Ethan’s Dad: What does three years mean? It means never getting to see Ethan run around with a foam light saber and talk about using “the forest” (the Force). There will never be any catching him as he tries to run out of the kitchen to avoid having his mouth and hands wiped off. We will not be playing hide and seek where he thinks he’s being sneaky but he is really hiding in plain sight. I won’t be jumping on the trampoline with him while his brothers and sister fall down laughing because the bounces are too high for them to keep up. We do not hear his cry when he wakes up from a nightmare or a bad cough and get up to come console him. There are no walks in the sunshine where we end up having to carry him. There is no constant companion by N’s side, dressed in identical clothes, copying each other as they drive toy cars around the playroom.

This is what irretrievable loss means. It occurs every day, for three years and counting, as we walk on without our little caboose. Our lives are more “normal” now because the more you keep living beyond the day of loss, the more you develop rhythms of life that consist of a family with just four children. It isn’t that you forget — Never That — but that it becomes achingly familiar to go about the activities of life in his absence. I suppose it is that way with all loss.

Except that, in this case, N always provides a physical reminder of what we are missing with Ethan not here. Through no fault of his own, every joy we experience with N comes with a catch, a prick of that wound which will not altogether heal this side of heaven. Of course N is his own person, but they are twins, so there is a very real sense in which they are always bound together. Overall, it is a tremendous blessing that N serves as both a comfort for, and a reminder of, losing Ethan, but it is a blessing forever touched with sadness.

But then there is also the aspect of Ethan’s uniqueness, and this is the part that is perhaps the hardest of all. It is the reality that because Ethan died so young, there are so many traits we never had the privilege of discovering about him that make him different than his twin and everyone else. Would his eyes have stayed that deep blue? (I like to think so). Would he have been stubborn or easy-going? Would he have been the rambunctious sort or a quiet thinker? Would he have been interested in a variety of foods (like his mom) or extremely picky (like his dad)? Would he have loved art or science or history or math or sports? The list seems endless, and with it so does the depth of the loss. Like all parents, we thought that we would have decades to watch Ethan grow (along with his siblings), not two months, and then suddenly there was . . . nothing. So yes, it has been three years, but what comes to mind is a few thousand little things that will not happen, that will never be revealed here, because he is gone.

There is a perspective in this world that would compare all of the foregoing as being akin to crying over spilled milk. This view tells us that life is about results, it is about what you accomplish or produce, that what matters is what “moves the needle” to make people take action, and that you should only invest your life in what you can control. Some call this view “realism.” The premise of realism is a material one, and if you accept that premise — what is real is what you see — this view is entirely correct: Not one moment thinking about Ethan, not all the tears shed for his loss, no matter how many words are written to help express the rending of our hearts . . . none of it will change the reality that Ethan is gone; none of it will bring him back to us. By the realist’s standard then, none of these expressions matter. Why should we grieve at all if everything is transient and immediate material effects are all we value?

But the Bible — and I think our hearts -– tell us that ultimate reality is marked by the things that are unchanging, unseen, and not even done by us. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says “God has made everything beautiful in its time; He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what He has done from beginning to end.” Yes, there is beauty in this world, but our hearts tell us there is more, that there are things which are enduring and defy concrete understanding. Second Corinthians 4:18 tells us that we should “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Revelation 21:4 relates that there will come a time when “there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for these former things have passed away.” First Corinthians 13:8 proclaims that “where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away,” but that “Love never fails.”

Our grief, our longing, and our continued remembrance of Ethan does not change the material reality of his absence, but it matters because it reflects our steadfast love for him. That love is real and enduring. It expresses God’s truth that Ethan is a gift to our family, he is unique, and he is eternal. Two months was far too short; these last three years have felt far too long; and this melancholy ache will be with us for the remainder of our time on this earth. But our love, and more importantly, God’s love, transcends all of that, so that we do not “grieve without hope” because “Jesus died and was raised to life again, and when Jesus returns, God will bring back with Him the believers who have died.” 1 Thessalonians 4:14. Thus, the years after his loss may continue to mount, but we will still grieve — albeit sometimes in different ways than we did at first — because we will always love him and know that God loves him, and that Love will one day “turn our weeping into dancing, remove our sadness and cover us with joy.” Psalm 30:11 (as rendered by Ellie Holcomb in The Broken Beautiful).