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.