Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Visiting with a Shadow

Ethan’s Dad: I still visit regularly, usually three days a week. For the first full year, I visited nearly every single day. I know some people think it is strange that I would go to Ethan’s grave so often. I suppose in their minds it seems like it would be too painful to visit such a place over and over again. But it is extremely important to remember, when supporting friends, neighbors, or loved ones who have sustained losses, that people grieve in different ways and they need to be given the space to do so. What I do is no better or worse, no more normal or weirder than how my wife seeks to survive in the midst of her grief. She visits his grave as well, though not as often, but she journals, for instance, much more frequently than I have. We are each dealing with an unexpected absence, a weight that may tug on our hearts more heavily at some times than others, but that always remains with us wherever we go. Yet we are different people and so our methods of carrying the weight correspond with our own personalities. And so it is with all who carry burdens of loss.

At first when I visited, I mostly talked to Ethan. I should clarify in mentioning this that it isn’t that I believe Ethan is there — at least not the part of him that matters most. My wife recently wrote a post about some of the awful day that was Ethan’s funeral. And while there was much that was unspeakably difficult about that particular day, one revelation for me occurred when we saw his little body in the tiny casket. We cried rivers of tears. We read letters to him that we placed in the casket. We hugged a lot. But one thing that was very apparent to me was that Ethan was not really there. His precious, frail body was there . . . but it was cold and impassive. . . the light of life was gone from it.

This is a difficult idea to put into words because it honestly can only be experienced, not exactly described, and yet it is not an experience I would wish for anyone. But in that tragic moment when you see your still baby who was so vibrant only a few days before, there comes this clear sense that something is truly amiss: You come face to face with the truth that a person is much more than just flesh and blood. People have spirits which make them who they truly are. The contrast between our real Ethan and what was left of him in that casket was so stark that this spiritual reality was undeniable. Our Ethan — the curious, quiet, lovable, strong, immaculately precious boy — is with the Lord. He is laughing now, rather than hurting, and waiting for us (though the wait will seem like nothing to him because time is nonexistent in heaven).

Alas, time is all too real to us, and to me it seems to go by much more slowly now than before Ethan’s passing. And so I choose to pass some of that time by sitting next to his grave. It is not the most vital part of him, but it is all we have left here in this in-between place we call the Shadowlands. It is my tangible connection to him. It is a place-holder until the joyous reunion.

Over time, my conversations with Ethan morphed into talking to God more often than talking to Ethan because He is my spiritual connection to Ethan. God is the reason a reunion will happen, made possible by Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. Jesus said He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” — of all things. (Revelation 22:13). This means He is also the God of this off-kilter in-between time in which we find ourselves.

At times, walking in these shadows, it can seem as if He has abandoned us, left us to our own devices.

“I cried out to God for help;
I cried out to God to hear me.

“When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands,
and I would not be comforted.

“I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.”

(Psalm 77:1-3). In fact, that is one reason that at first I only talked to Ethan: Because I did not feel God there, all I felt was a black hole, a yawning abyss from which no light could emanate or escape.

But in the end, faith is not about feelings, it is about will, submission of the will really, but will nonetheless. And when you press on through the shadows you discover that there is light there after all.  (And how could it be otherwise?  For shadows are only seen because of the light that illuminates reality). The light is not a bolt that thunders, at least not for me, but a flicker that whispers your name and tells you to keep listening. And so the conversations become less and less audible and more and more reflections pouring over the Bible, His words that come alive because of His Spirit communing with our own when we seek Him.

I don’t mean for it to sound like magic. It is not. There is no trick and this is not fantasy land. I do not live in a state of Zen or blessedness or higher consciousness or whatever else some beliefs choose to call their willful blindness toward the tragedies of life. Nor do I mean to sound super-spiritual, for the contemplation is born from desperation, not holiness. I am weak. I am hurt. I still feel out of sorts. I still cry because of this inexplicable loss that neither Ethan nor we deserved to experience.

And so I sit next to the place where Ethan’s little body resides. I sit still in the quiet (there are few places quieter than a large cemetery).  And in that stillness I know that God is there (Psalm 46:10), and I dare to trust that Ethan is with Him, waiting. My heart yearns: Come quickly, Lord Jesus, Come. (Revelation 22:20).

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Carrying a Weight No One Should Have to Bear

IMG_3479

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.

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Grief is like a Hurricane

Ethan’s Mom: Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact on the Gulf Coast. I lived in Long Beach, Mississippi, from birth until college. In 2005, I was in my last year of graduate school in Nashville. My parents and grandparents still lived in Long Beach. We all watched the meteorologists as they predicted the path of this monster storm until it became clear she was headed straight for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. By the time I woke up from a fitful night’s sleep on the morning of 8/29/05, the community that I knew and loved had been gutted. I remember vividly being at my internship that afternoon, checking the initial damage reports and reading a single sentence that broke my heart, “First Baptist Church washed away.” I had always daydreamed of being married in the same church where my parents said their vows and where I was baptized. It was gone. Totally and completely leveled, as were the homes of quite a few childhood friends and/or their parents. In less than 24 hours, the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast was demolished, and neighboring New Orleans was underwater.

