WATCHING LOVED ONES SUFFER
When I listen to audio interviews I had with Mitch at the hospital and home on hospice, it’s clear to me now: he knew he was going to die. I already knew it but was trying to shield my son from fear. He knew it but was trying to keep my broken heart from falling apart. I wonder what we might have said to each other if we weren’t trying to save each other from sorrow. I wonder.
If I think too much about that, I fall apart. I have to let that go, though it is much easier said than done.
I’ve never known a child to love life with such a depth as Mitch. In the most curious ways, he was burdened by the kind of thoughts an adult might think, like, how he was going to afford a home, who he was going to marry, and the type of father Mitch wanted to be.
On one occasion, he asked me how mortgages work and said he was worried he wouldn’t make enough money. “My allowance is so small,” he said. I chuckled a moment, then swallowed a lump of compassion in my throat then said, “Oh, sweet boy, don’t worry about that stuff. It’ll all make sense in time. I don’t know how or why; I just know things seem to work out the way they’re supposed to.”
Mitch thought a moment, “But Dad, what if I can’t make it work?”
“I’ll always be with you, Mitch. You will never have to face life alone. I promise.”
With that, Mitch went back to building his Legos.
My son fascinated me, both by his purity and maturity. He drank in sunrises and sunsets like an old man wise in years and rich with experience. He understood that each sunset was unique, never to be repeated in all the earth. Because Mitch thought of his mortality often, I think part of him wondered if the beautiful sky he so admired at any moment might be his last. On the deepest level, he knew life was fragile and precious above all things.
So when I saw my son at the hospital struggling to feel good and doctors grappling with how to save his life, my heart sank below anything I’d ever experienced, then or now. The days at the hospital were long and the nights unbearable. Sometimes I wonder if he awoke in the middle of the night and heard me quietly weep in the dark corner of the ICU room.
I remember running to get something from my car at the hospital, near the time I took this photo. The sunset was almost past, so I quickly captured it with my iPhone to show Mitch. When I returned to his room and showed him the picture, he said, “Was that today?” (see the next image in this post)
I could tell by the tone in his voice he yearned to see it with his own eyes. I could tell he wanted to leave the hospital and never return.
“Yes, son. You’ll get to see them again soon.”
My heart is glad knowing Mitch saw a few more sunrises and sunsets before his time was up. He treasured each of them.
I don’t know why we must watch loved ones suffer. I wish I could take it all away. I wish I had the healer's art.
Instead, I carry grief like an inoperable brain tumor. It isn't terminal, though sometimes it feels that way. But it does change my vision; as a result, I see the world differently, more clearly and compassionately.
I don’t suffer in grief like I used to, but tonight the gravity of grief is heavy. Tonight I walk on Jupiter and struggle a bit to breathe. That is the lifelong burden of losing a child.
While I continue to make sense of suffering, I don’t shake my fist at heaven, angry that I lost my son. Instead, I have a heart of gratitude to have been his father. I got to know a little boy who became my deepest teacher. I got to meet an angel made mortal, whose life forever touched mine.