If you’ve lost a child to death, you will understand this. If you haven’t lost a child to death, you’ll think this is sad, but you won’t even begin to fathom what I am saying. You’d be better off trying to understand why time moves faster farther away from the earth.
I’ve been struggling with sadness about Kye Matthew lately. A lot. When he died, I had 3 little ones to tend to, and I had their little hearts to help mend. I had a baby girl who would wake herself crying for her brother, not understanding why he wasn’t in bed with her, or even what death was. I had a boy who couldn’t help but think it was partly his fault, that he could have done something to save him. My little Lion, always the rescuer, still the rescuer who serves others without a thought for himself. I had daughter who suddenly had a lot less on her plate, who, at 5 years old, had already lost so much of her world, and now had to lose even more.
These babies grew strong together over the next years. They accepted a new baby brother into their arms, and have taught him his place as the younger brother of a brother he never met.
They still wonder why their brother was taken from them. It still doesn’t seem quite fair that they had to go through that, that they have to feel the scar of such enormous loss when they are so little.
But the mothers whose children die have to let the sadness out slowly and over years. They do not have the luxury of shedding tears when they feel like it, or acting out and having someone explain that what they are really angry at is the fact that one day their warm, sweet baby was in their arms, and the next they were watching him die, holding his lifeless body until the nurses told them he was getting stiff. They do not have someone to notice when tears start to form, nobody runs to hold them and bring them a tissue. And so mothers whose children die figure out how to get through the days and weeks and months on their own. Many people say they are strong. Really, though, each of them is simply no longer interested in much of what life has to offer. There are important things, and there are unimportant things, and the unimportant things aren’t even in the realm of their notice. If we try to explain this to others, a void opens up between us, so we stop trying. We get tired of people trying to fix us, or trying to get us to feel a certain way, or of people becoming offended by our lack of concern for most things. It’s not that it’s not worth it, it’s just that we are weary.
We are not strong. Strong. That word makes us want to scream, “What did you expect me to do? Shrivel up? Fall off the earth? Disappear? I had no choice but to go on or to kill myself! I chose to go on. I could just as easily have chosen the other. Maybe more easily.” No, we are not strong. We are just living with an enormous distraction that people have a hard time understanding, and so we ignore most of what is going on around us.
So six years later, mothers are still sad. We still remember what it felt like. We remember the the slowing heartbeat showing on the monitor. We remember the line going flat. We remember the sobbing doctors and nurses we suddenly felt compelled to comfort. We remember holding that stiffening body in our arms. We remember our baby being taken from us, knowing he would next lay in the morgue next to all those other bodies. We remember forcing ourselves not to go down there to be with him just one more time. We remember and relive this every single day.
So when it seems like we are distant and difficult to be with, give us space. Don’t take it personally. We don’t ask you to do anything but give us space to be something you cannot understand. Know that others have not given us this space, and we have let them go.
This past week two things happened: Miss Magpie was filling in some answers for an assignment. “What is the question you most want to ask God?” She answered, “Why did you take my brother away from me?” The Lion casually said, “Do you think if I hadn’t brought so much dirt into the house, Kye Matthew wouldn’t have gotten fungus in his lungs? I think I shouldn’t have brought dirt into the house.”
My babies can’t stop the sadness either.
Since then, I feel like I can’t stop shaking.
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