Loss

  I had a dream last night.  I don’t know what it means, but it left me pretty shaken when I woke up today.  In my dream my family was hiking through a forested, mountainous area with large, full trees, rocky trails, birds, animals, the works.  It was beautiful and serene.  My parents and sister were there laughing and talking with me, my brothers and our kids.  It was picturesque, really.  I remember the impression, now after waking up, that it had been a wonderful time of fun and adventure and that we had really enjoyed the day. 

  Then in an instant it all changed.

  My boys were running around the trail up and down a sloped section of the path, goofing off and playing tag when suddenly my youngest, J, slipped and fell.  Due to the slope of the path he began to tumble backward down the trail like some sick version of a cartoon character snowballing down a hill.  I didn’t realize that he was falling until right at the end when he tumbled right up to the rock that I had rested my day pack on. 

  I was concerned as any parent would be as I picked him up and brushed him off.  I knew that he would begin crying at any moment so I began to calm him.  Now, it has been my practice for a long time to help minimize the “artificial hurt” -- the additional crying and carrying on that a child feels due to the fear of something they experienced that they think should hurt regardless of whether is really does or not -- to pick up the boys and immediately praise them for how awesome a fall they had just pulled off. 

  “Wow,” I said.  “That was an awesome fall!  Did you see how far you rolled when you fell?”  J, was sniffling as he looked up at me with those huge eyes and dust smudged face, but he smiled as he was trying to be brave.  I looked over to my parents who had seemed not to notice the fall and were still talking to each other.  When I looked back to the face of my son it was stained red and the hood of his jacket was blood soaked.  I reached over to the picnic basket and grabbed a handful of paper towels to mop at his face and I called my father over as calmly as I could to help me.  I laid a paper towel over the wound on my sons head and it immediately soaked through with blood. 

  I calmly told my father to go get the park ranger.  My father, who was still laughing slightly at something he had been talking about, didn’t seem to see the urgency of the situation.  Instead, he came over to coo at J and began to dust off his pants.  Again, I told my father to go get the park ranger and to call 911.  Again, my father ignored me as he was talking to J and encouraging him to be brave and not cry.  With my hand over a mess of towels that were now soaking through and coating my hand in my sons blood, I finally shouted at my father, “Go get the f***ing ranger!!!”  I remember that I was looking at my sons eyes as they sleepily began to close while I screamed this last plea for help both in my dream and in reality.  It was this call, out loud and in real life that woke me from the dream.

   I don’t know what dreams are for.  I don’t know why I remember some dreams and forget many others.  What I do know is that upon waking from that dream, I feel a profound urgency to hold my son and make sure he is alright.  I had the sense after waking that as my son closed his eyes in those last moments that he was dying and for that split second, I knew the pain of the loss of a child. 

  Just yesterday I was told that my parents were going to be attending a funeral for one of their missionaries who had lost their 8 year-old son.  I knew almost all of my parent’s missionaries and viewed many of them like brothers so to know that one of these friends had outlived his own son was very hard for me to hear.  No man should have to bury his own child.  No man. 

  It took me back to when I had stood with my cousin as she and her husband had to lay their son to rest.  He had been sick for a long time and the mixture of pain and grief we felt was swirled together with relief and bitter-sweet happiness at his departure from the pain and suffering of this life.  I was a new father at the time and my oldest was just a baby, but I remember very distinctly the weight of grief I felt both for my cousin and as I imagined losing my own son.

  They say that God only gives you the trials that he knows you are strong enough to handle.  I know that one of my greatest fears is having to learn about the pain of loss first hand.  I have already lost much.  I have needed to rebuild my life many times and through it all, there has been one thing that I have never lost but always been afraid of losing: my family. 

  Here is the wonderful bit.  I can’t lose them now.  Not even to death.  My family is forever.  They are bound to me by eternal right and I will never lose them.  My boys are my boys through all the dimensions of time and throughout eternity.  I know without a shadow of a doubt that even if I am asked to be parted from them temporarily by the veil of death that I will hold them again.  This brings me peace in quiet moments and, with time, I know it will bring peace to my friend and brother.