Sin, Memory, and Purgatory
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
—Eliot
“I have done that,” says my memory. “I cannot have done that,” says my pride, and remains adamant. At last—memory yields.
—Nietzsche
I’ve thought for a long time that part of the pain of purgatory might be the pain of seeing one’s sins for what they really are. If that’s true, I wonder if I may have begun my purgatory—if, as I pray, such is indeed my fate—early. For the past year or so some of the more egregious sins of my early life have been forcing themselves into my attention, and I’ve experienced directly the conflict described by Nietzsche, though with a different result.
The recognition, the reaction, and the partial resolution come in stages. First there is a sharp intense pain and dismay at recognizing what I really did. This may be something like what one would feel after having carelessly, but culpably, caused an auto accident that killed someone: No—that can’t be true—I know I shouldn’t have been speeding but I never meant to hurt anyone—it can’t really have been my fault—that person can’t really be dead.
Next come sorrow, regret, and remorse. These lead directly to a desperate imperative to undo what was done, and to be given another chance not to do it. The only time I can recall having felt so urgent a need to go back in time and try again was eight or ten years ago when my wife fell off a ladder and broke her leg very badly. I noticed in the days immediately following the accident that I couldn’t get rid of the idea that it must be possible to undo it, to rewind the tape, so to speak, and then change the part where the ladder fell—to make the ladder more stable, or to make her fall in a different and less damaging way. I knew it was impossible, yet the sense that it must be possible didn’t dissipate for several weeks. And in that case I had no personal responsibility or blame, the presence of which only increases the sense of desperation. (Well, no direct responsibility—a co-worker pointed out that I, not she, should have been on the ladder painting the eaves in the first place.)
Then comes a sort of painful calm, when the fact and the irreversibility of the events have been accepted, and accounting must be made. This is something like an autopsy and something like a legal trial: analysis of exactly what was done, and determination of guilt. Of course I always look for something that will remove the blame from me—something in the circumstances, some congenital weakness in myself over which I have no control and for which I am not to blame, some bit of knowledge which I lacked (if only I had known…) and which, being known, would have changed my course. At this stage I think often of one of my favorite Leonard Cohen lyrics:
I told my mother, “Mother, I must leave you.
Preserve my room but do not shed a tear.
Should rumors of a shabby ending reach you
It was half my fault and half the atmosphere.”—“The Traitor,” from Recent Songs
But even if I manage to put part of the blame on the world and the times, in the end there is always the inner voice saying You knew what you were doing. You knew you were ignoring the voice of conscience, and you did such a good job that you can almost, but not quite, pretend you didn’t hear it. No one forced you. You could have done otherwise. The fact that you didn’t foresee all the outcome does not mean you lacked the knowledge not to have done it.
I can well imagine that without the promise of forgiveness and redemption and healing—not just of myself, but of everyone affected—without the promise that All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, this would be intolerable, and one would always resort to the lie described by Nietzsche: this is not true. The only reason it’s not hell is that there is a way out.
In saying that this might be the beginning of purgatory for me, I don’t mean to imply that I think it can be finished in this life. I’m speaking here of things that happened forty or so years ago; the reckoning for today will always be yet to come, right up until the final moment—and of course the punishment, although I do think this sort of knowledge is a kind of recompense in itself.
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