I’ve written before that I am oh, so thankful I had NO IDEA Dominic would leave us that early April morning in 2014.
It would have cast an awful shadow over all those years we were blessed with his presence.
But there are some things I wish I’d known.
I wish I had known how hard it is to conjure up his voice now that it’s been nearly six years since I heard it.
I would have taken more short videos, just to have his laugh, his sarcasm, his deep mellow “Hey!” handy on my phone for the moments when I long to hear it. I wouldn’t have erased the backlog of recorded messages on the landline just one day earlier.
I wish I had known there were so few photographs of us together.
I would have gotten over myself much sooner and stuck my fat bottom in every shot my family begged me to take. I would have made certain there was at least one of him and me on each birthday, at special occasions and when he graduated high school and college. I was always the one taking them, organizing something or just to self-conscious to be in the picture.
I wish I had saved more cards, notes and random bits of flotsam from over the years with his words, his handwriting, his childish drawings.
Just a month before he left us, I cleaned out two decades of home schooling records and carelessly tossed so many bits of him into the bed of my truck, hauling it to the dump. Back then it felt like I was unburdening myself of too much paper and too many frivolous memories. Now it feels like an incalculable loss.
I would have listened more often to the wonderful sound of his drums banging away upstairs.
I took a walk most afternoons and Dominic timed his practice for when I was out of the house because it was so very loud. It was considerate and kind. And I DID get to hear him through the windows as I made my rounds but I really, really wish I’d just stopped and fully appreciated his talent.
I could list so many more ways I’d have arranged life differently-if I had KNOWN.
But I didn’t.
So I make my way through another spring, remembering, remembering, remembering.
A year ago I was in the same city under very different circumstances.
My first grandson had been born at just over 28 weeks because his mama developed HELLP syndrome and was in mortal danger. Both he and she were in the hospital while we held our collective breath, begging for them to be OK.
We were filled with quiet but uneasy joy knowing as we do how death can come to steal it away.
This Sunday, family and friends gathered to watch this little guy grab his first birthday cake with gusto and smear his mama and daddy with blue icing.
You’d never know he got such a tentative start in life just by looking at him.
Grateful is too small a word for how we feel.
Melanie ❤
THIS YEAR:
LAST year:
Last week was a roller coaster.
My first grandchild-a boy-was born prematurely on Saturday after several days of heart stopping, breath robbing drama as his mama went back and forth to the hospital three times in as many days.
My son, his father, is deployed overseas and paddling as fast as he can to get home.
My friend and fellow bereaved mom, Margaret Franklin, Ryan’s mom, shared a beautiful Dutch word with me “Sterkte” (pronounced STAIRK-tah).
It literally translates “strength” or “power” but culturally means much more. It means bravery, strength, fortitude and endurance in the face of fear and insumountable odds through the empowering strength of God in me.
I have loved Scripture as long as I can remember. When I was in second grade I got the notion to read the whole Bible straight through-in the King James Version. I made it to Leviticus before I threw in the towel.
By the time my kids were grown I had read and studied Scripture for decades.
But three years before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I realized my reading had become rote-I felt like I “knew” all the stories. So I slowed my study to a crawl-only one chapter a day-and I usually copied the whole chapter plus my notes into a journal. I had just finished this time through the Bible in January before Dom was killed in April.
And all that truth stored in my mind and heart was what I “read” for months when my eyes were too full of tears to see print on a page.
I can’t stop the clock or the sun or the days rolling by.
Those of us who are more than a couple months along in this journey (or any journey that involves tragedy and loss) know that it is ABSOLUTELY POSSIBLEto feel worse than in the first few days.
Maybe it’s the time of year or maybe I’m just more attentive to the questions of others right now.
Whatever the reason, I’ve encountered so many hurting hearts recently struggling to square their experience of devastating loss with their faith in a loving and all-powerful God.
