Our newest grandchild, Henry, arrived May 7, weighing more than 8 pounds and measuring 21 inches in length. It was a happy day.
While Randy and I are thrilled to have a beautiful new grandbaby, we also continue to grieve the loss of our 29-year-old son, Joey.
There are no words I can find to describe the emotional pain of losing him.
Ever since he was a baby, I was so proud of him and his sister, Tracy.
It’s hard to believe how fast our children grow from babies to the kind of men and women we hope will take their place in society as happy, healthy and secure individuals.
But, in those final days for Joey, I cry when I imagine the horrible mental torture he endured and that sense of hopelessness I think he must have felt.
I want to turn the clock back and be given a chance to talk with him. Maybe to ask him,“Why?” Or maybe, “What can someone do to help you?”
Sadly, I can’t turn back time, which means so many things will go left unsaid between Joey and me, Joey and Randy and all the other people who loved him.
We know we aren’t the only family suffering from the pain of losing a child.
Our situation is not unique except for the fact it happened in our family.
Not long after Joey died, a good friend said: “Welcome to a club nobody wants to join.”
I didn’t quite put together what she meant, but then I realized she was talking about losing a child.
I have met so many parents who have lost children to military service, farming accidents, car accidents, natural disasters, drug overdose—and the list goes on.
Until Joey died, I didn’t fully grasp the amount of pain in this world.
One thing I am grateful for is the people God continues to put in my path.
The following is from one such person. The author is Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI, which is a missionary religious congregation in the Catholic Church. His writing is not just for parents who have lost children. I think anyone can relate to his words.
Toward the end of the movie, “Rachel, Rachel,” there is a particularly moving dialogue.
Rachel, the story’s main character, an aging spinster teacher, is more than a little frustrated with her state in life—teaching other people’s children rather than having her own.
Lamenting to another woman, who is a mother, she complains how difficult it is for her as a teacher to, year after year, intimately work with and get to know the young children in her classroom only to have them soon move on to other classrooms and to grow away from her. She expresses an honest envy of women who have their own children.
The mother, to whom she is speaking, says in reply: “It’s not so different for a parent. You also get to have young children only for a short time. They move on and grow away from you. They have their own lives and don’t belong to you. In the end, even for parents, your kids are never really your own!”
There is much to be learned from meditating on that—the children we have are not really ours. They are given to us, in trust, for a time, a short time really, and we are asked to be mothers and fathers, stewards, mentors, guardians, teachers and friends to them, but they are never really our children.
They belong to somebody else—God—and to themselves more than they ever belong to us. There is both a deep challenge and a deep consolation in understanding and accepting that.
The challenge is more obvious. If we accept this, we will be less inclined to act as “owners” to manipulate our children for our own needs, to see them as satellites within our own orbits, and more inclined to love, cajole, challenge and correct, even while giving them their freedom.
The consolation is not as obvious—and it is my real focus here: When we realize, in the healthy sense, that our children are not really ours, we also realize that we are not alone in raising and caring for them.
We are, in the end, foster parents. God is the real parent and God’s love, care, aid and presence to our children is always in excess of our own. God’s anxiety for our children is also deeper than our own.
Ultimately, you are never a single parent, even when you don’t have a human spouse to help you. God, like you, is also worrying, struggling, involved, crying tears of solicitousness, trying to awaken love. What is consoling is that God can touch, challenge, soften and inspire at levels inside of a child that you cannot reach.
Moreover, your children cannot, ultimately, turn their backs on God. They can refuse to listen to you, walk away from you, spit on your values—but there is always another parent from whom they can never walk away, whom they carry inside. Nobody, I suspect, could ever have the courage to be a parent without realizing this.
That we aren’t alone in our task of parenting needs emphasis today for another reason: More and more, very sincere couples are opting not to have children for fear of the world into which they would be bringing those children.
They look at the world, at themselves, their inadequacy and are frightened at what they see: “Do we really want to bring children into a world like this? We are powerless to guarantee them health, safety, security, love. It’s an unfair risk to the child!”
Persons who think like this are right in their feeling of powerlessness and in their sense that they cannot guarantee health, safety, love and security to a potential child. But they are wrong in their feeling that they alone are responsible for effecting and guaranteeing these.
God is also there and, because of that, in the end, all will be well and all manner of being will be well. One can risk having children since God risks it.
Finally, and perhaps most consoling of all, realizing this can do more than a little to bring back some peace and joy into the hearts of those who have lost children tragically—to accidents, but especially to suicide, drug and alcohol-related deaths, and other such things that make parents second-guess, worry about their failures and betrayals, and worry about all the things they should have done.
Again, we are being asked to not forget that we are not the only parents here.
When this child died, in whatever circumstances, he or she was received by hands far gentler than our own. They left our foster care and our inadequacy to fully embrace them to live with a parent who can fully embrace them and bring them to joy and wholeness.
Parents and prospective parents: Fear not, you are inadequate. But there is some good news: You are not alone.
Patty Decker writes news and features for the Free Press. You can reach her at patty@hillsborofreepress.com
