It is Sunday night, nearly Monday... a few minutes before midnight. It's been a really long weekend. I can't help but mentally liken this weekend in my mind to Resurrection weekend -- Emotionally, at least, I've walked from death and grief Thursday night and Friday into the hope of eternity on Sunday. But before I get too caught up in metaphors, I'll back up, past the start of this rough week, to the beginning of a tough year.
I only realized this afternoon that I've been running from the haunting of death and mortality for the past 11 months. No year of my life has so persistently, repeatedly, brought me face to face with the fragility of life.
No, that's inaccurate. Backing up further, a large part of the grief of this week resides in the fact that for the past 5 years I repeatedly witnessed children become gravely ill, or severely injured. It started in Africa, just over 5 years ago, when as a 3rd year medical student I performed CPR for the first time on a baby, one-month-old, and felt a child die in my hands. In those 2 months in Kenya there were a lot of awful "firsts." The first time I pronounced a child dead, the first time I told a tearful mother that her child had passed away, the first time I signed a death certificate. And the first time I had to turn around the next day, working on about 45 minutes of sleep for physical and emotional restoration after such a heart-wrenching night, and continue work with the day ahead, moving too quickly on from the trauma of the night before.
In the 5 years that followed, I've watched parents lose the children they cherish -- sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly and unexpectedly. Among the memories of residency, those don't seem to fade. And as I became a parent, with children I cherish sleeping just down the hall at night, those memories take on a quiet, haunting and threatening darkness in the background. I am so painfully aware of the fragility of life, especially the fragility of a child.
But the past 11 months have added to that with a barrage of reminders of not just the fragility of this life, but of the threat our mortality poses to the relationships and family we hold dear. Last fall I joined a group of mothers and was surprised to learn how many had lost children. Their stories surfaced on occasion during our meetings. In addition, one mother had lost her husband to a sudden heart attack during her children's preschool years. Another of these moms, with a baby just about Abby's age, is currently fighting metastatic ovarian cancer -- from a statistical perspective, her prognosis isn't good, and that's putting it mildly. I watched family, and a dear friend, lose pregnancies last fall just as Abigail was born. In December I joined a new medical practice and met a colleague who was unexpectedly widowed about a year ago, left to raise 2 children as a single mother. This spring another friend lost her baby, just a month older than Abigail, to a devastating illness. I was such an emotional mess thinking of it that I'm ashamed to say I couldn't bring myself to attend the funeral. About that time we met a young man at a Christian fellowship dinner. He was suffering from a bone cancer and shared his story, and we met his family. As his cancer progressed and all known treatments were exhausted, David became his physician. He passed away a few months later.
It was near Easter this year when we went camping. As I took Jonathan to the showers, he was impressed by the mass of bugs on the shower periphery. They were holding very, very still. "Those bugs are waiting their turns to take a shower, too!" He didn't know what death was, not even buggy death, and I couldn't bear to try to explain it to him. "Yep, Jonathan. They're waiting really patiently, aren't they?" I considered it that weekend, and concluded that it was not at all necessary to tell a 2 year old that people die. About 3 days later he returned home from visiting a friend for the afternoon while I attended a meeting at work. The babysitter lent us the copy of "Bambi" that they had read, hoping I could read it to him and explain it, because he'd cried when she read the story, insisting that Bambi's Mommy was coming back. He was eager to read it again with me and see if I could make the story better, and I tried not to curse under my breath -- Dang it! I was explicitly avoiding talking to Jonathan about death. Why the heck did Bambi have to come home with us?
Darned it if I didn't open my email that Saturday night to find the lesson plans for Jonathan's Sunday School class I'd volunteered to teach. Lazarus, raised from the dead. REALLY? I had just concluded that my explanation for Easter (just around the corner) was going to be, "This is the holiday where we celebrate that God forgives us when we disobey," saving the details about Jesus dying on the cross until he was at least 3. And here I was again being asked to explain to my sweet son and his friends how Jesus and Lazarus' family cried when Lazarus died because they were going to miss him terribly.
As the subject came up time and again, I began to realize that a large part of why I believed Jonathan would be so horribly scared if I told him that people die was, in fact, because I had gradually become terrified myself. Not so much of my own death, but of the threat that our fragile mortality posed to my beloved children and husband. It crossed my mind that I give little thought to Heaven. While I truly believe that by God's complete forgiveness I will leave this life only to enter a glorious eternity of worship, that reality has little effect on my daily life. It is, quite frankly, overshadowed by the much more immediate joys, hurts, and fears of life here, today.
Gary Thomas put it well in Sacred Parenting: "[Early Christian author John of the Cross] lived in a room covered with crosses and pictures of skulls. He didn't want to forget his mortality.... As a father, I don't have to keep skulls around to remind me of death. Having children and facing the fears of loving someone so much serves that purpose quite well."
This past week, the news started with all the talk of the Caylee Anthony trial and continued on to the 8 year old boy murdered in New York. David told me one evening how he'd read about the boy, who had become lost on his way home from a summer camp. I couldn't help but identify with his mother who must be in agony over her decision to let him walk home. Talking with David about the story, in tears that night, I reflected on how as a parent and a pediatrician, I feel responsible for foreseeing every possible injury, illness, or complication and enacting its prevention. While I recognize cognitively that I cannot truly control every circumstance that may affect my children, or forewarn parents of every threat to their own children during their well-child-checks, or diagnose every illness at the slightest, earliest abnormality, I certainly feel the burden of the responsibility to do so.
The next night, Thursday evening, I received a call that one of my patients had unexpectedly passed away. I'd seen the baby just 2 days before, and he was doing very well, though he did have a relatively mild respiratory abnormality.
