COMMENT
- The Unchosen Minority (2)
A Parent's Perspective
(Reflection - May 2004)
As I commence this second article, my recent illness offers a perfect segue into this topic. I want to thank all those from around the world who offered prayers for my healing. And I do mean around the world, as our beloved Bro. Bruce and Sis. Joanie Parker, who are currently in Ecuador fulfilling missionary duties, e-mailed to let me know I was in their prayers as well as several from other lands.
At the height of my illness, I became legally blind in my left eye. It was caused by a serious virus that was probably contracted in the daily duties of my job as an Infection Control Practitioner in a hospital. The Lord answered the prayers you offered, my dear brothers and sisters, as well as using the physicians, nurses and other healthcare workers who diligently cared for me. And now, we can praise Yahweh for restoring my sight to its previous level. This was a very scary time for my sister-daughter and myself as I am a single mother, having to work outside of our home, with my sight being a very important part of my job. I also thank those who helped get me to the hospital when I was so ill I could not sit up in the car, and the sisters who came to provide care in the hospital, and all of the outpouring of love since then in the form of meals, hospitality, cards, prayers and visits. All of this is truly your faith put into action to show the love of Christ to a disciple and her daughter in a true time of need. God bless you all.
Relearning
the value of my life
This article’s focus is from the standpoint
of a parent who has lost a child to suicide. While remembering four
Christadelphian youth have died from this disease in the last three years,
the following is only my personal perspective.
As a parent who has lost a child to this dreadful illness, there are times in coping with the horrific reality of it that I have wanted to join my son in death. On two occasions, in my recent illness, I faced death. I was not sure if I was going to live or if there would be doctors and medicine that would pull me through with the grace of our loving Lord. At these moments, along with losing the precious sense of my vision, it was almost as though I was being given a choice for the thoughts I’d had of wanting to join Jonathan in death. When I finally got that close to the reality of it happening, I begged and pleaded for Yahweh to forgive me for those thoughts and please allow me to live. I had thoughts flashing before me of all of the things I knew God wanted me to accomplish in this lifetime and the responsibility I still had to fulfill to my daughter who is just finishing her senior year in high school. In my pleadings with God through prayer, I promised to change that attitude and be thankful for every day He gave me and would work as hard as I could to be a better disciple to be an instrument of His to carry out His will.
Inside
a parent’s mind
Soon after the death of my child in this
manner, I identified myself as a mother of a suicide. When a child
dies of this disease, that fact is always just under the surface of everything
else that exists. I will never be the same person I was before the
event; but from a spiritual perspective, the Lord would not want it that
way, either. We must grow and learn from our trials and especially
one as devastating as this. I know that while I may look and sound
the same, I am not.
Just as many were patient with me when my eye was healing, leading me by the arm, so must we parents in this minority be treated with patience as our broken hearts mend. None of us in this unchosen minority anticipated we’d go through such a trial. We were not prepared. Our support and protection while we mend our broken hearts is the friendship and Christ-like compassionate understanding of our family, natural and spiritual. Everyday, we must find new ways to live and survive, but everything is different, strained, evolving.
The brain is a mysterious thing as it tries to heal the heart. If I focus on forgetting, it can work too well. I forget where I set my keys, my shoes, my purse. I forget your name, what we discussed last, what day it is, where I left your phone number or address. If I try to remember, I remember too well. At the memorial service, the hymns may set off an emotional cry. When they are of the resurrection, that is all that I can think of is seeing my son again then. When I get his picture out during the last hymn, it is because that is when I was last with him in meeting two days before his untimely death. Seeing young people that were his age in CYC gives me great pleasure to know where he would be developmentally. I enjoy each and every hug from them.
Please understand why someone in my position cannot go to certain Bible Schools or gatherings. It is because the pain of the memories with him there is too great. Please do not tell us to “Get over it.” We will never be “over it.” That doesn’t mean we haven’t moved on. The grief of suicide is very unique and carries many issues, one of those is that it is not a socially acceptable form of death. Many of you already know this first hand as you realize how distasteful you have found this subject to be and how uncomfortable it has made you feel.
Bible readings from the Daily Bible Companion could not be done in our home for the first two years without evoking a good cry from me as that was our family time and it was too hard to face. Bible study had to be done in other forms to get through it. There are notes and pictures he drew as a child still in my Bible that will always be left there. Seeing his Bible and study materials on the bookshelves are reminders of his too-soon departing. Attending special occasions – his high school graduation to get his diploma in his memory, his brother’s wedding, his sister’s upcoming graduation -- were harder than the funeral, as they are unavoidable reminders that he is gone forever. Please understand this when we have to take special mementos to these occasions and have patience with us. We bring them to help us get through the moment.
Most people’s years are from January 1 to December 31; some businesses have a fiscal year suitable to their business cycle; we now measure our years from the date of his death anniversary to the next. It is how we measure our survival. It is how we measure our growth despite our grief and it is how we now live our lives. Trying to cope every day with this is enormous. Emotional pain follows the same neural pathways that physical pain follows. All of us in this minority are suffering pain from our great loss.
How
we’d like to be treated
Treat us like any other survivor of a fatal
illness, always living in a tentative, strange remission between the lost
past and the ever present fearful new possibility the illness will reoccur.
We live with a threatening cloud that another CYC youth, another someone
we all love will shock us again. We are not contagious, except for
that first excruciatingly painful moment when it dawns on you that this
could happen to your child or someone you love, too. Treat us just
as you would a cancer survivor over the long term, with support and tolerance
of one who is riding through setbacks yet forging ahead to make every
day just a little bit more pleasant.
Please be aware of what is going on in your child’s life. Make yourselves aware of the issues he/she is dealing with that you may not otherwise be aware of. I pass on words that now mean so much to me, “each night, at bedtime, take time to talk with your child and ask him what he is dealing with and then pray with him over these matters.” Some of our CYC youths are silently dealing with depression. I pray that no one else will go through this trial of tears.
Our children died only once; the survivors of suicide die a 1000 deaths. Macbeth left brave advice: “Give sorrow words. Grief has need to speak, lest whisper o’er the fraught heart and bid it break.”
My grief has need to speak and each time I am fortunate enough to be allowed to talk and share or speak to help spare someone else this sorrow, I gain a renewed strength that heals my heart. I am thankful that somehow grace gives me a voice to explain all this. Daily I am reclaiming some bit of treasure from this tragedy, and my broken heart mends just a bit more.
Please keep in mind that the trial placed on the families of children lost to the dreadful disease of suicide is not their trial alone; it has become all of ours in the brotherhood. The Lord is putting each of us on alert to see how we are responding to each other. Please walk down the road of compassion with us daily.
Deborah Davis-Kauffman, mother of Bro. Jonathan Kauffman (5/25/83-3/6/01)