Do You Want to Build a Snowman?: Finding Moments of Happiness

Yesterday I felt joy for the first time in more than two weeks. Joy. Joy! JOY!

This doesn't mean I'm over "it" (my son's death). But I did feel something wonderful. It was fleeting, but real nonetheless.

That's a long time, at least for me, to be joyless. 15 days of no joy, to be exact. (Not necessarily unhappy, mind you, but living in a state without active joy. To me, there's a real difference.) I hadn't realized it until yesterday, but I normally live in a place of active joy for many of my waking hours. I really do. I love life. I try to live it to the fullest. I think this is why the unexpected loss of my son has been such a shock to me. I briefly spoke about this at Jack's funeral when I referred to feeling immortal throughout my life. The experience of losing my son has really brought me back to earth and brought certain things into focus.

It's also stolen away my active joy, at least for the time being.

About this joy yesterday: nothing major happened to cause it's brief return. It was just a small series of positive interactions and feelings throughout the afternoon. I am grateful for them and for what they did for me. I felt that deep, familiar sense of happiness I usually feel in my life. It erupted from my belly and spread throughout my body like goosebumps during a really special or triumphant moment in a play (think "Defying Gravity" or "Bring Him Home"). This feeling didn't last long, but I really enjoyed it for at least a few hours.

I love that feeling. Joy is truly exquisite. And now, having lost joy for 15 days, I understand more completely God's wish for us to have it in our lives on a regular basis. (2 Nephi 2:25: "Adam fell that man might be; and men are, that they might have joy.")

I had really missed that feeling, but the funny thing is that I hadn't realized it was gone until I got it back. That's how we are with the good things in our lives, isn't it? We don't fully appreciate them until we don't have them any longer. I know that's the case for me with joy. And certainly the case with my son, Jack.

As I've begun charting this pathway through full-time grief back to full-time joy, I was reminded by my loving wife of the Lord's plan for us and the portion of this plan requiring us to feel opposition in all things so that we might obtain the full appreciation of the good over the bad. I hadn't really considered that before, at least not in the deep and personal way I consider it now. Events like this really do change one's perspective.

Not only is my appreciation of joy expanding, but my sense of time has shifted as well. For the time being, everything seems to be measured, at least in my mind, in terms of Before and After (before Jack's passing and after). The thought of time moving forward is unwelcome simply because it puts me farther away from Before. Before is when I had my boy here with me. Before is when I spent time with him. After is when I don't. As time moves forward, it's all After from here on out (at least until our sweet reunion some distant day in the future), and that's a tough, joy-less pill to swallow.

To keep Jack nearby I focus on Before. That's where all the precious moments reside. And there are so very many of them. A five year old boy creates a lot of wonderful memories for a parent to hold onto, which is partly why I'm writing this blog (the other part is because it's a form of free therapy for me).

Here's one of them:

A few weeks Before Christmas, my 8 year old daughter, Katey, had holed up inside our food pantry in the kitchen working on a fun project to do with her younger brothers. It was a surprise. She's always doing these sorts of things. (Jack was definitely cut from the same cloth as her.) She was quietly working on her little project in the pantry when she heard a knock on the door. It was Jack. My wife saw this happening from her vantage point in the kitchen. Jack was looking for something to do. He wanted to play with his sister. He knew she was in the pantry, so he walked up to the door, gently raised his knuckles and lightly tapped on it. "Do you want to build a snowman?" he asked.

There was no snow outside. Jack knew this. It was his code, used just this one time (at least that I know of) for "Will you play with me?"

Even now, this melts me to pieces. My wife told me about this moment the very hour it happened and I've cherished it ever since. He said it so sweetly and perfectly. Pure innocence. It was exactly like the moment in Frozen (a movie Jack really enjoyed) when Anna knocks on Elsa's door and asks her that same question: "Do you want to build a snowman?" It's more than a question about playing together; it's about loving and connecting and valuing the ones you are blessed to have near you.

This memory has been a great source of happiness for me. And there are many many more of them. I play them on a loop inside my head at all times. I could fill a book with them. I probably will.

