3 posts tagged “loss”

The church was packed.  Family, friends, neighbors, teachers, classmates, Cub Scouts, you name it. 

This was a boy, and a family, that people know.  Knew.  That people are glad to know; to have known. 

One uncle's comments in celebration of Luke's life included these words:  "It was a freak accident; it was nobody's fault.  I bear no anger toward anybody about this."  And you could tell he meant it. 

Here's what the mom and dad had to say, in today's local paper.

http://www.salinereporter.com/stories/090408/loc_20080904001.shtml

And she means it too.  She's just that kind of person.  She truly, truly wants people to pray for and forgive the man who killed her son. 

Because it WAS a freak accident.

High noon, not a cloud in the sky, no drugs or alcohol involved, a 40-year-old man, father of a 7-year-old boy of his own, plowed into the back of their stopped minivan.  At high speed.  Until today I was racking my brain trying to understand how on earth this could have happened.  He was a local; it's not like he couldn't have known that was a 4-way stop.  Why wasn't he at least slowing down as he apprached the intersection? 

Here's how.  I heard about it this evening.

He had just given blood, and was feeling lightheaded, and stepped on the gas instead of the brake, approaching that 4-way stop. 

Here was a man trying to do the right thing, giving blood; and he killed a boy.  A boy his own son's age. 

Can you imagine what he is going through right now? 

So seriously.  Pray for him, forgive him, cover him with love, too. 

And the parents. 

Early Sunday morning, their beloved son was taken off the ventilator, and wheeled into an operating room, where doctors did everything they could...  to make sure OTHER children would live.  They donated their child's organs. 

The dad was reported to have said, in making this decision, "I'm not sure this is what I want to do... but it's what Luke would have wanted to have done.  He would have wanted to know that other children could live, even if he couldn't." 

Who knows why?  Who knows why?

The web of our lives is woven together more intricately than we can know.

But that's love.  That's love.  To take your own family's tragedy, and answer the prayers of other families whom you will never meet.  To offer prayers and care to the man who killed your child.  That's IT; that's what it's all about.

That's love.

Go hug your children.  Kiss your spouse.  Smile at a stranger on the street.

Love one another. 

So this morning after I dropped off Eldest Son for his first day of school (which gave me a pang, knowing...), I stopped off to get some flowers and a card, and took them to the home of our friends. 

They had taken their two older boys to school too, somewhat to my surprise, but in retrospect it makes sense.  Get the kids thinking about something else, for a little while at least.  The mom and dad and the littlest brother (who is just a couple of months older than my own Littlest Brother -- we were pregnant together in our Moms' Group) whom I saw at their home, are all dealing with this really amazingly well, considering. 

I felt like a dope at first, bringing flowers, when I belatedly thought, "Why didn't I bring food or something more practical?" but then the mom mentioned to someone who called on the phone that she had been given so much food already that she needed to start putting some of it in the freezer.  So then I didn't feel so bad about the flowers. 

A neighbor and two relatives were camped out in the living room and appeared to have things well in hand, so when the mom found some library books that needed to go back, I volunteered for that job, and left again. 

So, I'm glad I went. 

The memorial service is on Thursday evening.

If they're asleep already (and Dear God, they ought to be!  It's 10:00 PM on a school night!), then kiss their little angelic brows and settle the blanket more firmly around their shoulders.

I WAS going to post about this holiday weekend / mini-family-vacation, including a trip to Michigan's Adventure amusement park. 

Or else I WAS going to post about Sarah Palin, and all like that. 

But then when we got back home a few hours ago, I had a terrible, awful, horrible, tragic message on my answering machine.

So none of that seems to matter right now. 

A kid I know is dead. 

A kid almost exactly Eldest Son's age, a kid whose home we've visited, whose birthday party we've attended, a kid who would have been entering second grade tomorrow in our same school district (although not in Eldest Son's own elementary school; the other one), is dead.

A kid whose mom kept all us other moms in Moms' Bible Study in stitches with her bubbly personality and goofball sense of humor -- her kid is dead.

I am still in a state of shock, but obviously nothing like what that family is going through. 

They were all in their family minivan on Saturday about noon, when they were rear-ended at a four-way stop.  No teen drivers involved; no sign of alcohol.  According to the newspaper report, everybody else got away with only minor injuries.  The place where it happened is right next to the Dairy Queen and probably not even a mile from the family's home; they must literally go through that intersection at least five times a day -- ordinarily.  Now I think I would go miles out of my way to avoid it, if I were in their shoes.

He was a twin, an identical twin, whose name was always attached to his brother's name, a single entity, "Luke'N'Aaron."  "The twins this" and "Luke'N'Aaron that".  He was one of four brothers, all boys in that family. 

Now there are only three; now Aaron will forever be singular.  Never again a plural. 

So now my heart goes out to them; my prayers go out to cover them. 

But, it seems so little.  It seems so useless. 

I don't know what to do or say; I don't want to intrude on their grief, and yet, I want to do something. 

So go hug your children.  Kiss your spouse.  Quick, arrange to see those old friends you've been meaning to get together with but somehow always end up saying "maybe next weekend." 

Because you never know.  You just never know. 

You never know when it might be the last time you can.