Lately I have been deluged with stories of untimely passing.
Of course, the most prominent one was the tragedy in Boston at the marathon. I used to think about that event as such a whimsical, terrific party. Runners in their "Wicked Pissah" shirts from a past race year worn as a badge of honor. Crowds of Red Sox fans leaving that day's game to walk down the street and cheer on the runners. A few people staging their own type of marathon in the local bahs. What a wonderful way to celebrate Patriot's Day, now marred with shrapnel that finds its way into the tissue and sinew of the tradition, maiming it. Loved ones hurt terribly, limbs amputated, or even dead, just for loving their runners and loving the run.
But that wasn't the only instance. Just Sunday, I ran across a post on Facebook--I think it was "liked" by a friend, but I can't even remember which one--about a mom and dad who were spending the last days with their five-and-a-half-year-old son after he was pronounced brain-dead. I started reading their story, and I just couldn't stop. He had a number of health issues related to a diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy, and at this point in his life he suffered from major cardiac arrest. His mom and dad held him, still breathing, for several days while they found recipients for some of his organs. What a wonderful vigil--holding, caressing, and sleeping next to your son up until the very moment that he can be a hero to some excited, hopeful family. On Monday, at 2:45 (as in just minutes before the Boston bombing) their Facebook page reported that they walked him down to the OR, where they said their final goodbye. Doctors, nurses and social workers clapped.
The Friday before, another one of our SMA angels in Texas got her wings, a beautiful little girl named Savannah. I didn't know her parents personally, but I knew about their daughter through posts from Families of SMA about a run held near Houston every year that is named after (Savannah Smiles) to raise money for SMA research. She was just a few months older than Dylan and would have turned three in June.
There have been others, too, since Dylan died--but the dates were spread out. I at least had time to reflect, to pray, to collect myself in between. But these latest events occurred in a three-day span that also preceded my participating today in a class exercise on death and dying with first-year medical students. So I have felt immersed in my topic. And, I met yet another mom today--a participant--who still grieves her three-year-old angel.
I guess what I think is salient here--what I don't want to forget, and what I wish everyone knew--is that there is a literal army of parents handing their children up to God and falling to their knees, every day. Simultaneously at any given moment, someone is saying goodbye to their child, either because of a tragedy with no warning, or a disease that affects your child's genes and severely limits their lifespan and abilities, or a number of other reasons, none making any sense.
In my case and those like mine, I wonder every day, what happens to dragon moms when their little ones no longer require their fierce protection?
That's what grieving is all about, it seems. Finding a new purpose. I have struggled with this one for almost six months. Sure, some of them are easy to identify--continue to be a friend, a wife, and if you're lucky, a mother to the survivors. Heal yourself and your loved ones, for the day when joy returns and you can breathe differently. Thank God for the exquisite experience, even though you're sad and angry as hell. Pray for the dying and their mothers, their siblings, their fathers, their children. Donate the clothes that are left, the medical supplies, the time you now have.
I don't know what else I will do yet to carry on Dylan's memory. But today I offered my story, breaking down and sniveling, to twenty-something med-school students in their pristine white coats, so that they may possibly be the least bit prepared for the first time a parent weeps and snivels in anguish on them.