I was unable to take a day off my internship until October. I flew home to maximize my time there, and I remember watching through tears out the window as the plane landed – so many blue tarps, so many empty lots. The southernmost portions of the town were still barricaded, but my mom, as the church secretary, had a pass to visit the site of the church with me that weekend. Piles of rubble. The beautiful stained glass from the mosaic in the narthex lay mixed in with twisted metal, lots of paper debris, and an overturned piano. Only the cross-shaped steeple lay intact on its side. The church sat at the south end of main street and surrounded by residential areas, but you wouldn’t know it. It literally looked as if a bomb had exploded. Nothing was even recognizable.

My parents moved to Birmingham, very near to us, in 2011. In the times I visited my family between 2005-2011 there was a lot of change. The roofing men were in constant demand. Infrastructure was being rebuilt. FBC bought land further inland and built a large multipurpose sanctuary/gym/education building. The toppled steeple stands out front. Friends and acquaintances bought or built new houses. Progress came, but slowly. Still along the shore, things looked wild and depressing. It was better, for sure. No one needed disaster relief volunteers serving food or water or boxes of sheets and towels for their temporary “Katrina cottage” FEMA shelters. There wasn’t an “emergency” but the community was still in the early stages of healing: cleaning out, taking stock, and beginning to plan what they would do next.

My 20th high school reunion was this summer, and I debated long and hard about going. I had not been to the Coast since 2013. In the end, several people I wanted to see in person were attending, and it was a good chance to take the kids to the beach. So off we went.

We stayed in a little guest cottage off a main thoroughfare in Long Beach, which was so much nicer than a hotel. We had room to spread out with the kids, and it felt more like a visit home by staying in a familiar neighborhood. I enjoyed (much more than the kids did, I’m afraid) sharing stories and memories from my childhood. We drove by my old house and elementary school, both of which survived the storm with relatively little damage. I took them to my favorite po-boy restaurant, which was rebuilt almost exactly the same as it was. We dug in the sand and waded in the water that was part of my history in so many ways.

And yet, there were times when I was completely discombobulated. A beautiful town green sat in the middle of main street where an elementary school had always been. Stores were closed; restaurants had moved. Driving along the beach was still a navigational challenge because landmarks I had depended on for years and years were still gone. In fact, most of the lots closest to the beach are still vacant. They don’t have the wild, grown over look as much but they are still vacant. I would be where I knew I had been many, many times before but have no idea where I was.

It was so familiar and so different at exactly the same time.

On the drive home, it occurred to me – that is a very fitting analogy of my life at this point. In 10 days, we will mark 18 months without our precious Ethan. His death has changed me in a way that nothing else ever has, or maybe ever will. Last spring, our world exploded. Everything was affected – our marriage, children, extended family, friends, community, and even (especially) our faith in God. All at once, NOTHING looked like it did, or even remotely like it should. The wreckage and debris from those early weeks and months can be described as nothing but trauma. It was so overwhelming, I could not even begin to think about rebuilding my life or feeling any joy again. People wanted to share stories of friends who were further post-loss and living productive lives, and I couldn’t even comprehend how that could be. I heard people recommend journaling to begin to process my feelings – that was impossible, I couldn’t even begin to pick up a pen most days. All that I could process was basic survival mode.

Slowly, over the past year, we have begun the process of rebuilding our life and our family. We resumed being the primary caregivers for our surviving children. We returned to church, and eventually I made it to the grocery store and the beauty salon. My husband returned to work full time, and I fill in at the hospital when staffing needs arise. After a few months, I was able to read and pray again, and new infrastructure could be laid. We faced all the “firsts” – holidays, birthdays, family vacations – and found touchpoints of the familiar amongst the grief that continues to be so confusing at times.

The thing about my trip home this summer is that the evidence of Hurricane Katrina and the wreckage she inflicted was still very apparent to me. It is a city with a broken past that endured a difficult season of growth. It is not the Long Beach of my youth, but it is still home. After the devastation of 2005, some places were repaired or rebuilt. Other places I saw on our visit were brand new construction, even some really nice and beautiful places. Still other places were empty and awaiting redemption.

“Awaiting redemption” makes me think of the Friendship Oak. A seedling when Columbus sailed to America, this beautiful, enormous live oak tree used to be the crown jewel of a local college and a favorite place of mine. I wanted to take the kids to see it, but instead we pulled up to a decaying tree surrounded by “Keep Out” tape. There is no way to repair, replace, rebuild, or improve on the Friendship Oak until Jesus restores creation to its full glory, and I know there will be places like that in my life as well. Things that just will not be right until I see Ethan again. But in the beginning, that felt like all there was left to my life. Truthfully, that was how I wanted it. What kind of a mom “heals” from her son? Now, almost 18 months later, I can finally see that I am not healing from Ethan or the experience of being his mother but from the storm surge that made landfall on March 10, 2017 – the tragedy that swept my child away from me and destroyed almost everything I had ever known. Almost.

Some things survived the storm intact, but I couldn’t see them for the wreckage. I am starting to identify some places from my “life before loss” that can be repaired, other things that can eventually be rebuilt in a different location, and still other lots which will be vacant for a long, long time to come. I hope that one day, I can even build some beautiful new spaces in my life, like the town green where my classmates gathered with our families and watched our children play in the splash pad under live oak trees that weathered the storm 13 years ago. I don’t know that I am there yet, but the fact that it is even starting to seem possible is only by the grace of God, the love of my family, and the support of a few close friends. Please don’t stop praying for us, checking in on us, and braving the sorrow with us as you are able. We are still very much under construction.

