It’s just not comforting for my heart to think my son is looking down on me from Heaven.
I can’t reconcile the idea that he might be watching my sorrow with what the Bible says about Heaven being a place of joy and peace.
But I do love the idea that he’s outside time and so isn’t “waiting” on reunion the same way I am.
No matter how many years it may be, it will be only a “blink of an eye” for him. ❤
This past weekend was an emotional one.
My deployed son began his trek back home to his wife and newborn son.
My youngest son went on the bachelor trip with his soon to be brother-in-law and was incommunicado for almost 72 hours which always makes me nervous.
My daughter’s wedding is only a few weeks away and there is so much to do. Fun things. Things I want to do.
My companion animal and faithful sidekick died two weeks ago and I haven’t been sleeping nearly as well as I did before
It was the fifth anniversary of Dominic’s death and funeral.
I didn’t cry, but then I did.
And I couldn’t stop.
I just couldn’t stop.
How in the world can it be five years? I can’t explain it to anyone who hasn’t buried a child. But I keep trying. The giant chasm between what I thought life would be like and what it actually turned out to be is so wide that it’s impossible to comprehend. I’m living it and I can’t comprehend it.
I am trying so, so hard to participate.
I’m working at keeping grief at bay and leaning into the life I have without constantly comparing it to the life I thought I would have or the life I wanted instead. I’m purposing to keep my expectations low so I won’t be disappointed.
But it’s not working.
I think I’m just at the end of my personal resources. I think I’ve exhausted any reserve I might have had. I’m leaning into Truth and holding onto the hem of His garment.
I know it won’t always be this way.
The tears will dry up. They always do.
Tomorrow is a new day.
We CAN hold some of it in.
For awhile.
In certain circumstances.
And barring additional stress.
But not forever.
So let it out.
Speak your truth and tell your story.
If others don’t understand or turn away or give you the evil eye, ignore them.
This isn’t their story-to tell or to live.
It’s yours.
It may seem like the easiest way to get an inside scoop on how I’m REALLY doing-but don’t do it.
Please don’t ask my kids how I’m doing.
Respect the fact that they have their own grief burden. Respect family privacy and understand you are putting them in an impossible position.
If you want to know-to REALLY know-how I’m doing, ask me.
Life for us is no different than life for you except every decision, every event, every single thing requires more effort and energy because we carry the additional burden of death and loss.
It’s easy to assume children and young people-even adults in their 20’s and 30’s-are somehow more resilient than they really might be.
They are often in seasons of activity that serve as cover for deeper, more difficult feelings. Many beautiful celebrations typically mark these years. Graduations, weddings, births are wonderful! But they are complicated for grieving siblings as well as grieving parents.
So be a friend to my kids. Love them. Celebrate them.
And please, please, please treat them as fellow grievers and not simply bystanders to their parents’ grief.
If you want to know about me, just ask.
Me.
Not them.
For my fellow Christ followers, my early morning post may have been a disappointment.
We’re all schooled in the “right” things to say in the midst of a trial, aren’t we?
“God is good!”
“I know the end of the story!”
“Death doesn’t have the last word!”
And on, and on, and on….
True. Every single one of them.
And yet…
If we are honest (and often we are not, because spiritual honesty is absolutely underrated in the church) we will also have to admit that KNOWING all those things doesn’t minimize pain.
It only makes it tolerable.
But I don’t want leave anyone doubting for one minute that God has been faithful these past five years.
He most certainly HAS.
He has been a silent Source of hope and strength and breath and grace. He has lifted my head when I couldn’t do it myself. He has sent His faithful flock to minister to my needs and the needs of my family. He has held me when I would have let go.
I have wrestled and questioned and even shouted but I’ve never, ever doubted He was here.
I wish I could tell you that there was some super-spiritual moment when He assured me of Dominic’s safety in Heaven, but there hasn’t been.
I wish I could tell you of a morning when His love and assurance and Presence washed over me to take away the angst, but I can’t.
What I can say is that the Word I hid in my heart before this awful pain was also lodged there has been enough. That deep well of living water has been more than adequate to quench my thirsty soul. The torch of truth has been sufficient light along even this black-as-night path.
My faith is still just that-faith.
I don’t have special revelation nor an extra dose of grace.
I’m just following my Shepherd, trusting that He will lead me Home.
We all experience it from time to time-that moment when your head comprehends that life has kept going but your heart refuses to keep pace.
So today, I’m looking at a calendar that assures me it has been five years since that deputy knocked on my door.
It’s a fact.
My heart says, “It cannot be true. It cannot be that long since I saw my living, breathing son cross the threshold of our family home. It cannot be that long since I made the phone calls that still echo in my ears. It can. not. possibly. be. that. long.”
And yet it is.
If folks ask me how I’m doing, how my family is doing, I usually say we are OK.
Because, all things considered, we ARE.
None of us find daily life unmanageable. None of us have fallen prey to addiction or unhealthy coping mechanisms. None of us sit inside all day, moping and mourning the loss of a life we couldn’t hold onto even if we had seen it slipping away in time to take a firmer grip.
But we are absolutely, utterly, profoundly CHANGED.
I often think back to old Star Trek episodes that showed crew members transporting to the surface of an unknown planet. Their bodies were broken down into the tiniest component molecules and reassembled somewhere else.
I think that’s what this life is like.
We’ve all been disassembled and reassembled.
But instead of everything falling back into place, there are missing bits here and there, gaps too small for others to see but very, very real to us. Connections lost. Memories without proper context.
