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.