When The Unthinkable Happens
It’s quiet here in the parlor.
The dogs are happily snoozing on top of the couch cushions, Russ and Charlotte are sleeping in upstairs, I’ve had one cup of coffee and I’m getting ready to go fix another one. I can hear the occasional car go by. I can see the red berries of my holly tree right outside of the window. I’m grateful for those thick velvet curtains that frame my wavy-glass, not-very-well-insulated old windows, but I’m still going to tuck this fuzzy throw around my legs– it’s a gray, cold day here in the Buckle.
I’m feeling kind of cold and gray inside, too. Today Russ and I will drive in to Franklin and attend the funeral of a friend’s 24 year old daughter who was killed in a car accident during the recent ice storm in Alabama. I never met the young woman who is being buried today, but I know her father, and so many of their friends and church family. I cannot begin to imagine the kind of pain they are experiencing right now. What is your morning like on the day you are going to put your child in the ground? My prayer is that they still are in the lingering shock stage of this shattering experience, at least enough to get them through today.
I have several friends who have buried children. The circumstances were all different, but all equally senseless and tragic and forever life-altering. It is the number one fear of every person who has ever loved another person, that they will be irrevocably taken from you– but in the case of your own child, it just seems so WRONG on some global, universal scale. Even though I absolutely believe in life after death, and that our souls are immortal, somehow that seems like cold comfort when you are saying goodbye to the precious, mortal body that housed the spirit of your child. And for some reason– probably because my own Madi Rose is close to the same age– it feels even more bizarre that the young woman that lost her life was in her early 20’s. She had survived the vulnerable toddler/small child years, when there are SO many different ways they can be hurt or worse. She made it through the tempestuous teen years, when some people I know have lost children to drugs or suicide. She had graduated from college, moved a couple of states away from her family and was starting her life and career. As a parent I would kind of had a tendency to think, “OK, we’ve successfully raised and ‘launched’ her, she’s on her way– whew, I can relax a little now!” But you never really can, can you?
One of the things that struck me when my Mom died last year was that I had just lost the one person on this earth that I KNEW prayed for me every single day. A selfish thought, maybe, but it was kind of sobering. I knew that as long as Mama was alive and in her right mind, she was ‘lifting up ‘ her children and grandchilden to God daily. She was saying our names out loud, asking for protection and blessing and for God to be real to us and work in our lives. And part of the enormous loss of that amazingly feisty little spirit was the loss of that certainty, of that covering of prayer, straight from a mother’s heart to her/our Father’s heart. I don’t really feel less protected or blessed since she’s not here on earth to pray for me any more. But I do feel a little less, well, loved.
The Yake family needs your prayers today, and for lots of days to come. The only way through this is to just go through this, I guess. But knowing that there are people all over the world who are asking God for grace, peace and mercy on your behalf in your time of grief might help a little. I hope so, because for the life of me I can’t think of anything else that might. I have to keep reminding myself that God knows what it feels like to lose a child, too.
And maybe you can say their beloved child’s name out loud– it’s Emily.
