Faithful Paradox

Today is a hard day. It’s a day I awoke feeling grief into my bones from the moment my mind was alert. My eyes have tears at the brink of the dam, ready to spill over at every moment. Two years ago today was the last day I saw Ezra. Two years ago today, he awoke screaming in pain and meningitis began its final, deadly work. Two years ago today was his last lucid day. Two years ago today I heard his voice for the last time. Although his soul left his body in 3 days time, today was the last day he was ever with us. Two years ago today, as I was leaving him at the hospital, I said, “I’ll see you soon bud. I love you so much.” And he said, “I’m already looking forward to it. I love you too mom.” The “soon” of see you soon feels like an eternity today.

As I was walking out, they wheeled him away on a blue gurney to have an MRI. I don’t know why, but the blue color of that gurney is seared into my mind. Today, my mind sees blue. I hate it.

I have thought a lot about Ezra this week. I miss him. I miss so much about him. I miss the music he always brought to the house. If you knew Ezra, you know that he loved music. It is one of the things I miss so deeply about him not being around. He never had any training and yet he had an incredible ear for music. He filled our home constantly with piano and guitar.

Often as he was getting ready to leave the house, if he had a spare minute or two, he would sit down at the piano and play some beautiful tune he was in the process of creating or learning. He would then pick up his guitar and practice a riff over and over. This practice often meant that, despite the fact that he was ready early to walk out the door, he was actually often late getting out the door because he was so drawn into the music he was playing.

Early after losing Ezra, I came home one day to find one of my sons playing the piano and watching videos of Ezra playing; trying to re-create the music he was playing. He was weeping and grieving. He longed to feel connected to his oldest brother through his music. It was a heartbreaking picture of a child trying to find comfort in the midst of grief.

I sat with my son on the piano bench and wept with him. We watched videos together of Ezra. As much as I was able, I tried to be with him in his grief.

After I hugged this son, I went upstairs and found another son in his room, AirPods in, door closed with tears pouring down his face. He told me how he hated hearing the piano and hated hearing the songs that Ezra played. It triggered so much pain and grief for him. I sat with him and cried and tried to be present with him in his grief as much as I was able.

As I look back at that moment in time, it so acutely expresses how difficult grief can be. My one son needed a vocal and tangible expression of connecting to Ezra in his grief. And this vocal, tangible expression only increased the grief of my other son. The two types of grief could not coexist and serve one another. Inevitably one son had to sacrifice in order to serve the other. And as much as I wanted to take away the pain they were enduring individually, all I could do was sit with them. My presence did not change their pain, lift their grief or lessen their suffering. I could be no more than a presence in the midst of pain and I felt so acutely how insufficient my feeble attempts at comfort was for them in that moment.

This is what makes grief so incredibly complicated. As Vince and I have grieved over the last two years, we have found many times that we have been at odds with one another as we try to navigate how grief plays out for each of us; for our boys. I have heard grief is different for every person, and yet to live for such a long time under the weight of grief with my family, I do not think I fully understood what this meant until recently.

For Vince, grief could be described by Philippians 3:13″One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.” It’s not to say that he doesn’t remember or dwell, but he grieves by looking forward; by considering what it looks like to press forward, to faithfully endure, to keep moving. He prefers to not sit and dwell about hard things. When we first began to learn about how the other person grieved, I would often express frustration because I thought he was avoiding grief. His way of grieving was so radically different than my own and I felt frustration that he would not meet me in the midst of my own grief. I did not understand that his method of grieving was so very different than my own. It was not avoidance, but he engaged it differently than I did.

For me, grief entails dwelling and, at times, looking back. Looking at who my son was, what made him so special. I am drawn into moments with him, like the last day I heard his voice, and I sit in those spaces. Much like Mary, “treasured these things and pondered them in her heart,” I gather memories and hold them in my heart (Luke 2:19). Maybe it’s just the heart of a mother that holds individual moments so closely.

I tend to think in pictures and I remember acutely so many details of moments that are seared into my mind. I remember moments according to how I felt. I remember the blue gurney, I remember the sadness and despair I felt. I can feel the pit in my stomach. I remember the dead heat of the parking garage when I walked to the car and the suffocating hot air of the car. When I grieve, it’s a whole body experience. It’s a stopping and pondering, reflecting, remembering how I felt, seeing the details of the room, allowing all the pain of loss to wash over me. Yet with every washing, it is like the work of water on stones. As the waters of grief run over the memory stones, it softens the edges, smoothes the rocks, takes away the painful, pointy edges and leaves something less sharp. Vince has often asked me, “is that helpful for you? I don’t understand how that could be helpful, allowing your mind to go back in that moment.” He has struggled to understand how I grieve. We miss each other often as we grieve.

The difficulty in grief is that often, the ways people grieve cannot coexist. One person’s grief demands that the other sacrifice a piece of their comfort. My one son needed to have a tangible expression of grief; he played the piano over and over, learning Ezra’s songs. This caused so much pain and trauma for the other son. The two forms could not coexist. Vince looks forward in grief, I look back. When Vince looks back with me, he is triggered and sadness overwhelms him. When I look forward with him, I feel dismissed and forgotten in my grief. The two cannot seem to coexist.

However, I think herein lies where we can find help with the Gospel in grief. Romans 5:8 tells us that, “while we were still sinning, Christ died for us.” John 15:13 says that, “greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friend.” While I was still sinning, Christ died for me and then he asks me to do the same. We must fight to do this in grief. We fight to meet the other in the middle space; the middle space that doesn’t feel complete and yet is the best we can do. 

The middle spaces of grief can feel so lonely. It’s such a personal experience based on how we are wired, how we view God, how we remember experiences, and how (and if) we ever learned to navigate emotion. Vince will never fully be able to meet me in my pain and I will never be able to fully meet him. I will never be able to comfort my boys fully. All the things we have here are so finite and incomplete. And somehow, in a way I do not yet understand, I must trust that God will meet me completely and fully in my pain.

I don’t understand this concept, if I’m being completely honest. I think my hope would be that God meeting me would mean that the pain would be eased, the memories would stop being bitter and there would be joy. I find myself hoping that Christ’s nearness means that the pain is gone. But it doesn’t work this way. In my foolishness, I am quick to assume that because the pain is so raw and present, it must mean that Christ is not near. But that is simply not true.

God has promised in his word that he, “is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:16). Some how, as Vince looks ahead and anticipates what restoration will come, some how, as I look back and dwell on Ezra, some how as one son plays the piano in his pain and the other crumbles with the sound of the keys, God is near. He is not limited to one way of grieving over another. He is fully able to meet each one of us in a way that our limited, finite abilities and desires could never accomplish.

So today, as I remember the blue gurney, as I think about the pain that today holds for me, for my sons, for my husband, I ask the Lord, “Show me. Show me what your nearness looks like. We are all broken hearted and crushed in spirit. Show us.” And then I will wait to see how God comforts.