Dear Zach,
Today I dialed the number for a family coping with serious
health issues with their children. Ring and
I couldn’t catch my breath. A noose
around my neck threatened to force tears and gag my mouth. I thought I would have to hang up. Offering to set up a Care Calendar, I
plummeted back to your death and the door bell rings and the 100 lb weight of a
grief trying to open the door – the strength it took to try to be normal, to
try not to break down, to try not to envy the food grace givers for their healthy
children who came to give me or us a hug.
There came a time when I just couldn't answer the door – and some
caretaker would answer it for me. I want
to help this family, Zach, but tragedy vacuums my lungs clean of air, and I
gasp, and I cry, and I miss you. I don’t
have anything to give. But I think I
need to give.
The tribe had lunch recently, parking at a Chuy’s table for
so long we tipped the waiter twice. We
talked kids. My heart so heavy,
shoulders hunched, listening to other mothers talk about alive children and
tears came. Alone in a crowd with this
heart hurt. I spoke of regrets, of
guilt, of how every thought I think of
you is my failure – pictures where you smile, it feels like I stole that life
from you, and I can’t look. Head barely
above water, I sink. Mom T. talked about
sorry’s she still says to her kids for things she did or things she wish she’d
done, or things she wished she wouldn't have done. Like a stiff pair of shoes rubbing raw on the
back of an ankle, the sorry’s I can’t say scrape and tear and suck at the raw
places in my soul – deeper goes the guilt gash every day.
Zach, ask Paul. Ask
him for me about guilt. Surely he lived
with it, fought with it, struggled against it for all those murders – for all
those Christ lovers he hated unto death.
Surely, he did. Beth Moore said
over my Ipad today that God gave her a gift of pain. Zach, ask God to show me how pain can be a
gift and to find a way through this pain to forgiveness. Days go by, and I don’t want to face
another. Living is a molasses quick sand
hand pulling me down into a dark decay of guilt.
How funny I could break into hysterical laughter at people
who say, “It’s not your fault. You did
the very best you could. You are a good
mother.” Really? What grade do you get as a mother when your
child takes his own life? Are their boys
dead, all buried away in a hole in the ground, bodies decaying? How dare they say that to me. But they don’t know, and I do know they don’t
know. How could they know? So I am
quiet. We can’t walk in each other’s
shoes. We can only open our hearts to
each other and share kindness and love in the midst of all our warts.
Zach, ask Paul. Ask
David. Ask Noah how it felt to hear the
strangled cries of all those God haters.
Did all those dead hands flailing make him feel guilty? Did he fret and
wonder over why God chose him for life or over why God chose them for death? Were his dreams ever filled with the screams of
the drowning? Did David feel guilt over
his sins with Bathsheba? Did he ever
wish his life over? I think about
this. My shoulders hunch over, and I can’t
answer the “How are you?” checker talk in the grocery line. What I know for
sure is that it took God 13-ish years to take Joseph from the well meant for
his evil to a kingdom where God changed evil to good. Zach, I don’t know if I can wait 13 years or
even a day. I don’t understand or see how this sad can ever be turned into glad
– or this evil into good.
Why Zach? There are
so many sorry’s I wish I could say.
There are so many hugs, and I love you’s I can’t ever say. I hope another mother will tell her son. Tell her son how a suicide son kills his life
and kills the lives of those who feel him dead.
Someday, God, let me look back on this burden of shame, regret, guilt,
and all the sorry’s I can’t say – let me see how you painted evil into
good. It will be a miracle because alone
I am one of the hopeless drowning.
Zach, I’m sorry. I would give anything to say sorry, to touch
your warm face, and to see your happy’s and smiles and watch you grow up. Some days I don’t believe in God. But if I don’t, truly, what is the point? I can’t give you up into nothingness. I have to hold on to you in heaven. I struggle to hold onto that place of no more sorrow or pain
or tears. I struggle to believe it is
real. Your hug when you came in the
dream tells me it is real, but can you come again? Can you show me that slice of heaven again to
pick me up, to help me carry on for another and another day?
Zach – ask God to
show me his turning this evil into good. These scars weigh a body down. Ask Him to give us hope.
I love you, son. I am sorry.
Mom
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