Ethan’s Mom: Jones kid #4 and I started going on walks after school resumed this fall. #3 is off to preschool MWF. The big two are already at school, and it leaves just me and the little bear on our own. These walks have been good for us both, I think. I started walking this summer as a means of burning off anxious energy and getting out of the house after long summer days with everyone at home. We had a super fun summer, but this girl needs a little quiet in her life to function well. So I would strap on the tennis shoes and head out the door as soon as the lights went out. I started using this uninterrupted time to listen to a new podcast, “The Joyful Mourning,” produced by Ashlee Profitt, founder of the Joyful Morning an online community group for Christian women who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. I continue to save it for my walks even after changing to daytime strolls, and I look forward every Wednesday to a new installment. I have listened to Ashlee chat with her husband, her best friend, fellow mommas, and a Biblical counselor about topics with which I am all too familiar. Every episode, I find myself walking along and talking to myself like a crazy woman – “Oh me too. That is totally right. Yes, amen sister.”

Today’s episode dealt with planning a memorial service or funeral for your baby. I almost didn’t listen to it. Wednesday March 15th was the day of Ethan’s funeral. It was bitterly cold for mid-March, but bright and sunny. The days between the 10th and the 15th were full of so, so many horrible moments. No parents should be making the choices we were forced to make, but at the same time, Greg and I wanted to be the ones making them. I am a naturally indecisive person about most things, but every decision made at the funeral home, cemetery, florist, and the meeting with our ministers to plan the service seemed very clear cut to me. I don’t know if I wanted to make them fast just to get them over with, or if I knew somehow (I never would have been able to articulate this at the time) that only a baby’s parents would know him well enough to plan a meaningful send -off and that Ethan deserved our best efforts in caring for him in this way.

I guess maybe I started listening to find out if we did everything “right,” even though I know there is no right and wrong in this. I found myself going through a whole range of memories and emotions as she addressed some of the issues surrounding planning a memorial service: gratefulness for the people that were agents of His grace in the worst of places and family that fully supported us without taking over decisions that needed to be ours, bittersweet memories of the soft polka dotted gown that all of Ethan’s brothers wore before it became his burial clothes, the tension between wanting to look like a woman that Ethan would be proud to call his mother and not caring at all what I wore to the funeral, the relief that we would have a written copy of the beautiful eulogies spoken at the service.

But twice in the podcast, I stopped in my tracks and caught my breath as tears fell suddenly down my cheeks.

The first was when Ashlee said that if you choose to have your child buried, you will need to select pallbearers and what a sacred job this is. When we first met with the funeral director, he said that some fathers in this situation choose to carry the casket to its final resting place. Greg immediately knew this was something he had to do. To be honest, I wasn’t sure about the plan at first. But he was certain – I knew that determined look on his face and knew better than to attempt further discussion.

When that terrible, surreal moment came to transport him to the cemetery, someone had to carry the casket to the hearse. It was too much to ask Greg to carry what had to be the heaviest load of his entire life twice, so we asked his brother to do this for us. When I heard the word “pallbearer” on the podcast, I immediately thought of my brother-in-law carefully carrying that tiny white casket from the dim light of the funeral home into the bright sunlight and brisk air and placing it into the back of the hearse. I have never been able to say thank you. I know you are reading this, J., so please know how much I appreciate you caring for Ethan, your brother, and me in such a personal and powerful way.

I composed myself there in the middle of Park Avenue and continued walking until this:
“My last thought dear friend, is to have someone take photos and video. It may be a long, long time before you look at those, if ever, but one day you might want to remember all those special details you planned. And the pretty new dress you wore. And how handsome and brave and strong your husband looked while reading the letter he wrote to your baby boy. And all the friends and family who came to mourn death and celebrate life with you.”

I couldn’t walk another step. Because my husband did carry Ethan from the hearse to the graveside, just as he said he would. I have never, will never, be more proud of him. I cannot imagine loving him more. In that moment, he was everything, everything that a woman’s heart yearns for in a husband. I could not have lifted that tiny white box to save my life, but he would not let anyone else carry Ethan that very last time. As he laid the casket on the platform so gingerly, I could see the anguish on his face. His heart was shattered, but his hands were steady and his arms were strong.

My brother did take photographs for us, and I am glad this moment is captured for a few other very special people to see as clearly as I will always see it in my mind. When our boys grow up and want to know what it is to be a man, I will show them this picture of their father, literally carrying the weight of the entire world to care for and protect his son and his wife. When my daughter brings home a boyfriend (I can hardly type that sentence), I will measure each suitor against her father and nothing less will be good enough.

He is not going to want to put this on the blog. He does not want your admiration or your praise. But if this blog is about our journey walking through the shadowlands together, this entry belongs on it. Just like any marriage, ours has moments of conflict and miscommunication, possibly even more so as we navigate the stormy waters of grief. There are times when he drives me crazy, but I can assure you the man who carried my sweet Ethan on that cold, sunny March day is the man I will trust and love forever.