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Taking the Path of Paradox

Ethan’s Dad: Karl Marx famously said: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” This remark says more about Marx than it does about religion. That is, it shows that Marx knew very little about true religion and only focused on what he wanted to believe about religion.  Marx told himself that people believed in religion because it provided them with a delusion that masked the truth of their sterile lives. In other words, religion supposedly made the lives of ordinary people easier for them at the expense of facing reality.

Any true practitioner of the major religions can tell you that Marx’s framework is nonsense.  It is anything but easy to take religion seriously.  Most religions, to one degree or other, require a person to do at least one thing that is directly contrary to our basic nature: pay homage to something higher than ourselves.  In this sense, religion is not natural at all.  It is not an easy way to escape reality; it requires a certain transcendence of it.  The easier path does not acknowledge demands outside of ourselves.  The easier path treats survival as its own reward and lives accordingly, sacrificing anyone and anything that gets in the way of the self.

In a sense, Christianity raises the level of natural difficulty to a whole different level than other major religions.  How so?  A pivotal difference between Christianity and other religions is that Christianity says that we cannot save ourselves, only Jesus can do that. Thus, Christianity removes the control over our lives that other religions seek to bestow by making our actions play a consequential role in our ultimate destiny.  Because of this difference, Christians are not supposed to act out of obligation or to earn a reward, but out of love: a love for God and what He has done for us in Jesus, and a love for others that grows from that love for God.

But again, this love does not come naturally or easily.  We are born loving ourselves, first, foremost, and always, and second loving those who help us most. We must be shown by God (through His Spirit) that He does the most and cares the most for us, and that even strangers deserve our love because God loves them just the way He loves us.

The militant atheist Richard Dawkins has said that it would be much better for humanity if people just acknowledged that life is “empty, pointless, futile, a desert of meaninglessness and insignificance.” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 360).  He argues that people create problems for themselves when they seek to attach meaning to a universe of “blind physical forces and genetic replication” where “some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.”  (Dawkins, A River Out of Eden, pp. 132-33).  This view is nothing more than a post-modern rendition of Marx’s riff about religion. It is this notion that “reality” — by which people like Marx and Dawkins mean their belief that there is no spiritual reality and the only real existence is matter and physical energy (what I will call materialism) — is harder for people to accept than the fantasy of another world beyond this one.

Such contrasting thoughts can provide for an interesting, if esoteric, philosophical debate, but at this point you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with Ethan.  The answer is, actually quite a bit.  This debate takes on an entirely different dimension when you face the unexpected death of your child.  If Marx and Dawkins are right, then that death is just part of life and there is no greater significance or meaning to it.  If Christianity is right, then . . . .

I want you to stop for a second and ask yourself if Christianity is really the easier choice here? If life and death are accidents of nature, then why should another person’s death affect us at all? There is a sense in which the materialist view makes things very easy because then life is what it is and there is nothing to reconcile. There is no higher obligation, let alone a rational reason to love because that implies an attachment beyond the self with accompanying burdens that last after other people are gone forever.  And since you are an accident too, whatever befalls you is not evil or cruel or unfair, but rather it is just the reality of it all and it matters not because you will end permanently as well.

Now, if Christianity is true, it means that God loves us beyond all measure of our comprehension, and yet for some reason He allowed our Ethan to die — through no fault of his or ours — before he got to do (and we were privileged to witness) a thousand things in his life.  God knew Ethan’s death would cause us unfathomable pain, and yet He allowed it to happen.  As a Christian, I cannot say this happened because it caught God by surprise or He was unable to save Ethan, because the Bible tells us that God is all-knowing and all-powerful. (And indeed, why would God, if He is real, be less than that?) As a Christian, I cannot say (the way the Marx/Dawkins adherent can) that this was simply an accident of nature.  No, instead I have to hold onto a paradox: that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever loving God, and yet somehow there also exists a pervasive natural evil in this world that at times robs us of those we love.  It says God calls us His children and still somehow He allows this evil that inflicts unspeakable harm upon us.

And this is far from the only paradox Christianity asks a believer to accept.  We must believe that God transcends time and yet that He stepped into time.  That He is infinite and yet He became finite. That He is Spirit and yet He became flesh.  That He is eternal and yet that He died. That by His death and resurrection He gave us life everlasting. That we are here, and yet this is not our home.  A real belief in Jesus means all of these things. And yet the likes of Marx and Dawkins want to say this is the easier path in life?

I will grant that there is a segment of Christianity for which it could be said that it is easier than the materialism of Marx and Dawkins. It is the segment that ignores the paradoxes — particularly the first one regarding the existence of evil — by claiming that absolutely everything happens for a particular reason, that God wills everything for His purposes, and so there is no room for questioning or wondering.  Instead, all is as it should be, you just have to have the faith to accept it.  This is not the post for me to explain all the ways I think such a brand of Christianity misunderstands Biblical truth.  It will have to suffice here to observe that such a Christianity leaves no room for actual evil or for authentic faith.  So I leave it aside and ask again: is Christianity the easier path in life?

