“Death ends a life, not a relationship.” ~ Tuesdays with Morrie
A parent’s love doesn’t end simply because a child leaves this earth.
The relationship is not over as long as a bereaved parent’s heart beats.
So we face a challenge: How do we express love to and honor relationship with a child out of sight and out of reach?
We tell our stories and theirs. We start foundations or fund scholarships or do Random Acts of Kindness in honor of our son or daughter. We lobby legislators and city councils. We fight for changes in medical protocol. We post pictures on social media to keep their lights bright in friends’ and family’s memories.
And we say their names.
Because death can take a body, but it can’t steal a relationship.
One of the most interesting (and best) pieces of advice on relationships I ever read was this: Imagine the person with whom you contend as an infant or a very elderly individual.
Try it.
Pick someone who rubs you the wrong way every which way to Sunday and think about him or her as a tiny baby or a frail and feeble grandparent.
I’ll wait.
Did you feel some of the hostility melt away when the image of your “thorn in the flesh” as a helpless human came into focus?
It works every time for me. It doesn’t mean that I won’t have to address any underlying issues between me and whoever. But it does tame the mean and vengeful out of me.
It makes me tender when I talk to a friend or family member about a testy topic. It helps me be kind to the cashier who has picked now to count out her drawer just as it’s my turn after I’ve been waiting in a long line. It moderates my reaction from road rage to a more appropriate and safe, “Oh, well!” when cut off in traffic.
It makes it easier for me to be gentle.
Gentle: 1. having or showing a mild, kind or tender, temperament or character; 2. moderate in action, effect or degree; not harsh or severe.
~Google Dictionary
Truth is we are surrounded every day by people who are one unkind word away from falling apart. We drive down the highway with strangers whose lives are filled with pain. We work and eat and worship and play with folks who carry wounds we know nothing about.
I don’t have to understand everything about someone to appreciate that there is more than meets the eye. All of us have scars and secrets, stress and strain, unmet needs and unseen struggles.
So I try to give the benefit of the doubt, assume the best, extend grace, be humble, choose love.
I want to walk gently among my fellow humans.
At minimum I hope to do no harm. At best I hope to encourage another heart to hang on and keep trying. Most of the time I probably fall somewhere in between.
I want to be everything my living children need me to be.
I try hard to celebrate them, be available, listen closely and love them well.
I never, ever want them to feel they are competing with their missing brother for my affection or my attention.
But I’d be lying if I said it was always easy.
Sometimes the happy moment so closely resembles a shared memory that includes Dominic, my heart takes my head in directions I wish it wouldn’t go. Sometimes it’s a long awaited once-in-a-lifetime occasion and Dom’s absence is a giant, gaping hole everywhere I look.
It’s really hard to be stuck at the crossroad of being happy for a child still here while mourning and missing the child that’s gone.
I’ve had to do that many, many times in the five years since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven and I’ve found a couple of things that help.
I put something in my pocket or wear a piece of jewelry that is a token of my love for Dominic.
It helps me feel as if he’s represented even if no one else knows about it. Then I lean in and take hold of the celebration as best as I can.When I feel overwhelmed, I touch my little token and/or escape to a quiet corner or bathroom for a minute or two and collect myself.
I also try to do something called “pre-grieving”.
I allow myself time early in the morning of an event to be alone and cry if I need to. If the tears won’t come, I listen to music that helps my heart reach that place of release. I journal my feelings. I walk through the day and admit where it might be especially challenging. I think through how I can deal with that and make a plan.
It makes a difference.
So much has been stolen from my surviving children.
I have been guilty of this more times than I ‘d like to admit.
I assume someone else’s feelings mirror my own and act on that assumption by withdrawing or not showing up or “giving them space”.
But the problem is, most times, on reflection, I realize my action (or inaction) was really all about sparing my own feelings or staying within my own comfort zone.
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
For so much of my life, I thought sucking it up and faking away the pain showed true strength. But real strength is identifying a wound and asking God to enter it. We are robbing ourselves of a divine mystery and a divine intimacy when we pretend to have it all together. In fact, we lose an entire vocabulary from our prayers when we silence the reality of our pain. If questions and cries and laments are not cleaned up throughout Scripture, then why are we cleaning them up or removing them completely from our language?
~Esther Fleece, No More Faking Fine
Social media is replete with memes, stories and “pass this on and Jesus will bless you” messages that imply if only our faith is strong enough or our hope steadfast enough things will be alright.
But sometimes they aren’t!
So when I see posts about a survival story and another family spared the awful journey my family must make, I am truly thankful but my heart cries out, “Why him and not MY son?”
It was a long, long time before my first reaction to someone surviving an awful car accident or motorcycle accident (my son died on his motorcycle-instantly) was joy for the family of the one that survived.
I would have a moment of relief for them (that they didn’t have to suffer this pain) but then my mind went to the place I wish I didn’t-why them and not us?
