Thank God we had a winning soccer match tonight.
Otherwise, I may not have been able to field challenging questions from my ten-year-old. He opened with mumbling and I was an impatient prick until he fell to tears and said, “I’m afraid of what happens when people die.” This wasn’t just about his mom, I could see it in his eyes, he was contemplating everyone’s death on an empathetic level that would be overwhelming to anyone. I remember contemplating pain in a similar way when I was his age, it was so frightening that I closed off my empathetic self for decades.
So I was faced with the light task of not ruining my son’s compassionate path to adulthood. I held him and we talked easily about Heaven, the inevitability of death, and the power we have to choose how to face it. He’s a smart kid, he’s worked out much of this, but needed to cry through it a little. We turned to the subject of Mary and how he thought he didn’t properly say goodbye. The last thing he really remembers about her was watching the first half of the Super Bowl in the hospital. With the Eagles winning, it was a nicely exaggerated happy moment.
I asked him to remember all the times Mom said, “I love you,” and how many times he said the same to her. I told him, “Mom taught me about always doing this because we never know when we won’t have another chance.”
We talked about how he and his brother bravely came to the hospital and faced the news that Mom probably wouldn’t survive. It took them all day to be ready to see her and they stood shoulder to shoulder to tell her goodnight.
I told him that it was the first step towards Mary’s peace with dying. She’d find peace with many other friends and family over the next 36 hours.
There were more questions about the details of my comings and goings and what happened at the hospital while they were at home. We both got our tears out.
I thank God again for the wisdom these circumstances has afforded me and my sons. We’re not letting this break us, but allowing it to make us stronger.
God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason