I’ve not written about my most recent therapy work with Red, work with young veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, Jerry is one of the reasons why. Jerry suffered severe head and other injuries from an explosion while patrolling outside of Baghdad, he has spent four years trying to get his head and his life straight, suffering from rage, depression, trauma and great physical pain and confusion.  Soon after we saw him in Vermont, his mother contacted me to say that Jerry hung himself in the garage of their home, “he just lost hope,” she said, she thought he could not handle Christmas.

I did not know Jerry long or well – he did love Red – and I felt a good deal of rage at the old men who send young people off to war and then forget about them when they come home. Jerry may have been brave on the battlefield, he was braver in the war after – struggling through bureaucracy, pills, indifference and humiliation at home.

It has happened to many thousands of young men. I felt some guilt about Jerry – was there something I should have done? – before collecting myself, this was not about me, it was not my tragedy, there was nothing I could have done. I remember Jerry telling me that ever since Iraq, he found life a club he could not find a way to join, or re-join. Too many voices in his head now, he said. He left a wife and two young children and joined the company of many thousands of very young men who have committed suicide after going to  wars that nobody wants to talk about any longer.

The holidays seem to highlight the fragility in so many of us, despite the great pressure to feel joy and buy a lot of shiny new things. Many people do feel joy – I never mean to forget them or dismiss their happiness or make them feel guilty about it – many cannot.  I know a number of people who are losing friends, parents, dogs this week, life is sometimes a test of our highest expectations. This week I have been re-reading one of the most famous sermons of the great author and theologian C.S. Lewis, he called it the “Inner Ring,” and I thought of Jerry and of me and many others had the idea to write a series about the idea of acceptance and life outside of the “inner rings.” Perhaps it is a need.

Lewis warned that life sometimes seems to consist of a maze of inner rings, exclusive groups, gatherings, organizations and communities that people outside are trying to get into. “They are everywhere,” he wrote,”in our workplaces, our schools, our governments, and our churches. They are the unwritten hierarchies that claim to give those who are admitted a place, identity, and value.” I know this feeling well, I’ve felt it my entire life.

We all know the draw of the “inner ring,” Jerry wanted back in, I have often looked afar at literary stars, decorated academics, people with a lot of money, and wondered why I couldn’t get in, it is human nature. I’m reading a book about Washington called “This Town” by Mark Leibovich and he writes of our gilded capital as a place of inner rings – journalists, lobbyists, lawyers, contractors, politicians, government aides and White House luminaries – the people they all presume to serve locked out of the system, kept at bay.

Lewis warns of the great moral dangers in wanting to join the inner rings, we will not, he says, find what we are looking for once we get inside, we often have to compromise our very souls to get in. So I want to write this week about the inner rings and about acceptance. Accepting who we are and loving ourselves for it. Accepting that death is the twin cousin of life, they are each a part of the other.

Death and sorrow seem to come as a great shock to so many people, we somehow think we can stave it off, deny it, push it away. No many how many times we learn otherwise, this is not a lesson that seems to get shared, or perhaps it is not a lesson people ever want to hear. Is it in our nature to deny the reality of life?, is that how we get through it?

Hospice and therapy work have shown me the grace with which so many people accept life – and death. C.S. Lewis teaches me to accept who I am and come to peace with the nature of life – mine and others. I’m going to write about that all of this week, I’m dedicating the series to Jerry and thinking of his Mother this Christmas. And to all of us who live outside of the inner ring.