The answer is “No,” but at bottom that isn’t even really the right question. We should not be surprised that Marx and Dawkins assume that people select religion over materialism because it is easier. They hold this view precisely because they are materialists: to them the material is all that motivates people, and so most people inevitably will select the easier road in life.  Of course, this view is self-contradictory because it fails to explain why there are people like Marx and Dawkins who do not select such a path.  When you drill down, the answer comes down to the fact that they believe that they are just smarter than the rest of us.  In the end, that is their real motivation for such a view: a demonstration of superiority.  And you do not have to read much of Marx or Dawkins for proof of this smugness (a natural trait that, at time, we all display).  I would also argue that a lack of belief in God fits nicely with this claim of superiority because it means that there is no being superior to them.

If you put aside the lens of materialism for a moment, however, and imagine that people sometimes make choices based on something other than comfort, then you might see the real reason why people would select Christianity over materialism. When you watch your baby dying before your eyes, you scream and shout in bitter anguish, and then you collapse in a pool of silent despondency, wondering where God is; you do not have the luxury of a comfortable Christianity.  You feel numb; cold; hopeless; alone.

You are left with this: Is it true? Is there a love that surrounds this? Is there a hope that transcends it? Is there ultimately a triumph of the good despite the harsh reality of such abject evil?

This place of haunting loss is where faith is not a a tingly feeling or a rote creed.  It is a conscious decision to persevere in spite of the deep wound in your heart. It is where, as Andrew Peterson says in one of his many honest songs,

“faith is a burden, it’s a weight to bear
It’s brave and bittersweet
And hope is hard to hold to
Lord I believe, only help my unbelief
Till there’s no more faith and no more hope
I’ll see your face and Lord I’ll know
That only love remains.”

My wife and I (and a host of other Christians that have experienced abominations of evil even worse than our own) do not believe in Christianity because it is easy.  We believe because, while you are drowning in the abyss of evil, you realize there is something else there, something beyond you, something above you — Someone who knows all about this because He suffered the loss of a child, experienced a separation unlike any we could comprehend, endured torture, embraced an ignominious death, and bore the sins of the world — all at the same time.  Does He understand what we endure?  How can He not?

Christianity does not deny the existence — and even the pervasiveness — of darkness in this world.  It simply insists that God ultimately has overcome the darkness.  The materialist views Christianity as delusional because of its insistence on a spiritual reality, but there is a a raw concreteness to Christianity that materialism cannot match because true Christianity not only recognizes suffering for what it is, it endures it, and it promises that God will ultimately overwhelm it because of what Jesus has done.

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

“If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,’
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.” (Psalm 139:7-12)

“[B]ecause of the tender mercy of our God, the Sunrise from on high came from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide their feet into the path of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79)

Jesus said: “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” (John 12:46)

Thus, by holding onto the paradoxes inherent in the Christian faith we are planted in a reality far more profound than the shallow materialist vision that seeks (and spectacularly fails) to maximize pleasure and avoid pain at all costs because it insists that the here-and-now is all that matters.  Instead, we are renewed by a Spirit that only a lasting hope could bring. “Therefore, though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” (2 Corinthians 4:16).  Another paradox — and thank God for that.

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands · 1 Comment

Back To School

His Mother: Today was the first day of school. We have three enrolled in school this year – 2nd grade, kindergarten, and 3K preschool. I have been trying to prepare myself for this week for a while now. After last year’s back to school festivities caught me off guard, I was expecting the waves of grief this week. But the thing is, you never know exactly what a difficult day or season will actually look like in advance. Some things might be easier than expected, other things are harder.

Back to school is, like a lot of things in our culture, getting to be a bigger and bigger deal. I remember getting new clothes and school supplies for the new year when I was growing up but not much other fanfare. There is a lot of pressure now to look and act in certain ways. You go check the class lists ASAP, milling about with other parents to talk about “who you got” even though technically I didn’t get anyone, my child did. Then there is meet the teacher day, with its obligatory new-teacher-side-hug photo to post on social media. On the crazy first day of school before getting your kids to school on time, you must stop to get perfect pictures of your kids standing outside your welcoming front door with homemade signs that document their grade, school, and what they want to be when they grow up (or some other sweet memory). Our school also has this breakfast social for kindergarten parents called “Tears and Cheers,” so that you can rejoice or mourn with others who have sent their kids on to big school this year.

You could probably imagine, even if you haven’t experienced child loss, that these milestones and photo ops could be painful. Anytime I am around a whole group of people where everyone appears to be so “normal,” the loneliness bears down on my soul: knowing that that most of the folks in the crowd have no basis for understanding what it feels like to know you will never walk your child into his first day of kindergarten. I can’t go to the breakfast because the “tears” that people are sharing over bagels are because their babies are growing up like they are supposed to do, and I have cried an ocean of tears because my baby will not.

But do you know what is the worst so far? The “All About Me” pages. I have filled out 4 forms (and I only have 3 students!) that have asked me to list my students’ siblings and ages. I am waiting to get requests for sending in a family photograph from at least one teacher, maybe more, which is also awkward. My family does not fit neatly into a blank line on a form or into a photograph. I cannot leave Ethan out – he is their brother and usually when asked how many siblings they have, my kids will answer 4. So far, they have always drawn family portraits with some representation of Ethan. I want the teachers to know they are not drawing some sort of imaginary friend! The real difficulty comes in the age part. I list names and ages until I get to Ethan. Then I stare at the paper. I can’t really write 19 months old, as that seems disingenuous. If the teacher knows our family already, I will just list his name. For instance, my daughter has the same teacher my son had during the year the twins were born and Ethan died. She actually came to the visitation, so I know she is aware of who Ethan is. For the others, I am left writing Ethan (deceased). Writing those words hurts my heart every time. The very few pictures of all 5 of us no longer show the big kids in their current ages and stages, so we send in family photos that only show the majority of our family.