One of the hardest tasks in this journey has been to lay aside the questions I know won’t be answered before Heaven and to learn to live in the now with them tucked away.
I’m better at rejoicing but I still can’t tolerate talk of “miracles” (even if it really IS a miracle) or “answered prayers” or “prayer works” or someone trying to justify why one person dies and another lives in the same circumstances.
I can tolerate mystery but not men’s attempts to explain away God’s working in the world.
So I have learned to let it out in the privacy of my own prayer closet or journal and beg God to pour more mercy and grace into my broken heart. Pretending it’s OK doesn’t help me or anyone else. Lament allows me to exhale my doubts, questions and disappointment and make room to inhale the truth that the Lord is faithful and that He loves me.
I know my Redeemer lives and that every promise of God in Christ is “yes” and “amen”.
I hang onto that truth, even when my heart begs for more.
Because I have absolutelyNO IDEAif anyone is aware of the passage of time in Heaven or if birthdays are even a thing there.
So instead of celebrating another year with my third born, I’m celebrating the years I had with him-too few as far as my heart’s concerned.
I am oh, so thankful for the time I had.
But my heart cries, “More! More!”
I’m no good at this “birthday in absentia” thing. This is the sixth time May 28th has rolled around without Dominic here to eat cake, open presents or break his usually strict dieting rules and gobble down pasta.
A couple of years I’ve purchased a cake in secret at a local bakery for a child that shares Dom’s birthday.
Most years I’ve quietly remembered the events leading to his birth including what now feels like a prescient experience: my obstetrician’s nurse came into the room as I was waiting for a C-section delivery and whispered, “Dr. H is here, but his daughter completed suicide yesterday”. *
When they brought Dom close to my head so I could kiss him before they whisked him away and sewed me up, tears streamed down my face. I really had NO CLUE, but I realized (in a tiny way) that this man was here ushering life into the world as his own heart was breaking for a life that was no more.
All I could say was, “Thank you! I am so, so sorry.”
And I meant it.
Now I know what it cost him to be there. What it cost him to see a family made larger at the moment his (earthly) family had been made smaller.
This year we are at my oldest son’s home savoring the first precious moments holding our grandson. Born too early, his story could have ended badly.
It didn’t and for that I am thankful.
Ryker’s original due date was May 27th-one day before Dominic’s birthday.
It’s fitting that we have a new life to celebrate even as we celebrate missing Dom.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to merge these two lives, these opposite feelings, this joy and sorrow meeting in my heart.
I vacillate between overwhelming sadness and overwhelming gratitude that my grandson’s story is beautiful, remarkable, nearly miraculous.
So today I will try to honor Dominic-who he was, who he still is (even more so and perfectly in Heaven!) and the precious gift of another generation to love, nurture and cherish.
I’ll try to lay aside the awful knowledge I carry in my heart that any day things can change. What you never think can happen DOES happen.
I’ll celebrate love.
Because love lives forever.
Always.
*Dominic was killed instantly in a single vehicle motorcycle accident April 12, 2014.
There may be some mamas that don’t drill this into their children but if there are, they don’t live south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Every time there was back and forth in the back seat or on the front porch and Mama overheard, we were told, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.”
Parents weren’t interested in policing every errant word out of the under 18 crowd’s mouth back in the day.
It was a simple (and effective!) rule: If what you want to say does not meet the criteria of T.H.I.N. K. (true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, kind) then
All the preparation and anticipation meet under a covered outdoor chapel as my daughter and her fiance exchange vows and become one.
By the end of the evening, we will have laughed (and cried!), danced and toasted our way through this very important event.
And they will leave changed in ways they can’t imagine nor fully understand. It takes time to grow into lifelong commitment.
It takes years for singleness to be sanded down to a perfect fit one for the other.
Weddings are fun.
Marriage is work.
My parents have been married for 58 years. My husband and I for nearly 35. None of us has a magic formula for marital longevity. Mostly it’s been leaning into the commitment we made at the altar so many years ago even when it seemed easier to give up and give in.
We’ve all faced so many challenges in our decades together. Some we saw coming and some landed suddenly on top of us without warning. Life, death, moving house, illness, accident, floods, hurricanes, and dozens of smaller crises have forced us to change course, adjust our sails and adapt to new and often unwelcome directions. But we haven’t abandoned ship.
Sometimes it’s been pure grit and determination that see us through. Other times it’s holding on to the good things we’ve shared together.
I’m thankful we are celebrating today.
I’ll be tucking this memory in a safe place where I can pull it out on days that aren’t so beautiful.
It’s my prayer that Fiona and Brandon do the same.
When life gets hard (and it will!) may they remember the promises they made to one another and weather the storms together.
Now this is the reason a man leaves his father and his mother, and is united with his wife; and the two become one flesh.
So we face a challenge: How do we express love to and honor relationship with a child out of sight and out of reach?
