Grief Archives - Page 3 of 3 - call me pasturescott

How will the dead be raised? What kind of bodies will they have?…And what you put in the ground is not the plant that will grow, but only a bare seed of wheat or whatever you are planting…God gives it the new body he wants it to have…Similarly there are different kinds of flesh—one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish…There are also bodies in the heavens and bodies on the earth. The glory of the heavenly bodies is different from the glory of the earthly bodies…The sun has one kind of glory, while the moon and stars each have another kind. And even the stars differ from each other in their glory.
– Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthian believers (Chapter 15:35-41, NLT)

Once upon a Sunday night, my little boy was staring out the passenger window and looking into the evening sky. He was silent for several minutes.

“What’cha thinking about, buddy?” I asked.

He turned to me and I saw the most serious expression on his sweet boyish face.

“Dad,” he began, “you know when the clouds go away they become stars?”

“They sure do, buddy.” I smiled at my prodigy.

My boy.

Sigh.

Oh, the insufferable ache!

Fifteen or so years later, give or take, I’d be looking into his casket; face, neck, hands and arms – every exposed place – just covered with tattoos. Innocence erased. Boyish wonder swallowed by a life that had stolen away too many spring-times and summer adventures and given only harsh winters in return. My little boy far afoot. A young man who tried to grow up way too fast and far too free.

Looking back, I’ve said some pretty hard words in my years of life and ministry…but nothing I’ve ever had to say compares to this:

My sweet boy died from a heroin overdose; cold, alone and homeless.

This is not the eulogy Sandy and I would have imagined on that morning we laid eyes on our little boy for the first time. Chattanooga seems so far away…

Surely not this tiny bundle?

This same little boy who, on the way home from church on Sunday, with family settled in for the quiet ride, begins singing “I Love You, Lord” word for word – and in perfect pitch – from his little fastened-in car seat? And, oh, did I mention he was only 18 months?…

This same little charmer who sidled up next to his mama and bravely watched a drama depicting the five missionaries who spilled their life-blood in Amazon sand and were added to the hallowed list of martyrs, at which he looked up at her with fiercely honest eyes and remarked, “that’s what I want to do with my life!”…?

My little third grader whose girlfriend Stasia ‘broke up’ with him, then later, on the playground, told her best friend he broke up with her, which led to that friend pushing him down and calling him a “stuck-up ***-hole”, then mocked him, saying, “aren’t you going to cuss back?” and our Gravy Train picking himself up, brushing himself off and replying with a sense of bravado, “Nope. I’m a christian”, to which she then called him a “stupid christian” and he just smiled…?

You mean, that brave little guy?

My precious seven-year old who told me he wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up, and when I jokingly asked “you don’t want to be a preacher?” (I never pushed this on him), honestly replied, “I’ll be an astronaut who goes to church and loves the Lord”… Him?

Our darling first-grader, holding the ‘S’ sign for his Christmas program and standing ramrod-straight and belting out the all-too-famously encouraging Advent passage of Luke 2:10,11 loudly and proudly? Surely not him?…

The very Gra-Gra Scott who changed his “when I grow up” dream a year later and told us he wanted to be THREE THINGS: “a father, a ‘ski racer’, and a husband”, then proceeded to inform us with utter sincerity “I won’t even kiss a girl before I’m married, and if she asks me to dance, I’ll say ‘uh-uh, not until I get married!’”… Not, for the love of Pete, him?

Our little ‘Bubby’ who would not be silenced on McDonald’s playgrounds, telling other little boys and girls about his True Love Jesus, and Sandy getting a couple different stare-downs from appalled mothers, to which she could only smile and shrug, and the day our little guy actually “led a little African-American playmate named Terrance to Jesus”…?

Him? Dead of a heroin overdose at twenty-four, all alone in the back seat of a car?

Our precocious nine-year old who walked in on Mommy and Daddy one morning in Clearwater, Florida, then ran out giggling and telling Grandmother about what he saw?