Sometimes the Lord blesses us with experiences which reinforce His love for us and the love we have for one another. These are called tender mercies. I've come to appreciate these a great deal in the last 15 days. This story of Jack and Katey is a tender mercy, one of the many I hold close and carry with me throughout the day.

This particular tender mercy came full circle yesterday when my wonderful sister-in-law, visiting from Texas, took her children along with my wife and our son, Tate (Jack's twin brother) to the cemetery to visit Jack's grave. She had the idea, while there, to build a snowman for Jack. A snowman! A real one. When this idea came to her, she knew nothing about the story of Jack and Katey from Before. It wasn't until many hours later that she found out about it.

So they did; they built a snowman for Jack. There's not much snow on the ground at the cemetery right now due to the unseasonably warm weather we're having in Utah, so the kids spread out and brought handfuls of snow to Jack's grave from all corners of the cemetery. By the time they were done, a lovely little snowman sat perched on the ground next to Jack's grave. It's perfect. I know Jack loves it.

Tender mercies such as this one are wonderful gifts in times of trial. They provide incredible support and strength to me as I move through this weird reality I now find myself in: the reality of having three children living in my house instead of four. Tender mercies bring respite from grief, focus to life, and healing to pain. The good news is that I've gone from constant melancholy to the next phase. I'm not sure what you'd call it: it's not unhappiness, yet not happiness either--it's somewhere in between. I guess it's just being. Being in the After, with many tender mercies to keep me company.

The Hearse With the Dead Battery

My five year old son, Jack, who passed away last week, never missed an opportunity to push my buttons, both literally and metaphorically. (He was five years old, after all. Isn't that part of the job?) You might call it a specialty of his, and it really has everything to do with his inquisitive nature. He just loved to explore every nook and cranny of the world he came into contact with. This fascination with getting into things relates directly, and quite appropriately, to the title of this specific blog post. I'll get to that in a moment.

First, I refer back to my previous post when I spoke of the swiftness of this whole ordeal and the state of complete shock it has left me and my wife in. The reality is that I'm still in disbelief, although as I reflect upon the events of last week I realize I'm in a much better place now than I was then; I wasn't just in shock when my son unexpectedly passed away, I was in complete and utter denial. I think part of this can be attributed to the fact that I was flying home on an airplane from New York while his health was declining so rapidly and I had no true sense for how bad things were. My wife was only slightly more prepared because she was with him throughout the entire ordeal. The total span of time from when Stacy noticed his first seizure at home to when she said goodbye to him for the last time in the hospital when the doctors stopped doing chest compressions on him was just less than nine hours, although he was only awake for the first three or four of those.

Here's a case in point to illustrate our inability to initially process what had happened. It will sound completely ridiculous and perhaps even callous, but it's a good illustration of what I'm saying. Jack passed on Monday. On Tuesday, my wife and I were having genuine discussions about whether or not our two oldest children should go to scout meeting and piano lessons and gymnastics practice on Tuesday night like they always do. We were just going to send them on their way as usual! Isn't that crazy? I laugh about it now, but we just couldn't quite yet wrap our heads around things and how to process this dramatically sudden change in our lives.

Now that we've gone through the process of laying our son to rest, we find ourselves in a sort of limbo state--not really able to move forward yet (although I'm sure that will come, with time) but not wanting to be perpetually sad either. It feels like a betrayal to Jack's memory to simply go about our daily routine again, but the fact is that we MUST do that (at least to some degree at this point; completely, in the not-too-distant future). We can't remain in limbo forever. But the moments of normalcy are really the most difficult for us now: we've gone out of the house several times since Jack left us, and I'm constantly catching myself counting four kids instead of three when moving from one place to the next; his chair sits empty at the dinner table; his toothbrush untouched in the bathroom. These constant reminders are the most challenging and difficult because they remind us of his absence. It's also become dramatically more quiet at home. I used to curse the noise; now I'd give anything to have it back.