I was prepared for that, in a way, given that this is our second back-to-school season without Ethan. One thing I did not expect that caused big waves of grief to crash over me earlier this week was kindergarten parent night. I requested that our daughter be assigned to the same kindergarten teacher that had showed such kindness to us during that difficult year. She loved on and watched over our son when we sent him back to school. I was excited walking in to her classroom, but then as I sat there, I realized that during that first parent night, I was sitting at those same desks with two little babies in my belly about to enter the second trimester of pregnancy. I was overwhelmed with all the changes in my life – pregnant with surprise twins, preparing to buy/sell houses, sending my firstborn to kindergarten. Those feelings came rushing back at me, and I sat there thinking how much more change, very unwelcome change, was unknown to us at that time. One thing my counselor has said on more than one occasion is how this loss changes who a person is at a very deep level. I am not the same person who sat in those small desk chairs two years ago and that realization was distressing and disorienting.

I have heard some people say that the first year after a loss is the hardest and others claim that the second year is hardest. Well, frankly, they both stink in my experience, but they do stink in different ways. The shock is completely disorienting during the first year – waking up discombobulated and having to remember that Ethan wasn’t there, trying to count 5 kids when leaving the house, etc. – and of course the trauma is fresh and causes frequent flashbacks to that horrible, terrible day and more terrible days that followed as well. Every 7th and 10th of the month weighed so heavily on us that first year. With the second year comes the realization that this nightmare is, in fact, permanent. The shock that can be so disorienting is also protective in a way, and now we are left with all the sadness, all the time. Plus, I am just tired of it all. I told my counselor it’s like when you decide to start eating healthy. You can start out with a lot of momentum but then there is a point where you realize this is not just about getting through 2 weeks without cake but a permanent change to a lifetime of carrot sticks. Not that I don’t like carrot sticks, but they aren’t as good as cake, you know? I miss cake.

I had a realization this week that maybe some things will be less painful in the years to come, but I don’t see any relief from the back-to-school grief for a long, long time. Next year, I will send Ethan’s twin brother, Noah, to his first year of preschool. The older kids have gone to Mother’s Day Out prior to preschool, but I have not been emotionally able to send Noah yet. I will pack his backpack and lunchbox, remembering the afternoon that I sat sobbing in the living room while my husband and father-in-law discussed funeral arrangements in the kitchen. My mother-in-law crossed the room to kneel beside me and hold my hand, and I choked out “I am supposed to be the one that picks out his lunchbox, not his casket.” We will take him to the same classroom that we have taken the others to at age 2, with a teacher that we adore. She decorates her room in Dr. Seuss for the new school year. Noah will pass under a door with a picture of Thing 1 and Thing 2 while every cell in my body will be crying out for our Thing 2 to walk in with him. I will come home to an empty house, which I imagine would have seemed like such an amazing thing to a mother of 5. But #5 isn’t going to go to school. Our 3 year-old tells me sometimes that Ethan “isn’t home” – he isn’t home and he isn’t going to school either.

The year after that, #3 will go to kindergarten, leaving me and Noah home 5 days-a-week. He was not supposed to have to endure my solo company – he was supposed to have a built-in playmate, not feel like an only child from 7:45-2:45 each day. Another kindergarten, another tears and cheers to skip out on…

Here’s the best/worst one yet – the next year, 2021, Noah will go to kindergarten. Alone. No debating whether or not it would be best for them to be in the same class or not. No decision on whether to match, coordinate, or just wear totally different outfits. Only 4 big kid backpacks hanging inside the door. As if that weren’t enough, my oldest will go to middle school. Middle School — where kids become teenagers. I had figured that out before the twins were even born, and I joked about how many tissues I would need that day. I think I should probably start stocking up now.

You get the idea… Each year signifies something new, if not for Noah, then for another of the kids. Milestones Ethan will never reach. The “what ifs” and “I wonders” are some of the hardest questions, and it just seems like there are a lot of those associated with back-to-school and the whole educational process, at least to this momma’s heart. I wonder if he would have eaten in the cafeteria or brown bagged it.? I wonder what his favorite subject would have been? What if the boys had totally different friends? Would I have insisted on matching backpacks and would that have resulted in protests?

I could go on and on, but I’ve got to go put snacks in backpacks and get ready for another early wake-up tomorrow. It’s the second day of school, and I have 4 kiddos earth-side depending on me to be present in their lives. I am so incredibly grateful for that job, and I want to celebrate their milestones as much as I need to grieve Ethan’s missing ones. Writing this post is helping me to do both, so thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings.

