The Day After Christmas

The past few days have been full of traditional comings and goings and doings. I spent three days just doing cards. I committed myself to the task with a religious dedication, first going back through many of the hundreds of emails and Caring Bridge messages so many friends and strangers wrote to us. In the process, I was blanketed again with the warmth in which they were written. It reminded me of the concept of stored energy I teach to my students. Those notes of love were like little potential power packets, just waiting to be tapped. Energy is "the ability to do work or cause change". I have surely been changed.

Friends have encouraged me with the familiar, "God will never give you more than you can handle." While I read the prayers and inspired kindnesses of so many, I realized that I am way beyond what I can handle; I am observing first-hand, I am a witness to the power of love and sacrifice and of so many people coming together in a common light. I am being carried now by God's love, expressed through the obedience of His children.

These days are, no doubt, the most difficult I've ever passed through. I weep, sometimes without much warning, until my eyes are nearly swollen shut. I wail even though I try to hold back the sound. Sometimes I am so undone that my body shakes and writhes with pain. But then the wave of grief passes. I am finally able to stop crying, to take a deep breath, blow my nose, and wash my face. I am able to go on.

I realize mine is a unique grief journey, unlike any others'. Sure, I'll share the road at times, but then there will be sections I must make on my own. It's a burden of motherhood; like trolls under bridges, heavy taxes must be paid for this privilege of being given the babies. The meanest troll has required this: an acquiescence to this law, that though our babies are given to us, they do not after all, belong to us.

So these are days of intense blessing as well as great loss. The edge between is sharp; the pain of losing David seems most unbearable when I most clearly remember the joy of having him. It still seems that he is not far away. Sometimes it feels as though he's tangibly in the room with us, enjoying our jokes and joining in the hugs. Yesterday especially, we felt him close. I don't know why I did not predict it, but his presence is very strong around Amber. "Clearly."

Outside today the last of the foot of snow that fell last Friday and Saturday is melting away. It's been above fifty degrees since yesterday. The grass is exposed, green as ever. David is still with us; his struggles have likewise melted away. The dross is gone; silver remains. Praise God, David is free from fleshly torment; the price of his freedom was merely his body, nothing more.

Child psychologist James Dobson once wrote that, "little boys become men over their mothers' dead bodies." I've always enjoyed that quote, because I've felt keenly the way my boys have had to "slay" me in order to pursue their own identities. Now it's my turn to grow, literally over David's dead body. Life and death are inexorably intertwined, as with darkness and the dawn.

xxoo