Making a "new normal" for yourself is pretty miserable work. This is probably The Great Trial of Our Lives. We may look happy and put-together all the time but the reality is that we have near-constant melancholy interrupted by moments of complete breakdown. Yet we also have joy. We see the light from our living children radiating brighter than it ever has before. Their light, love for us, and need for us to be "present" for them strengthens us a lot. We also have great hope for the future, tremendous appreciation for those who care about us, and complete faith in God's plan.

We also have a sense of humor, which brings me back to the hearse with the dead battery.

Following the funeral service on Friday, Jan. 16, Stacy and I exited the church, got into the car, and waited patiently in the parking lot behind the lovely white hearse from the funeral home so we could begin our caravan to the cemetery. When the funeral director went to start the hearse, he found that it wouldn't turn over. The car had a dead battery! He ran over to tell us and apologized; Stacy and I immediately burst into laughter. A dead battery in a hearse at a funeral--talk about a perfect way to lighten the mood at a very sad moment!

Of course, the funeral director was mortified and embarrassed but handled the situation with aplomb. My amazing brother, our chauffeur, hopped out of our car and went to work helping to get the hearse started. Since we were next in line, our car made the most logical choice of vehicle to jump the hearse's battery. It all worked out, and after a few moments everything was back in working order and we were on our way.

It wasn't until two days later that a friend at church made the connection for us that it was probably Jack who had caused the hearse's battery to fail. That might seem harsh, but I was reminded about the many times Jack used to slip into the van in our garage at home to fiddle with the many buttons and levers therein. I always knew he had done so when I'd get in the van and discover that all of the air vents were closed or facing the wrong direction and my secret stash of chewing gum had been raided (not so "secret," I guess). On at least one recent occasion (with more under suspicion) he managed to kill the van's battery in the garage by leaving a light on or door open or by turning the key in the ignition (I can't remember exactly which one, perhaps all three!). This is how I know he had something to do with the stalled hearse in the church parking lot. This small event served as a wonderful reminder of the uncontainable spirit of our precious baby boy and the fact that he doesn't want us to take his departure too seriously.

Thoughts About Grief and Losing a Child; or Now What?

Well, here it is. The time when I put fingers to keyboard to put the period on the week now gone by.

I've been putting this off for a day or two, knowing it would be coming. There's no way I was going to get out of writing about the experiences I've had over the course of this last week, primarily because they have in no small way changed my life forever. But I haven't exactly been looking forward to it, perhaps because the emotions and experiences I've lived over the last seven days are quite complex and varied.

One week ago today I was living the dream, pounding the pavement in The Big Apple, working on my producing efforts for my work. Things were really coming together in a nice way, and I'd made some good progress on several things. I'd also had some really wonderful cultural experiences, including seeing Renee Fleming, Nathan Gunn, and Kelli O'Hara in The Merry Widow at The Met (my first time there); Sting in his Broadway musical, The Last Ship; John Lithgow and Glenn Close in A Delicate Balance; Hugh Jackman in The River; Beautiful: The Carol King Musical; Wicked  (for the seventh time!); performances at The Public Theatre's Under the Radar Festival; and many more. I was set to give a presentation at a conference on Monday morning in New York about the international arts festival I started last year at BYU.

But somebody else had different plans for me...

Early Monday morning, January 12, 2015, my wife was on her way to bed at home in Utah when she noticed our youngest son, five-year-old Jack (one of our twins), was having a seizure in his bed. She rushed him to the ER at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, where, after another seizure and a CT scan, the doctors discovered a blood clot in his brain. This sent them into "very serious" mode and landed Jack and Mom a high speed ambulance ride to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City in the middle of the night.

My wife had called me before "very serious" mode began, and we were keeping in touch. Jack was awake and responsive for the first few hours of this ordeal, and I'm glad my wife got to share that time with him. I was able to change my airline ticket home and caught the first flight out of JFK at 7:00 a.m. I talked to my wife just before I had to shut off my phone and she wasn't yet certain how bad things were with my son. In fact, I'm writing this a bit out of sequence: when we last spoke, she hadn't yet received the results of the CT scan and didn't know about the blood clot. So when the plane departed JFK I didn't have any idea how serious things were. She hadn't even learned they would be going to Primary Children's Hospital yet. I found all of that out when I landed, several hours later, on the tarmac in Salt Lake City.

