I’m Not Strong

People tell me “Mike you are so strong, I don’t know what I would do if I lost one of my kids”.

To begin with they don’t know just far off-base they are regard­ing what they per­ceive to be strength. On the ques­tion of not know­ing what to do, they hit a home-run. Neither do I !

My fam­i­ly and I are immense­ly blessed and indeed hon­ored at the tremen­dous out­pour­ing of love and prayers we received from friends near and far, dur­ing this most trau­mat­ic peri­od in our lives. For that we are eter­nal­ly grate­ful and for­ev­er in your debt. Never in my wildest dreams did I con­tem­plate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an event of this magnitude.

Naïveté? .….…Maybe.

Feeling enti­tled or exempt? .….….. No!

The hard­est thing for me is try­ing to come to terms that my son is no longer here, isn’t com­ing home any­more, is dead.That word dead is the most dif­fi­cult for me to process, the final­i­ty of that word forces me into men­tal retreat.

I am unsure how oth­ers expe­ri­enc­ing this type of trau­ma deal with get­ting around that obsta­cle. Coming to terms with the final­i­ty of the word “dead”. Accepting that a loved-one has died is ter­ri­bly dif­fi­cult. Accepting that your child is nev­er com­ing home, is unimag­in­ably and inde­scrib­ably hor­rif­ic. How could this hap­pen ? “Why my child” ? I ask myself a thou­sand times , still I am no near­er an answer than when I asked the first time. This Summer, College kids all across America are return­ing home to spend time with their fam­i­lies. Not so for our family.

Try as I may , I can­not shake the feel­ing of vic­tim-hood which has plagued me since April 7^th 2014. I feel sin­gled out, I have cer­tain­ly had more than my share of tragedies. I won­der what the pawns on a chess-boards feel if they had feel­ings? I feel caught between two pow­er­ful com­pet­ing pow­ers, in a bat­tle which has pre­cious lit­tle to do with me. I feel I am mere col­lat­er­al dam­age. I know I will draw fire from some Religious quar­ters for dar­ing to speak this way. I humbly dis­agree with my friends who would chas­tise me for feel­ing or see­ing , I believe those are two of our sens­es. We are sup­posed to use them, aren’t we  ?

Am I self­ish to pine over the loss of my son, despite hav­ing more sons? Am I being dis­loy­al to my fam­i­ly for the deep,dark grief I feel for this, my child? If so how does :Luke 15:4 apply ? 

Jesus asked ‚“What man of you, hav­ing a hun­dred sheep, if he los­es one of them, does not leave the nine­ty and nine in the wilder­ness, and go after that which is lost, until he finds it” ?

In the para­ble Jesus told of the prodi­gal son, did the father not still have a son at home ? : Luke 15 :20. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with com­pas­sion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

Luke 15: ²² “But the father said to his ser­vants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his fin­ger and san­dals on his feet. ²³ Bring the fat­tened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and cel­e­brate. ²⁴ For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

Do these Scriptures apply?  The prodi­gal son did return. The miss­ing Sheep is like­ly to be found. My son is nev­er com­ing home. I cry every sin­gle day , so too does my wife. In the begin­ning I felt sor­ry for my son. I won­dered , did he hurt in the process lead­ing to his pass­ing ? Did he lay there think­ing “my dad will come get me”, through­out his short life he thought his dad could always make things right.

As much as I cry won­der­ing about that, I feel sor­ry for my wife and his mom. I feel sor­ry for his broth­er we all lost a great Guy. I grieve for the rest of my fam­i­ly and his friends. But most of all I feel sor­ry for me. I lost a part of me that can nev­er be replaced, the void left can nev­er be filled. Nothing can ever be the way they were. Everything takes on new mean­ing. I strug­gle to find a way for­ward, a way to claw my way out of the dark­ness. Sugar will nev­er be as sweet, water will nev­er taste the same, a cup of morn­ing cof­fee will nev­er make me feel the way it used to. My world is for­ev­er changed , how I move for­ward is all up in the air. There are times when I won­der if I ever will, or whether I even want to.