  This all has to do with how I started this reply:  We have no idea where, what, why.  And that's the way it will stay forever. 
All that is left for me is to feel fortunate, incredibly fortunate, that I had Liam.  I leave the reasons why she came into this world and where she went to the philosophers among us.  Except for straight forward, scientific, medical explanations, I can't explain why she "had to" go through all the suffering.  It is what it is.  I don't spend time thinking about it.  I remember the good and happy Liam, not the suffering Liam of the past several months.  And I hope that this is the way it will stay and that the rest [of the bad stuff] will blow away with the wind.

Maybe what helps me to think of her as such, is because I was there, right next to her, in many of those suffering moments.  I mean, long hours.  I tried my best to help.  In the few moments that she was relieved of the pain, we took a breath.  We didn't ask why or what or how.  We just took a breath.  At some point, it was clear that there was little we could do to help beyond sedative medication.  When we decided to enter hospice - or, in blunt words: to end her life - our only wish was that she will never experience suffering again.  Not even for one thousandth of a second.  When she gave her last breath in this world, the suffering died too and for me there's no reason to look back.  For the entire last year we looked for a reason for the suffering.  We never found any.  Now it's time to move on and remember just the good times.  Enough with the bad stuff.

But, since we're already on the subject,  I don't see any  connection between the lesson she taught us all  and the suffering she went through.  In other words, she would have left the same incredible mark on us even without the suffering.  She was a special person.  Special people don't have to go through stuff in order to shine their light on the rest of us.  That's part of what makes them so special.

 There are those who are still looking for [other] answers:  What did Liam had?  Why did she went from a healthy, happy child to being really sick?  How suddenly she had blood and kidney problems?  What did she dies of?  Etc., etc., etc.  I don't give a damn about any of these questions.  Water under the bridge.  Had they performed autopsy on her, maybe it would have been interesting to know.  But they didn't (and we never talked about it and I'm glad we didn't.  I don't think it would have revealed anything.  And even if they did, what then?  She's gone, why is it important to know?)  When Liam was just born and arrived an NICU, somebody started a research of why she was born the way she did.  While I completely support the scientific aspect of such research, as a dad I didn't want or need it.  It already belonged to the past at that time.  She was already here.  All that was left was to see that she stays here.

To me the question is not "what happened" to Liam but quite the opposite:  With a malformed brain to begin with, which was additionally being attacked by tens of seizures a day, and after numerous difficult surgeries and other illnesses - after all of that (and really, much more) - how come Liam was still the positive, loving, laughing person that she was?  In the very last few months of her life, or maybe after she passed, I think that the medical field started also realizing we have something special here.  Nobody has an answer to the above for it cannot be measured in the lab, or viewed in an X-ray or MRI images, neither can it be listen to or smelled.  But really, it's not that important.  What IS important is the incredible presence she gave us and the memories she left.  What a gift.  I wouldn't want it to be any different (less her suffering, of course). 

A few months after Liam was born and the magnitude of her problems was known, somebody said how lucky she was to be born to parents like Rachel and myself.  Over the year I started feeling the same, just opposite:  How lucky we are to had her.