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

The Toughest Questioners

His Mom: I have been delaying on writing my first blog post (other than my introduction of Ethan) for a few weeks now. It’s hard to know where to start, how much to say. I have a list of possible topics in my planner, and I was going to sit down and start one tonight, come heck or high water. I was trying to decide what to write about while rocking #4 to sleep tonight. Then this happened at bedtime…

We had been to the pool in the morning, and the kids were pretty tired by bedtime. Then we let them stay up a little late to get to a good stopping point in Muppets Take Manhattan, tonight’s family movie selection. After I got child #3 in bed upstairs, I came down to say good night to #1 and #2, having already been tucked in by Daddy. #1 informs me that #2 has been crying since Daddy left. She has moments of bedtime drama fairly frequently and tends to try to delay the process of being tucked in. But when I leaned down, I instantly realized this was not a little girl who was manipulating bedtime, or even just overly tired. This was a little girl genuinely upset about something. So I leaned down and asked her what was wrong. “I don’t want to tell you,” she replied. That is highly unusual. I replied that most times talking about something that is upsetting makes us feel better. She then had me lean in even closer to whisper in my ear, still shaking with little sobs, “I am afraid when you and Daddy die I won’t have anything to remember you by.”

Can you hear the sound of a mama’s heart breaking at this point in the story?
I have no way of officially knowing this, but I’d bet the farm we have more conversations about death and dying with our children than the average suburban American family. Deep questions are not unusual at bedtime, when the kids seem to get reflective and ask hard questions by the soft glow of their night light. Our kids ask why people put up stones in the yards around Halloween that look like the ones at “the place to think about Ethan,” which is our family’s term for his graveside. They ask if you get birthday cake in heaven. They want to know why his heart stopped. For several weeks last year, #1 would lose it at bedtime because he wanted to know how old Ethan would be when we see him again – does he grow up in heaven or stay a baby? The answer he came up with was that Ethan would be older than him, which negated his role as the oldest child and upset him greatly. Just the other day, #3 asked when Ethan was coming back from heaven. They know that butterflies and dragonflies start out as caterpillars and water bugs before their bodies are transformed into new bodies, just like people when they die and go to heaven.

I hate that they know so much, that their childlike innocence is marked by this terrible tragedy. I hate that they have been to a cemetery way more times in the last year than I had been in my first 36 years of life combined. We can’t tell them that people don’t ever die until they are old. We can’t promise that someone else in our family won’t die. They would see right through those answers in a second.

I asked what had been making her think about mommy and daddy dying, and she confirmed that she had been thinking about Ethan. I assured her that anytime you love someone, you will never, ever forget them. Even if she didn’t have any mementos, she would never forget us and we would never forget her. Because our “fancy Nancy” loves her some jewelry, I followed up with a promise that she would get to keep one of my special necklaces to wear. “What about Daddy? What does he have that we can keep?” We came up with his collection of National Park quarters and his Nebraska baseball cap. The hat seemed to satisfy her (again, an accessory!) and she laid back down. Two seconds later, she popped back up with a question about Muppet Babies, so I felt okay moving on with goodnights and backrubs and admonitions to be quiet and get some sleep.
Then I stood outside their door, clutching my chest and asking God to keep my little girl from having nightmares about her parents dying.

Do you know what makes these Q&As even worse than they already are? I want to know that answers to the same questions and more. I ask myself every.single.day why Ethan’s heart stopped. Why do people have to die? Why does God heal some people and not others? I want to know if he is eating ice cream or smiling or getting to know his amazing great-grandparents. I sure hope so. Outwardly, I am telling my son that we don’t know what Ethan will look like or how old he will be when we see him again, but we do believe the Bible promises we will recognize him. Inwardly, my chest is burning and the voice in my head is shouting “that’s not enough! I want to know what he looks like now, what he will look like then, and how in the world can You possibly make this all right in the end?”

You would not leave your child at a daycare sight unseen, not even one recommended highly by most of your friends and family. You want to see the room they will be in every day, meet the workers who will hold and change your baby while you are gone, and verify their security systems and check out processes. Even then, sending them on that first day is hard, even if they are too little to raise a fuss.

On March 10th, 2017, my child was abruptly taken to a place I cannot go, where people can’t send text messages or make Facetime calls. Even worse than not knowing anything about the place, I don’t even know anything about him anymore. It is so horribly, wrenchingly sad and scary.

I tell myself that he is with God, and that God is Love. He is known and loved and cherished by Jesus, as much or more so than if he were here on earth. If the stories are true, he is in the best and safest place he could be. It hurts my heart a little that there could be a place better or safer than in my care, but if that were not true, I would be in utter despair. As it is, we walk this weary road, trudging ever closer to the day when death shall be no more. God will wipe every tear from our eyes, and at last I won’t have any more questions to answer.

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Who is Ethan?

His Dad: His mom already wrote a wonderful post about him, but I also want to share some about who Ethan is to me. (I use the present tense because we strongly believe he is still alive; he just is not with us right now). One of the many tragedies of this loss is that there are so many ways in which we do not know Ethan because he was with us for such a short period of time. The first couple of months of an infant’s life consist mostly of eating, sleeping, and growing. Many personal characteristics do not begin to reveal themselves until several months down the road.

So, knowing Ethan involves mining bits and pieces from the very beginning because it is as much about what he means to us as who he got to show himself to be. Thus, I go back to that summer morning when my wife sat me down with tears in her eyes and told me she was pregnant. The tears were there because we had not yet decided whether we wanted to have a fourth child and so it was a shock for her to be pregnant. But even if we had not definitely decided, God obviously thought we needed more children in our family, and life ultimately is His domain, not ours. So my wife made an appointment with her obstetrician to confirm the pregnancy.

