I usually don’t sit down to write a blog post without
knowing my point in advance. This time I don’t know what my point is. I’m just
processing.
Three and a half years ago, I watched my friends go through
the brutal, agonizing, unimaginable process of losing their teenage son to
cancer. About the same time Ian died, a local news story threw me for a loop.
Two college girls, home for spring break, were getting ready for a family
outing by filling the family vehicle up with gas. Somehow a truck ran into the
fuel pump, igniting a fire ball and trapping the driver between the vehicle and
the pump. She was gone within seconds. Ian experienced the ups and downs of
cancer treatments, prolonged hospital stays, and prayer vigils, while this girl
was alive and well one minute and gone the next. Such different experiences,
yet two families experiencing the same devastating loss.
Now another set of parents we know are enduring the cancer
journey. Instead of starting kindergarten with my daughter this fall, their son
was admitted to Children’s Hospital in Denver, where he’s been for the past
four months. His cancer is aggressive and scary. Their battle has been the talk
of our school. On Friday, the school held a blood and money-collection drive
for this little boy.
I went in about a half-hour before school got out to drop
something off for him. An armed guard stood at the front of the school. Very
odd. I walked around to the office door, where the secretary ushered me in. As
I walked down the hall, an announcement was made that no children were allowed
to walk between buildings without an adult. Carpool would also look different
today. After dropping off my card and appreciating all the hard work that had
gone into the fundraiser for this little boy who is fighting for his life, I
called Kevin to find out if he knew something I didn’t. He told me about the
shooting in Connecticut. Twenty children dead, many of them kindergartners.
They went to school alive and well—probably thinking about spelling tests and
Christmas parties and what they’d do at recess—and ninety minutes later they
were gone. Just like that.
Do I have a point? I’m not sure. I just know that I’m struck
by the contrast of parents who endure grueling, endless battles for their
children’s lives with those whose lives are ripped apart in a second. Certainly
neither is preferable; both are heartbreaking. Both seem so wrong, so
appalling.
Not knowing what to make of any of this, I wrote to my
friend David, Ian’s dad, to see how he’s processing the news from Connecticut.
Is it different for him, I wonder? He was kind enough to make his response
available to us all, for whatever we can gain from it as we all seek to process
Friday’s horror.
One thing I can say for sure. Anyone’s
pain touches me more deeply than it did before Ian’s suffering and
death. So as I read about the shooting in CT it brings tears to my eyes
and leaves an ache in my soul. As I was listening to a report on the radio
my whole body recoiled inside. In the past my response would have been
much less intense. Unlike many others, I can and do imagine what those
parents may experience in the coming days and weeks and months and
years. So I grieve with them differently than others might.
I can also say that even with a
prolonged illness and when you know that death may be imminent, the death of
your child takes your breath away. Death of any kind is so final, so
violent, so “wrong." It is an ugly tear in the fabric of life as life was
intended to be. I don’t know about others, but I never emotionally or mentally
rehearsed for Ian’s death. I did not expect him to die. I was fully believing
that he would live. So although others may be puzzled in view of what
transpired before Ian’s death, I was shocked when he died.
However, I had a “privilege” that none
of those parents in CT had. I was THERE when Ian died. I was able to
say goodbye. I was at his side when he drew his last breath here on this
earth. I imagine that those parents are horrified by what the final
moments of their child’s life was like. And imagination can be worse than
reality. That’s a horror I’ve not experienced.
I have no desire or sense of leading to
personally connect with those parents in CT. It feels presumptive to think
that we could somehow truly understand their pain. When one is in deep
pain, and someone says, “I understand,” you know that they don’t, and it feels
like they are treating your pain as commonplace.
On the other hand, I think that every
parent who has heard of the shootings in CT feels a heart connection with those
families. President Obama clearly does. But my emotional nerve endings may
be a bit closer to the surface and a bit more tuned to resonate with the pain
of those parents.
