Living with Loss

  I looked new grief in the face today. I hurt. I saw the pain, the hopelessness, the deep sorrow of grieving a child. His eyes were tired, and then he laid his head down on the mailbox that stood between us, my neighbor and me. The fatigue of grieving covered his face and his body was bent with the heaviness of it all. This is his second loss, the twin to the son he lost thirty years ago. This one comes with trapping and thoughts unlike the first. It’s hit him hard. There are no more children, his wife is dead. He’s alone. He’s lonely. He’s sad. I ache for him. I want to make it all better for him, but I know I can’t, this is his journey. He says I’m strong. He sees me breathing, walking, he believes me to be strong. I share that my times of wailing and crying are done in private, and it hurts so badly to open your heart and allow the sorrow to be, to know the absence, to acknowledge the death, to understand all that was lost and to have it seared into the soul and vanquish

When this journey began three and half years ago the anguish that filled my soul was so intense and so encompassing, there was nothing that could enter my mind but the horror of death and the absence of life. My soul was engorged with grief. It seemed writing was my balm, an outlet to share my hurt and the cathartic flow of words somehow released the pain. Yet now, words have no solace. Now, the grief is different, its changing to a more erratic and unpredictable creature that tucks neatly in the center of my life, lurking for the opportunity to jump in my face and throw me back to the reality of death. It's very sinister using hope as a weapon. Being blanketed in sorrow was easier, knowing nothing but sadness is simple; living with grief and weaving it into the fabric of life is daunting. Just when you think your moving forward, grief attacks and the silence of life's emptiness booms in my head. Hope dissipates. I understand why people do it, why they take that step to end

A father and daughter were commissioned today to go forth to Cuba to share the gifts of Christ through their music ministry. I saw them standing there together and was struck by how fortunate they were to be able to share this experience; that the father took time to purposely engage in life with his child. It’s difficult in our busy lives to put aside the obligations of the day and commit to being actively engaged in our child’s life. We want to left life go along like a predictable Swiss train. No worries, no real problems, children just need food and water and a little attention, then they will go on by themselves as we watch quietly from the station. But it doesn’t happen that way. Life assaults us with pebbles, rocks and boulders….denting the shiny exterior of our predictable Swiss train, sometimes even causing it to stop. It is our commitment to sharing time with our children and the gifts that result from that time that sustain us in strife and sorrow. I watched them take th

There was a single cloud sitting in the sky, it seemed as if it were again he and me. For a moment, I felt so close, but ever fleeting the cloud disappeared as did the feeling of he and me. Quickly it drifted and vanished. No more he and me. Just like that, gone quickly,   silently,   mysteriously,     forever, gone.      

He was a free spirit. I smiled as I listened to this father speak of his son and thought my son too was his own person. That foundational characteristic was one of the things that both frustrated me and that I so adored about Wyatt. His stubbornness and confidence, kindness and compassion tempered with unyielding positions on matters important to him, his staunch support of those he cared about and his ability to truly not give a damn about some things. Then I thought of the children who have died that I have come to know and love through Wyatt's death, being a free spirit seemed to be a common thread in many of their lives. Maybe that is the way we remember them, maybe it’s the way they really were, but either way, I’m beginning to believe that indeed only the good die young. These are the children who brought to our lives a different way of looking at the world or thinking that things just might not have to be what we thought they did. Don't we all want our child to be