We went into that appointment expecting the same drill we had experienced 3 times before: seeing a tiny blob on a gray screen and wondering afterwards whether it is a boy or a girl. Except, this time it was anything but conventional. This time the ultrasound technician said “There are two sacs there.” And my wife responded, “You mean, like an echo or something?” And the technician said, “No, honey, as in two babies.” At that moment, both my wife and I apparently had priceless shocked looks on our faces because the technician told several people about it later. We did not really know what to say. I felt a little lost for a second, and then my next thought (which I did not articulate) was “We are going to need a bigger house.”

The next little bit was spent adjusting to the idea that we were going to have twins. After the initial shock, there was unbridled joy, tempered with a little trepidation about whether we could handle two at once. Were we ready? Of course not. Were we going to give everything to try to be ready? Absolutely.

Shortly thereafter, we made the decision that we needed to get a bigger house, and we needed to try to move before the babies were born. We also concluded that, if at all possible, the new place needed to be in the same neighborhood because we liked our church and our first child was just starting kindergarten at the local public school, which we also liked.

This was no small decision given the logistics it entailed. I will not get into all the hassles we endured in getting our house ready to sell while trying to get ready for the twins. What needs to be understood is that it was not easy, but that it ended up working out better than we could have imagined.  Moreover, looking for the right new house actually ended up being fairly easy, but only because somehow that particular house stayed on the market long enough for us to have a chance to get it. So, in both the selling and buying it seemed God had His hands under us throughout our situation.

Looking back on it now, I realize that was the last “easy” part of our lives. After that came the birth of the twins. My wife has vaguely alluded to the circumstances involved in that event. I will not add much more here because I do not want it to distract from the main purpose of this post. I will just say that they were born in the back of a moving ambulance, and Ethan was born breech. And yet he was okay.

What I think that says — and events yet to come would confirm this to me — is that Ethan is a very strong person. Yes, he seemed very fragile in appearance, but he has an inner strength nonetheless. He wanted to live, and God wanted Him to live too.

My wife also has already mentioned that Ethan struggled from the beginning to rest comfortably and to gain weight. We did not find out for a month why that was, but we knew something was amiss. Ethan would sweat sometimes. He would let out high-pitched screams. He often would get upset around 9:00 at night and need to be carried around for a long while to be calmed. To me, it seemed like he was in pain. Once his heart defect was diagnosed, the cardiologist assured us he was not really hurting, but I honestly could not square that information with what I saw.

We had to give Ethan supplemental bottles after every feeding. That was my task, and as difficult as it was — because he really did not eat much of them and he choked on them a lot — I would not trade those memories for anything. I see now that those feedings and the times I spent walking him around while patting him hard on his back as he screamed were my real “Dad time” with him because they were my chances to pour love into him. He could not understand it when I would tell him it would be okay and that I loved him, but surely he knew it all the same from those actions.

As my wife said, in his quiet moments Ethan was contemplative. His blue eyes could look right through you, just like his mom’s. After a little while he was so small compared to his twin brother, but you could never forget he was there. Holding him when he was quiet was a dream — so precious, so cute. You tried to remember that during the other times when it seemed as if he would never be quiet again.  He was the better sleeper of the two once he got to sleep — very peaceful.  And he did love being with his brother.  We like to say that Noah looked out for Ethan from the start because he prepared the way at birth by going first, and Noah’s name means “comfort,” which I think is how Ethan felt around Noah.

Those are the actual memories.  And then there are the imaginings.  We instinctively imagined more about what Ethan would be like than Noah because Noah was already growing before our eyes.  We kept wondering whether Ethan would be more like Noah after his heart surgery.  Would he become a big baby?  Would he stop being quiet and introspective and become super-active?  Would he be a late walker? Would he have more health problems? The answers to these and so many other questions painfully elude us.

What I do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that although the length of his earthly life was a wisp compared to most others, he etched a deep and permanent mark in our hearts. I will admit that sometimes I worry that the passing years will erase the precious details of him from my mind because we had so little time with him, and then he will be completely lost to me.  But after a while an adamant assurance overtakes those fears.

No, I will always remember his strength.  I will always remember his peace.  I will always remember that he taught me about the true patience love requires. Ethan was not an echo; he is our little boy with a big heart.  That heart had a large hole in it, but it was nothing compared to the hole his absence has left in ours.

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Meet Our Ethan

His Mom: Before we get into posting about grief and loss and the bigger picture, we want to introduce you to the little boy we refer to as “our little caboose,” Ethan Walter Jones. He is our fifth child. He has a twin brother, but he was the second to be born. Known as Baby B for several weeks, he was the baby up underneath my ribcage, closest to my heart. He spent pretty much the entire pregnancy in a transverse position, so his head was on the left side and his little bottom made a lump on the upper right side of my belly. There are a few extra stretch marks right there, where I patted his little heinie before I even met him. The twins’ birth story is complicated, and I don’t want that to be the focus of this post. Suffice it to say, he was born vaginally in a breech position with no pain medication. This was a little rough on both of us (understatement). My first glimpse of him scared me – he was a little blue and quiet. He spent about half a day in the NICU before being released to my room, with regular blood sugar checks for 24 hours. He was 3 oz bigger than his brother, and his hair was a fuzzy, reddish blonde. His head seemed small to me but the doctors assured me it measured fine. He liked being swaddled, and both boys preferred sleeping together in one bassinet.

