Another angel watching over…

Early this morning a young boy died. He was seven years old.

He was a boy whom I knew from singing with his mother in a church choir, as well as his father from various events that I participated in at the university. This boy never spoke a word to me–not because he was a shy or rude child, but because he was born with such severe special needs that he couldn’t utter more than a few grunts at a time. He barely could fixate his eyes on anything, and he remained in his stroller/wheelchair the whole time I knew him. Nonetheless, his parents doted on him as if he was the homerun hitter for the local little league team; they cooed over him, stroked his face, spoke to him softly throughout Mass. The love between parents and child was obvious, and as I grew to know them, the love between child and parents was as well.

I knew that throughout his life he suffered a lot from physical challenges; not just the obvious ones, but from other problems that kept him in and out of the hospital for surgery numerous times a year, every year. His parents would tell us that the hospital PICU staff knew them all quite well. Still, the love kept all continuing on, making a family out of what some say was “so unfortunate” (I know this because I have heard people say this about my own special needs brother, who has needs far less severe than the boy I speak of now). Love made the family whole. Love made the family more “normal” than most, despite what one may perceive. Love, love, love.

Last night as we awaited news of his inevitable death, my husband knew of my need for consolation–he always does. He knows what I need usually before I even know it. And so we took a drive down the coast as the sun slowly dipped down into the water and the horizon shed the last bit of light to our world for the night. Inside I mourned the sun’s disappearance, the death of this day, a day which is like any other day, except to that family in the PICU last night.

It made me wonder the same question I return to in times of loss: why does it have to hurt so much, this mortality, this inability to hold on to a moment? I don’t doubt why it has to be; without mortality we wouldn’t value things in the same way, just as we wouldn’t appreciate the moment if we had assurance of a certain lifespan or knowledge of when death will come. I know these things.  And I know about refiner’s fire, and spiritual growth, and faith, and all of the answers that all of us in ministry use to explain away pain. But why does it have to hurt so much, Lord?

As my husband and I drove home, I knew that the next time the sun rose, it would be with one less soul on earth, it would be with less physical pain, it would be with heartache. On the radio, a mournful cello wove its tones in and around the rest of the strings, lamenting the heaviness it carried with each note. “It’s beautiful,” my husband said softly, and I agreed, although I wasn’t quite sure what I was saying was beautiful–the cello, the deep blue sky, or the ascent of another little angel to meet God.