To Mourn with Those That Mourn

Last Saturday, March 28, I had a Hallmark moment. (As in, a moment so cliche it could have been stolen directly from a cheesy yet unable-to-stop-watching Hallmark movie.) I had finally mustered up the energy to get outside to do some work on getting my yard back into shape for spring. I spent a good, long while pulling weeds in the flower bed where the hyacinths were fading and the bright red tulips were about to burst open. I actually enjoy gardening and yard work, although I complain about it while doing it, at least to myself. (I'd never complain about it to my kids. To them it needs to be a fun Saturday activity otherwise they'd never learn to appreciate it.)

While I had my hands in the dirt amidst the flowers and weeds I began to think about the Easter holiday and the meaning thereof. I like to take time in my life to ponder about things. It's very important to me, although it's rarely a formal affair (and never scheduled or planned in advance). I find that many of my greatest creative ideas and spiritual insights come to me in these moments. Lately, these sessions of meditation (not my favorite word) also allow me to think about Jack in a personal way. I feel close to him when I do this. This is helpful because one of my greatest fears is that I'm going to lose him twice. What I mean by that is that I know I've lost his physical presence, but I also worry that I will lose him in my heart and mind, that the memory of him won't be close to me--thus losing him again. I don't want to forget how it felt to have him here in our home or to snuggle with him while watching a movie or holding his hand when he tagged along with me to Home Depot or Walmart.

Back to the bulbs. I was sitting there weeding the tulips while thinking about Easter. Easter, this annual holiday which I have observed all throughout my lifetime with candy and eggs and thoughts of Jesus. (Easter has the very best candy of all holidays, by the way. Seriously good. But I digress...) This year I knew it was going to be different. Quite a bit different. And it is. This year I am counting on the meaning of Easter (the atonement and resurrection of Christ) to actually be true. I am depending and relying on the promise of the future resurrection of the dead to actually come to pass and to be fulfilled for me and my family in a very real and personal way. Now, I have pretty much always held a belief in this. But there have only been a few serious times in my life when I have had to rely on this truth so deeply and personally. This year, this Easter, is one of those times. For me, this Easter bears the promise of a future reunion with my son, Jack. A reunion which Stacy and I look forward to very much.

So I'm sitting there in my yard thinking about Easter and what it meant to me Before and what it now means to me After. I begin to think about the idea of mourning and sharing the burden of mourning with others. Our ward, neighbors, and family have been such a blessing to us during this period of suffering. They have truly lightened our load. That's a large part of what it means to be a Christian. The words of Alma from the Book of Mormon came to me:

Mosiah 18: 9--Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life—

[Later that day, at the General Women's Session of LDS General Conference, Pres. Henry B. Eyring would talk about that very subject. (Coincidence? I don't think so. Especially because he even related a story about a family struggling with the unexpected loss of their five year old son.) My wife told me about it, so I watched it online. You can watch it here.]

Back to the bulbs again. So I'm thinking about what it means to mourn. I look up and my neighbor is crossing the street, heading in my direction. He has something in his hand. He comes over to talk to me and offers me the gift he has prepared for us: a painting he created of the Saviour's hand lifting a child's hand into heaven. It's a very powerful image and a beautiful work of art. He created it for a family member a while ago and made me a copy. The accompanying letter was very heartfelt and meaningful.

Mourning with those that mourn--in action.

This experience, along with the inspired talk by President Eyring, gave me exactly what I needed that day in order to bring the true spirit of Easter and belief in the promise it holds into my heart. We look forward to these moments and cherish them dearly.

All of this came just a few days after Stacy and I had completed the task we had been dreading for the last two months: we placed the order for Jack's headstone for his grave.

Jack's grave waits for a headstone.

We hadn't necessarily been putting this off, but we hadn't exactly been hurrying to get it done either. Honestly, I felt conflicted about the whole thing. Part of me felt like Jack's transition from this world wouldn't be fully complete until he had a headstone to mark the location of his body's resting place. This thought crosses my mind every time we visit the cemetery; it just feels incomplete without one. But at the same time, the idea of installing a headstone feels so completely final that I don't want to do it yet. Once that rock is in place, it seems as though one chapter officially ends and a new one has to begin. I'm not ready for that.

Buying a headstone is one of the only things relating to the sudden loss of our son that didn't happen quickly, so I think I appreciate the delay for that reason. I'm not exaggerating: from his last breath on earth to his burial, only five days passed. Five days! For someone we'd had with us for five years. His departure was so sudden, and everything subsequent to that monumental event happened so quickly. The dramatic succession of necessary events flew into motion, and I felt like I could hardly keep up with everything that was going on (making impressions of his hands, hiring a funeral home, picking a casket, planning a service, etc.) Because of the rapid motion surrounding me in those early days of his loss, I have been unwilling to speed up the process of buying a headstone. It's the only thing out of this entire ordeal I can control.

But we've done it. We went headstone shopping (never thought I'd say that!). Part of this process includes browsing catalogs, websites, and all of the other headstones at the cemetery--including Jack's new neighbors--to get an idea of what we wanted to do in order to honor and represent him best. After a fair amount of browsing, pondering, and discussion, we settled upon a design. And the headstone has now been paid for. So we wait.

Wait for what? The monument to be installed? Yes (four to six weeks). Then what? We mourn. We wait. Repeat. We move on. We move back. Repeat. We do things in life that have to be done because they have to be done. We wish we didn't have to move on. Repeat. We find that everything we watch on TV means something different to us than it did before.

I conclude with a story from our time in the hospital, or rather Stacy's time in the hospital.

It turns out that life in the hospital can really be a lot more like Grey's Anatomy and ER than I had ever imagined. I always thought those shows were so over-written and overly dramatic, but it turns out that aside from being rather addictive soap operas, they have a fair amount of truth to them. (I hope you never have to find this out for yourself.) I know this now because when I showed up at the hospital (about two and half hours after Jack had passed away), I felt like I had entered one of those hospitals on TV. Things had certainly calmed down by the time I arrived, but Stacy told me that in Jack's final moments all of the frantic nurses and doctors had poured every bit of energy and skill into urgently turning his diminishing prospect of survival around. They desperately wanted to save him, but it just wasn't meant to be.

My wife had been waiting for news about Jack in a public room down the hall from where they had conducted emergency brain surgery on him. (A blood cot had enlarged and burst in his brain in the ambulance on the way from Provo to the hospital in Salt Lake City; it had been too foggy a night for Life Flight.) She hadn't heard from anyone for a little while. Then a nurse unexpectedly ushered her into a private waiting room nearby. The door was open. Suddenly the doctor was there, standing before her. He was panting and out of breath. He apologized and said he had run down the hall from the pediatric OR to find her. He still had his little surgery goggles and disposable gown on. He said, "He's not going to make it." Jack wasn't going to live any longer. The medical team was performing CPR but it wasn't going to bring him back. He was not going to wake up. His brain was not going to work any longer, and they couldn't keep him alive. The doctor asked Stacy if she wanted to come say goodbye to her son before they stopped the compressions on his chest. Of course she said yes, so the doctor took her by the arm and led her down the hall and into a room filled with busy nurses and doctors and monitors and cables and beeping machines and the still, silent body of our sweet, precious boy.

She looked at him. She said goodbye. We started to mourn. And others mourned with us.