First, You Decide to Live

Recently we learned of another couple who lost a child—a baby, only four months old. My heart aches for them, for the traumatic pain that has just flooded their souls, threatening to drown them. And then I think, “They’ll need to decide if they want to live.”

Yes, it’s partly that meaning. I wanted to die when Robb did, the pain was so horrific. I wished like anything that God had taken me, sparing Robb. I’ve lived my life, and he was so young. So I pictured taking my life, ending this pain, so wanting and wishing that I could. But it was only wishing; I would never do that to Craig or Jay or any of my family or grandchildren. I know it would be a self-centered act, and that would only add more pain for those I dearly love.

But the other meaning for “deciding if I want to live” concerns entering into real life again: Interacting with people. Putting oneself out there. Responding and choosing and talking and communicating and feeling. Feeling? I vividly remember how just getting up in the morning required all the decisions and choices and emotions that I could manage for weeks after that December 23. Why on earth would I want to really enter living again, when I could barely function with the most basic of actions?

Days passed. Then weeks. I ventured out but climbed back into my cocoon as quickly as I could. My emotions were held so lightly under the surface that I couldn’t keep them in control. By instinct, it appears, you search for that lost child, so I watched for Robb constantly. Any resemblance would capture my attention: A trombone player in the orchestra. A movement or a gait that resembled my son. The cut of a hairline and slight stoop of the shoulders. All reduced me to tears as I discover time and time again that this world was simply too painful for me to live in. It was insecure and scary and wearying and hurtful—wounding at times when least expected, so I couldn’t prepare for the “surprise.”

At some point, however, we grieving souls have to make a decision. Am I going to take those first steps? Am I going to commit to fully entering life again? Do I want…to live? No. And yes. I take baby steps. Pull back and hide, still bookended by courageous movement outward after a resemblance sent me back to cocoon. Still, I cry. Again and again and again.

You see, there’s this gaping hole in my life now, and the reality is that it will be with me in this world until God takes me home. Nothing else can fill Robb’s gap. No person. No experience. No temporary distraction of a new toy or travel or purchase or activity or anything. Nothing in this world will ever, ever be Robb. And that gaping hole will never heal—not until I die. Or Christ comes.

So yes, I decide to live, but life will demand maneuvering around this hole, this emptiness, this ache for him. And at this stage, the pain ebbs and flows. Sometimes the ache is off to the side in my peripheral vision. A quick remembering, a glance, an oh…that was so…Robb. Other days the ache follows me—the hub of memories of what was. Which ignites the should be’s. Anniversary times, like today, my grief becomes an impediment, planted right in front of me. Once again I feel paralyzed as I long for a Robb hug or the sound of his voice or the sight of his smile.

To those precious grieving parents, know that I pray for you. I know the stages you will inhabit, the cycles of losing a child. First, you decide to live. And then you spend the remainder of that life maneuvering through this realm with a hole in your world.

(Note: Please also know I do not live without hope! And that hope in eternal life—that Robb is indeed with Christ in heaven—is ultimately the only way I can decide to live. Several times a week I repeat from memory, “May the God of hope fill me with all joy and peace as I trust him, so that I may overflow with hope, by the power of his Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13)