Not my ten-year old little shadow who lamented to me one day he didn’t have a best friend, then me saying “sure you do, buddy, tell me who you’d rather spend your time with more than anyone else on earth” and hearing him say, “you, Dad”…?

Him?

Oh, dear God, no…please…

But…yes. The very same.

I have an entry in my journal, dated July 1, 1999, when Graham was not yet ten, where I’m crying out to the Father for the soul of my son who was struggling with his young faith. He was in an unsettling phase of questioning everything about God, along with a bent toward the far country. I find myself drawn to a single phrase that apparently reflected the fear I held for my child:

Dear God, I beg you, do not let my son run in rebellion…

The prayer was a daily plea until the end of his life. You’ll find it in every form all over my journals. I pled for the Lord to keep our son from drugs, pre-marital sex and a prodigal life. I wanted him to go to his wedding day a virgin. I begged God to make my son “a man You would write about.”

Over and over…

and over…

again.

How we wish for better endings. Sigh.

And yet…

December 16, 2013 was not the end of the story. While we were planning to see him at Christmas for a visit, the Lord gave us something worth eternally more. His body came home to us, but our son made it beyond the clouds. We gladly trade in our sorrows for the Father’s grander story for Graham.

Among those whom we shared a hug with in the five-and-a-half hour long receiving line at Graham’s viewing was a blind man who sees things mere mortals can never see, a friend, arm-in-arm with his wife who guided him to me. Tom handed me a note and told me to give it to Sandy later. He said it was “hefty and robust” and she needed to know what God spoke to him.

Later on that night, home and still reeling from the impending chore of burying our only child the next day, I unfolded the note, read its contents, and silently broke. The words told my wife that “one day you will see your son, running to you, skin gleaming.”

For all these stories and recollections of our Gra-Gra, Father, we thank you. Thank you for allowing us to be his on-loan parents. Each and every memory is its own separate “star” in an evening sky clouded right now by heartache, questions, grief and wish-fors. Even some regrets.

But, in the end, when the clouds roll away, there is nothing left but a brilliant galaxy of truth, lit by the unarguable proof from our Father that the same tattooed shell we saw in that casket is right now and forevermore adorned with everything his crying heart on earth hoped for: real peace, real hope, real answers, real freedom…real life.

You were right, son. When the clouds go away, they turn into stars. Tonight we’ll look up and ‘see’ you shining and feel you running toward us with skin gleaming.

And we’ll be okay.

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Burying your child bites. At any age. And Christmas, no less. If it wasn’t so sad, it’d seem almost ‘made-for-Lifetime-tv’ cliche.

An empty stocking. A poignant absence. A cask of memories stoppered, it’s aroma sealed off so that only the fragrance left over could be imbibed. It’s tough sledding.

Yesterday I returned two books to the library for my bride. The sweet girl with the kewpie doll voice asked about our holidays. I paused a couple of ticks, then lied. It was great, etc., etc., family in town, etc., great food, laughs, etc., etc….

Her co-worker overheard and added, ” oh that’s good; mine was the best in memory.” I bowed and took my leave. I could’ve sucked the air out of the atmosphere right then with a story made for Kleenex, but what possible end would that achieve? So I wheeled toward the exit, smiling, and kept our library a tissue-free zone.

My next stop was the neighborhood hair cuttery. What the heck, I thought. It happened. I can’t hide it forever. So when the smiling girl behind the counter asked my phone number, I knew her screen would pull up two names, mine and my boy’s.

“Are you Scott?”

“That’s me,” I said cheerily enough.

A few clacking noises of fingernails on keyboard, then, I took a breath and took my chance.

“You can remove Graham’s name.”

I did it. I requested the erasure of my son’s memory from their hard drive.

She laughed, probably a little too loudly for anyone’s comfort.

“Remove it?” she half-smiled, but now seemed momentarily puzzled.