Feelings floating free of any anchor, bubbling up at the most inconvenient moments.
And we all just plain MISS HIM.
We miss Hector Dominic DeSimone and who he is, what he brought to the table and car rides and family gatherings.
We miss who we were before we knew loss that burrows deep in your bones. We miss the unmitigated joy and celebration we could toss around like confetti at the slightest provocation.
So today, unlike most days, we will give in to the sorrow. We will remember that morning. We won’t brush away the tears or the sad memories.
He is worth every second and every heartache.
He is never forgotten.
He is always, always on our minds.
I used to look at tombstones in cemeteries and do the math between the dates.
I was most focused on how long this person or that person walked the earth.
I still do that sometimes. But now I do something else as well.
I look to the left and the right to see if the person who ran ahead left parents behind. My eye is drawn to the solitary stones with the same last name next to a double monument clearly honoring a married pair.
And then I do a different kind of math.
I count the years between the last breath of the child and the last breath of his or her mama.
Because while that first date marked an end for everyone else, for the mama, it marked the beginning of the rest of her life- a life she never imagined nor would have chosen.
I wonder how many lives have been cut short by the effects of grief. I know some folks have tried to research it, but it’s so hard. Because grief ends up doing things to bodies that look like aging or like other disease processes and it’s really difficult to tease it out.
But those of us who live this life know.
We know.
What’s a moment for everyone else, is a lifetime for us. What is a date on the calendar, a trip to a funeral home, a casserole delivered to a door in hopes of lifting spirits for everyone else, is so much more for us.
I don’t begrudge your ignorance.
I celebrate it!
My heart breaks every single time another name is added to the roles of “bereaved parent”.
I think a lot about the generations gone before. Before vaccinations, before penicillin, before so many modern blessings that lengthen life and give hope where there used to be none.
I think about the families involved in WWI and WWII. I understand the need to call the first war “The Great War” and assume such atrocities would stop mankind from falling headlong into them again.
But it didn’t.
So, so many families that made the highest sacrifice.
So, so many parents that hung that photo of their son or daughter on the wall and never moved it-because they were as frozen in time as their child.
I have a friend who does home-based physical therapy. She often goes to the homes of elderly patients and lovingly and gracefully listens to their stories. If it is part of their history, they almost always point out the child who never grew older and tell the tale of how much they miss him or her.
It’s so, so hard for others to understand how very different child loss and out-of-order death is from any other loss in this life.
But it is not a moment.
It is not even a week or month or years.
It’s a lifetime.
We miss them and mourn them for a lifetime.
So often we think of prayer as words.
But prayer can be a heart cry too deep for words.
It can be a groaning soul, longing for release.
That has been the prayer I offer most often this side of child loss, “Please God, please, please, please! Send grace and have mercy! Help me hold on to hope and make it Home!”
As I’m caught in the current of the days leading up to the anniversary of Dominic’s running ahead, my mouth grows silent and my heart louder. My world circles smaller and eternity looms larger.
I don’t have to think about prayer.
I breathe it.
My heart beats it.
Unceasing, persistent, continuous prayer.
There is a different kind of prayer without ceasing; it is longing. Whatever you may be doing, if you long for the day of everlasting rest do not cease praying. If you do not wish to cease praying, then do not cease your longing. Your persistent longing is your persistent voice. But when love grows cold, the heart grows silent. Burning love is the outcry of the heart! If you are filled with longing all the time, you will keep crying out, and if your love perseveres, your cry will be heard without fail.
~St Augustine
In response to something I posted in a bereaved parents’ group a friend used the term “tangible absence” to describe what I was feeling.
She is so right.
When I imagine something I’ve never actually experienced-even when I might say “I miss such and such” it’s not the same as when I’ve had something and it’s been taken away.
I can only miss the imaginary in an ephemeral, insubstantial way. I miss what I once possessed in a tangible way.
I know exactly the size and shape and sound and substance of the person that SHOULD be here but isn’t.
I know the energy he would add to a room or a conversation.
I know the point of view that’s missing from the debate or decision making.
And I miss him like crazy. ❤
~Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
C. S. Lewis gave voice to so much of human experience in ways that help us understand ourselves and one another.
His book, Mere Christianity, began as a series of radio talks that were later compiled, published and sold millions and millions of copies.
I think Lewis managed to use a conversational, inviting voice in all his works.
When I read them I feel like I’m chatting with a friend (granted, an extremely erudite friend!). He and I are discussing a thing, reasoning through it together.
He’s not teaching me something, he’s guiding me to learn it for myself.
When he experienced the loss of his beloved wife, this giant of the faith struggled like all us mortals. His grief journal was eventually published as the book, A Grief Observed, and has helped many of us who sorrow describe our feelings and find our way.
I particularly love this quote:
I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process … There is something new to be chronicled every day. Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape … Not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago.
~C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Lewis understood that grief was not a state which could be changed like ice to water through the application of heat.
There is no quick fix for a broken heart. No remedy for missing someone you love.
Instead, grief is a process.
It’s a lifelong journey of remaking a relationship that can no longer depend on physical presence and new memories. It circles back again and again, asking the same questions, sometimes finding new answers but often having to settle for the old ones.
It’s almost five years since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven and while I have forged new paths in that time, much of my travel has been over well-worn ruts that bring me to the same watering holes.
I’m often surprised that life after loss is not linear at all.
I do feel (as I’ve shared before) that the circles progress ever upward.
I’m not standing still.
But I’m not free to escape the valley.
thelifeididntchoose 