I write about my own struggle over and over in this space but this series of posts is an orderly exploration of doubt, pain, faith and the hope I’ve found in Christ Jesus.
When my perfectly healthy, strong and gifted son was killed instantly in a motorcycle accident on April 12. 2014 my world fell apart. My heart shattered into a million pieces. And after three and a half years, I’ve yet to even FIND all of those pieces much less put them back together.
So what does a heart do when that happens?Because, try as I might, I cannot stop time.
Even THAT awful day only lasted 24 hours.
When the sun rose again, the pain was still there. And behind that pain and mixed with it was something else-disappointment, disaffection, distrust.
A mom who is also coming up on her season of sorrow this spring wrote that she felt like screaming and throwing things.
I get it.
And because I live in the middle of the woods, far from neighbors or nosy passers-by, I’ve done it.
Sometimes I walk in the woods and just holler out my questions, my pain, my indignation that this is my life.
Other times I cry as loud as I want to, not trying to hold in the sobs.
When I’m really angry that it will soon be seven years since Dominic has crossed the threshold of home, I take old eggs and toss them at trees. I work myself to a frazzle stacking sticks to burn. I use my clippers and chop away at underbrush, releasing pent up feelings with every satisfying snap of a twig.
The longer it is since his leaving, the more I feel I need to have it together in public. Others have long moved on and my tears are inexplicable to those who have forgotten.
And while I have gotten stronger and better able to carry this load called “child loss” this time of year makes it all fresh again.
The pressure builds with no place to go.
It’s going to force its way through the weakest part of my character if I don’t release it on purpose.
So I do.
If you need me, I’ll be outside for the next few weeks.
Driving down the road I look to the right at the pond overflowing its banks and find myself drifting out of the lane and onto the shoulder.
I never intend to run off the road.
But I steer where I stare. Every time.
I do the same thing with my thought life.
Even before Dominic left us I realized that if I stared long enough and hard enough at the challenges before me (educating and raising four children), the world around me (full of danger and potential danger) or the looming prospect of some giant future obligation, I’d drift from the firm foundation of peace and contentment in Christ and end up in an ocean of worry and despair.
It was critical that I redirect my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection to Jesus and I used Scripture to help me do just that.
I remember the first time I copied out and held onto this verse:
Dominic was only six months old and I absolutely, positively HAD to have my gallbladder removed. I was anxious about leaving him and his siblings for the twenty-four hour hospital stay and even more anxious to be placed under general anesthesia.
The last time I’d been wheeled down a hospital hallway for an operation other than a cesarean section was as a three year old.
There’s something very eerie and frightfully final about having that mask placed over your nose and being asked to count backwards. I didn’t count. Instead I repeated my verse.
And when Dominic ran ahead to Heaven, this was one of the verses that helped my heart hold on.
What was once a good habit became a lifeline.
Peace was elusive in those first days, months and even years, but I clung desperately to the truth that if I continued to meditate on, recite and copy out God’s Word my heart would eventually hear it.
Life may be swirling all around me, threatening to steal my hope, my peace, my joy. But I am declaring right now that I will not be swept up into a storm of fear and wild emotions. The Lord has promised me that He will keep me in perfect peace when I fix my mind on Him. I very much recognize I will steer where I stare. So I must watch what I fixate on. If I keep staring at the wrong things, I’ll go in wrong directions. I am choosing to place my attention on the Lord in this very moment. I am choosing to focus on trusting Him and believing His promises. And as I steer my attention more and more toward Him, His peace will come and flood my heart and settle my anxious mind.You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. (Isaiah 26:3)
Lisa TerKeurst, It’s Not Supposed to be This Way
My heart is headed somewhere.
Focusing solely on what I’ve lost, what I’m afraid of, or the emotional and relational storm around me will lead to despair.
When I lift my eyes and fix my gaze on Jesus, He will lead me to hope.
When I reach out my hand for the edge of His garment, He will help me hold on.
thelifeididntchoose