He had difficulty nursing at times, and because of the low blood sugar levels, he received supplemental bottles to start. The supplements continued after he did not gain his birth weight back appropriately. Eventually, we found out that his feeding and weight gain concerns were due to a heart defect. At his one-month-old checkup, our pediatrician heard a heart murmur and got us into the cardiologist the next day. I held his tiny arms while they did an EKG and an ECHO and cradled him close as he was given a diagnosis of ventral septal defect. Again, we might write more about this later, but it was only one part of his story. His feedings would tire him quickly – both nursing and taking a bottle left him sleepy and dribbling milk down the sides of his mouth. He required a bib with every bottle, but he never did have any real acid reflux symptoms. He also never had baby acne – the only Jones child that can say their skin was clear at 6 weeks of age.

Ethan loved swinging in the old creaky baby swing we got for $25 at a consignment sale the week before our oldest was born. He wanted to be swaddled and didn’t wiggle out like his brother. His eyes were deep blue – the color where you can bet they will stay blue. He was a fussy baby – spending so much energy eating tired him out quickly and we suspect there may have been something else bothering him. His cry was higher pitched and easily identifiable to me. We spent a lot of time bouncing, walking, shushing, and rocking. He liked to be firmly patted on the back. I would swaddle, pat, and rock while singing his favorite song, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” but his daddy would pat his back as Ethan was laid over his shoulder while walking around. His older siblings would bring him “the sleep sheep” when he cried – one of those stuffed animals that was supposed to help soothe babies to sleep. His oldest brother swore that Ethan loved the sleep sheep much, much more than his brother.

During the infrequent periods where he would be quiet and alert, he would stare at your face with those deep blue eyes, looking like he was studying every detail of your face. I said that his brother had an inquisitive look but that Ethan was studious. Both observant but with different tones, if that makes sense. They each loved to look at the blinds in their room, just behind the changing table. I guess the contrast made them visually appealing. I would kiss his tiny feet while changing his clothes. He also had a sweet little button nose perfect for kissing. One of his ears bent over a little at the top. His right eye didn’t close quite all the way sometimes when he slept. He loved his fuzzy pajamas that said Little Brother on them. He did not love bath time.

I loved holding them together. I would say to myself, this is the best feeling in the world – to be covered up with babies. It seems crazy, but they really seemed to enjoy being together as well. Of course, 2 months is too young to have your first social smile. One of my deepest yearnings is to see him smile one day. I called him my Big E, which was kind of silly because he was a tiny little peanut. So tiny he fell off the growth charts, but that was supposed to change after the open heart surgery to correct the VSD. He was just growing out of NB diapers and clothing as March approached.

There is so much more I wish I could tell you – those precious moments and memories we cherish with our other children that we never experienced with Ethan. I could go on for pages listing the questions that cross my mind daily – like would he have eventually grown to love his bath? I wonder every night as his brother toddles up the stairs saying “Bah! Bah!” with such excitement. But those are some of the memories from his two months on earth with us, and we hope you feel like you know Ethan a little better as you read about him in the posts that follow.

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Why We Are Starting This Blog

What is the right way to begin this blog? Other than explaining the meaning behind its name, which we do in the About page, perhaps it is best to start by explaining why we would do this. Why write about the loss of our child? And even if we write about it, why publicly share something so personal?

When you lose a child, you experience several responses. You cry, a lot. You scream. You shake your fists. You sit in silence. You listen to reflective music. Eventually, you pray and read your Bible. And, at least for us, you also write.

You write because there are thoughts that need to be expressed which you cannot bring yourself to verbalize to anyone else, either because they are too dark or painful or meandering or because they don’t make any sense until they are loosened from your mind and expressed on a page.

Such thoughts are deeply personal. But often when we have “compared notes,” we find that we are thinking much the same things, though of course expressed in our own voices. And when you start reading what others have written about their losses, like Nicholas Wolterstorff in Lament For A Son or C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed (works we highly recommend), you discover that they share some similar thoughts and experiences.

There is a kind solace in this discovery about grief. That you are not alone in your devastation. That it is okay to question everything. That though it feels like your world is ending, you are not crazy.

Yet, even with the similarities, each voice is unique. Each expression contains a different emphasis. Nothing is really repeated. And of course this should be expected because no two losses are exactly alike. We lost the same person, but my wife and I experience that loss in our own ways just as much as we share in that darkness.

So, one reason we have chosen to open this space is because our experiences and thoughts might help someone else who has the profound misfortune of facing such a loss. Perhaps one of our voices will speak to someone in a way that will provide them even a sliver of solace. If that happens, the surrender of privacy is worth it.

But the other reason to do this is that our son Ethan, even as short as his life was, deserves to be remembered. Some people seek to continue a person’s legacy through a charity fundraiser or a monument or a foundation. We are not geared in those ways. But we can write, and doing so in a public forum, no matter how small, inscribes Ethan’s name and his memory in one more place here with us until the day we see him again.