“Yeah, go ahead and take it out.”

In retrospect, I’m pretty sure she thought I was being facetious? Because now she smiled a full-white-teeth smile.

“I know its morbid,” I continued, “but he’s no longer with us…”

What happened next caught me off-guard.

“Okay, Mr. Mitchell, right this way…”

She never even acknowledged what I said. I followed her to her station and parked in front of her mirror where I saw the reflection of a dad who had just lost his son, laid his body to rest, and would never know the feel of grandkids bouncing on his paralyzed lap.

In ten minutes, the insipid business of clippers on head and hair on floor was over; I paid, tipped generously, and quietly removed myself from the premises, already on to the next jejune errand.

Sigh.

Life goes on.

Good grief.

Tonight, as I compose these thoughts, I’m surrounded by the din of small talk and redolent aroma of coffee in a bookstore cafe. No one here knows me, thankfully, or what I’ve just been through.

I find the juxtaposition of conflicted feelings has got me all Sybil-ed out. On the one hand, I’m safe in my nest of anonymity. On the inexplicable other, I want to tap on my cardboard cup with my plastic spoon and announce to the room I’m grieving. I somehow think if I did that, a few might be mildly irritated by the interruption, some would be confusedly alarmed and others might smile, nod in deference, then return to their paused-on paragraphs, none the wiser. Who would it help? No one, most of all me. I easily relent.

It’s been almost two weeks removed from “the dreaded call” and the suddenly-childless couple are braving the public. We want to, yes, need to, get out, but we’re not yet ripe for frivolity.

The day after laying our son’s body in a scar in the earth and paying our soulful respects, someone wanted us to leave all that weight and grief behind and let Madea turn our mourning into dancing with them. Completely understandable. But nowhere near our radar.

There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Amen, Clive. I so get you.

It’s hard to be on Facebook these days. For all its good, it can be painfully obtrusive or, even worse, obtuse. Aloof. People’s lives (rightfully) have already moved on past our momentary grief. We’re just not that interested in friends’ parties, get-togethers, selfies and animal snaps. But I too have been the unaware perpetrator of similar ‘crimes’ against others’ sorrow. Sitting here atop my own ash heap of dirge, I’m acutely aware of it.

We’ll move on, yes, but grief is, paradoxically, healing. So we’ll heal here in the warm bath of hurt. And praise Him in the pile.

On the day I knew of my son’s departure from this hard earth, I was visited by a friend. He came to the house, drew a chair close beside my own in the dining room and wept there with me, wordlessly, for fifteen minutes. Tears didn’t run down his cheeks, they flung outwardly to the floor. After he hugged me and held my hand, he prayed a few-second prayer, hugged me again then left. I still talk about that visit. There was no Romans 8:28, though it’s no less true. No counsel, though we welcome words of life into our soul. No bumper sticker theology. No tweets. No platitudes. Just grief.

Good grief.

We’ll be okay. We are okay. We’ve been prepared for this. God has made us ready. And when our Father requires us to redeem our suffering by entering into the suffering of another – which He will – we’ll most gladly tell of His good deeds, gracious intentions, expert wisdom and unfailing love – without words, if we have to; with simply being present; with silent sobbing; with resurrection hope; with His authority, because of a new degree added to our schooling.

On the night before Graham’s funeral I wrestled with my responsibility to share something. The people need to hear from us. I didn’t want my silence to be translated into depression or hopeless grief. The pastor in me wanted to explain, expound, exposit and exhort. The encourager in me wanted to encourage the many who came with question marks. It turns out, my pastor friend handled it with all the eloquence and grace I pined for. He was magnificent. I, on the other hand, listened to my wife who said, “it’s okay for us to grieve, Scott. Just for today, would you be a Dad instead of a minister?”

Yes, my love. Yes, a million times over! I like Dad mode. Who says it’s supposed to be over?

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Category: Grief

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Good Grief: The Graham Posts