This I Believe

From Grief to Grace to God

I believe that deep suffering opens the soul to knowledge and to love.ß I believe that when one loses a child, they are enveloped in grace that comforts, soothes, and protects.ß And I believe that sorrow leads to abiding peace.

Two years ago, I awoke at dawn one beautiful May morning, bright-eyed and full of life as the sunrise spilled onto the horizon in jets of orange and pinks.ß My son, Sam, was home from a year of study in Italy.ß Handsome, charismatic, and brilliant, he had spent the evening dazzling us with stories and pictures of his European travels.

That next morning, a glance to the basement confirmed that old patterns had returned, as it appeared Sam had fallen asleep on the basement sofa.ß But a sense of unease disturbed my thoughts.ß It was not smiles and hugs that greeted me that morning, but death.ß For I knew death.ß I knew it as surely as I had watched my father slip into a coma four years earlier, heavy breath turning to gasps turning to stillness in the middle of the night zipped into a body bag by funeral directors dressed in 4:00 AM suits.ß I knew it as I found my mother only a few years later curled lifeless in the sunroom of my house.ß

In the midst of tragedy a sense of calm can lead to clear thought and action.ß Strength just comes suspending time and directing each word and movement.

Running with me now, my fourteen-year-old son and I raced downstairs my husband following. And I began the unimaginable task of breathing breath into Sam’s cold and ashen body.

Hope existed in that last hour of driving to the hospital, hope of a modern day miracle, hope of Sam walking through the door silly grin on his face.ß Instead, the doctors gathered stating, (I’m sorry.ßYour son died today.)ß The words, hard and heavy each like a bomb exploded in the emptiness once filled by Sam.

Much later, as the shock of Sam’s death receded and new patterns and habits of living took hold, I realized that a veiled choice had faced me as I grieved: to die internally despairing over a future that could not be or to learn and grow reaching for understanding of a new tomorrow.

It was the silence in the midst of my sadness that brought acceptance and love.ß Silence resurrected the colors of flowers on a June day–reds and golds surprising with their beauty and heralding the possibility of healing.ß Silence brought my son back to me– this remembrance of him a part of the new meaning that unfolds before me. And silence instilled within an inner, lasting peace.

So I have changed.ß I have faced devastating loss and have moved through it to a new reality. I believe that grief enlarges the heart as it heals.ß I believe in the future, though it is not the future I once saw or imagined. I know that my son is dead.ß But I believe that I have been blessed by God.

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