My grief for a sweet baby, only a few months old, mixed with grief for his family and with an onslaught of questions for myself about my clinical judgement and management of his illness. Two other physicians, with years of experience behind them, had also seen the baby recently and agreed with my management, and from the circumstances of his passing it appears his illness was not the causative factor. But that doesn't keep a young pediatrician from asking herself time and again if I should have done something different, if I should have told his caretakers something more, if there's anything I could have done. Though I didn't see the scene of his passing, my mental image of it when the story was told to me is etched very clearly in my mind. It was completely heart breaking, and another threatening reminder of the fragile lives of my own children and my responsibility to protect them.
The next evening I asked David about a movie he'd finished without me. As he re-told the ending, including the details of the death of three children at the hands of their mother, I pretty much lost it. I'm not one to shout, even when angry, but I couldn't stop from shouting: "I don't want to hear about another dead child the rest of the week. No... I don't want you to ever tell me about another child's death, for the rest of our marriage. I can't handle any more dead children!" With the thoughts of my patient afresh in my mind, I tried to sleep as I involuntarily recalled each of those children I watched pass away in Africa, then those in the hospital here during the past 3 years of residency. I remember in particular a sweet younger brother who stayed home from elementary school to sit in his sister's hospital bed with her all day. On call that night, I was called to the bedside to pronounce her death -- he was still there beside her. Laying in bed Friday night I was so angry. Angry that such things happen, angry that I've seen them happen, and angry that my fears for my children are so colored by my experiences.
At 1:30 that morning David turned over to find me again in tears. As he held me, I was reminded that this pain, and my care for my children as well as my patients, does not happen in a void. That we live life in the context of an imperfect and fallen world that is still in the reign of a good and loving God, who loves these children dearly. Who loves my own children so much more fiercely than even I do as their mother. And who can, in fact, redeem for good even the most painful of events. I was again reminded that while we are not always spared pain, He is beside us, and beside our children. And finally, I fell asleep.
Saturday was a bit better. Then Sunday afternoon I had the blessed opportunity to sit down and read for a few moments alone while the kids napped. I used the opportunity to catch up on the chapter we'll discuss for my church's small group discussion at our next meeting. We're at the end of the book Sacred Parenting, referenced above, and the chapter was titled, "Leaving." It started out benignly enough with a discussion of how hard it is to watch our children grow up and leave home -- sad, but bearable. But then I reached a subtitle, "The Ultimate Departure," and the discussion moved on to the separation of a parent and child, first with stories and reflections on the death of a child, then looking at the early death of a parent. Each discussion was accompanied by heart-wrenching illustrative stories. By the time David returned from grocery shopping, my eyes, and quite possibly my whole face, was swollen from crying.
After 11 months of running into the topic of death, turning around, and running deliberately away, it hit me as I discovered the topic of the chapter this afternoon -- God clearly wants to talk to me about death. This life is short, and for some it's even shorter, but that is not the whole story.
A while back I prayed God would use the year ahead to teach me about peace. You know, how not to be anxious. Mostly, I want to raise children who have learned peace, and who truly rest in God's lavish grace. Instead I've been actively working to ignore the threat of mortality at every turn. Not just the threat that I'll eventually die, but the threat that death could invade my life now and create a grief from which I don't know if I'd ever recover. With all these reminders, I have worked very hard to turn my attention the other way. There's this awful song they play on the radio that starts with reference to a mother losing her baby -- I recognize it two notes in and can have the station changed before the lyrics start.
Though David was ready to take my small group book and toss it out the window after finding me yet again in tears over the topic, I was finally ready to turn around and ask God, "Fine, so what is it you're trying so hard to say?" I headed out on a short walk and spent some time in the gardens of the church next door. And this is what I heard,
"Have you forgotten? Life does not start at birth and end in death. No, I knew each child's name before the creation of the world. And they don't leave this world alone. You will not leave this world alone. I go to great lengths, to the extent of giving my own Son in sacrifice, in your stead, to bring you to me and keep you there forever. While you were meant to live forever, you weren't meant to live here forever -- no with illness, fear, and sadness. You were created for life, love, worship, and glory. While your duties of today are many, and are important, they boil down to a few basics. Prepare yourself, and those in your charge, to love and worship me forever. Your days here with your husband and children are numbered, and that is how it is meant to be. Many, or few, the days are precious, and you may use each to teach them to love. And when one day your family does seem to break apart, be it 40 years from now or unexpectedly soon, it will break your heart but will not break you. Remember that the joys of today, as much a treasure as they are, are but a glimpse of the joy that forever holds. And through it all, I love you, and I love the ones you love."
God wanted to talk to me about death. And I don't believe it was necessarily to prepare me for any tragedy ahead, though that's possible. Rather, I asked Him to speak to me about peace. And I discovered this year, that there is no resting peace when life is lived clinging so tightly to that which we love that we huddle in the fear of losing it to death. I'm so blessed to be in a place where I love this life to the extent that the possibility of losing any piece of it is heartbreaking. When I finally looked God in the face, I was reminded that death is no threat in the light of eternity. And with that freedom, it is easier to relish the great joy of hugs and cuddles and stories and tickles with Jonathan and Abigail. I'm still aware that it could all disappear in an instant, but today my heart and my soul are again at rest in the reminder that life does not start at birth, and it does not end at death. These children are held in the hands of their powerful and loving Father and Creator, and if even the worst comes to pass... there will still be light, and life, ahead.
1 comment:
Beautifully written. Thanks for sharing.
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