A lot had happened while I was up in the air.

Jack was rushed into emergency brain surgery at Primary Children's, but unfortunately by the time he had arrived in Salt Lake City, the clot had grown dramatically and burst, causing a great deal of blood and pressure to accrue in his brain. His little body just couldn't handle it, and the doctors could not save him. He left this world very unexpectedly.

I called my wife as soon as I landed and she delivered the news to me. Needless to say, finding out my son had passed away so suddenly was a complete and total shock. In fact, almost a full week later, I'm still in disbelief, even though I have held his lifeless body in my arms, written his obituary, dressed him for burial, and spoken at his funeral. Never in my life had I ever imagined I would do any of those things for one of my children, let alone all of them in the course of a just few short days. Yet happen they did.

I've been really really sad this week. More sad than I'd ever known a person could be. I've ugly-cried in front of total strangers (including a plane full of passengers on the Delta flight to SLC). But I am not without hope. Yes, this week has been an enormous roller coaster of emotions (think Sally Field after the funeral of her daughter in Steel Magnolias) from the deepest valleys of gut-wrenching grief to the aforementioned shock and disbelief to blissful spiritual comfort and strength. But the one emotion I have never felt at any moment is despair. I take great comfort in the knowledge and testimony I have of the atonement of Jesus Christ, His great plan of happiness, and the promise of eternal families. These are the central tenets of my faith and belief, and they did not fail me in my hour of need. They don't take away the tremendous loss I feel from my son's absence, but they do provide the support and comfort I need in order to deal with it.

I have also been completely overwhelmed by the sheer goodness of others and have glimpsed the greatness of humanity through selfless service and sacrifice. My word to the rest of the world is this: don't let the news headlines fool you--human concern and love is alive and well in this world; my family and I are living testaments of that fact!

One thing I had never expected to happen during a time of extreme familial crisis, is that I would learn so much, that I would receive personal enrichment and increased faith. I have been strengthened in many ways. Strangely enough, the one emotion I have felt throughout this unplanned journey just as frequently as grief is thankfulness. I feel so much gratitude for the many people who have written notes, sent flowers, paid visits, donated money, cooked meals, and offered shoulders to cry on. This has buoyed me and my wife up immeasurably. Some of the things I've learned include:

• Take every moment to make meaningful connections with those around you.
• Hold family prayer and family home evening. (I had always thought the purpose of these activities was to strengthen gospel knowledge, and it is, in part, about that, but what it's mostly about is creating lasting bonds among family members.)
• Spend time together as a family and with those you love.
• If you ever have the impulse to share a kind word or thought or gesture, do it. Don’t hold back. Do it today, not tomorrow. Don’t let fear prevent you from sharing something good with someone else; that’s what Satan wants. The Lord wants us to share with one another and to lift one another up.
• Don't have any regrets in your relationships. Do this by saying the things you need to say, and say them on a regular basis. I'm grateful I often hugged and kissed my son and told him how much I loved him so that he was able to take that knowledge with him to the next life.

I've also started to become familiar in more depth with some of the gospel teachings on parenting children who depart the earth early. I like this quote: 

President Joseph F. Smith, the sixth President of the Church, reported: “Joseph Smith taught the doctrine that the infant child that was laid away in death would come up in the resurrection as a child; and, pointing to the mother of a lifeless child, he said to her: ‘You will have the joy, the pleasure and satisfaction of nurturing this child, after its resurrection, until it reaches the full stature of its spirit.’ …

I'm not sure what tomorrow will bring or how we will move forward. There are many complex emotions I continue to experience every moment of the day. I think the strangest part of this whole ordeal is the swiftness of it all. It all happened blindingly fast. A snap of the fingers has left me in a daze.

I'm so glad I don't have to go through this alone. My beautiful, strong wife is my partner in this new chapter of life. And our three living children are full of energy and innocence and light. We'll make it through, somehow. And we'll be better for it.