No words can express the horror of finding out your child was killed in a car wreck.
I know I’m not alone, I know these sudden deaths happen to so many, causing unthinkable grief and heartache. It’s the kind of broken heart that never heals. However, despite witnessing two close friends lose their children suddenly, and way too early, I never, ever thought it would happen to me.
I think about my son everyday. Yet on the anniversary of Jordan’s death, I can’t help but to walk once again through the unthinkable, like a slow motion picture reel. At eight years, I am amazed how I have been able to continue on. So much has changed. Birthdays and Christmases have come and gone. Jordan’s two younger brothers are now young men. Eight years ago, I truly thought that the world would stop. I would stop. Frozen in a moment. And in some ways I am frozen, or more precisely, altered. Forever changed.
This year I wanted to recount my very first feeling about the tragedy of my son’s death.. At the time, the shock of what had happened made the first few weeks and months somewhat of a nightmarish blur. But I do remember having a vivid sense of Jordan being scooped up by God, into the arms of Jesus like a child.
I tried to capture the image of this as a painting. My way of reaching towards Jordan, of communing with him, of loving him. A way of giving a hug I can no longer give. It’s been a strangely beautiful and sad undertaking. What I ‘saw’ was not a vision in the strict sense of the word. It was more like an impression, a perception, an idea. A sacred flicker of awareness. And more and more, as time moves me forward, I want to incline my ears and heart toward the subtle whispers of the Spirit.
My faith unraveled so much in the first years after Jordan died that I did not think this fleeting glimpse was at all significant. It’s a very dark road to walk where you entertain the idea that God may be like an evil demigod, demanding blood and sacrifice and full of vengeance. Thankfully, I am not in the place I was back then. I’m no longer angry at God, and I do not doubt the existence of God any more either. Far from being distant and uncaring, I have come to believe that all of my tears are kept by God, as tender reminders of love. Even more poignant, God would cherish my tears because God was and is weeping with me all the while. And somehow, I am held through it all.
Despite this inner knowing, I always seem to ask the same question around this time of year. “Where is my son, is he safe, is he well…he is not here… where is he?”. I don’t think I will ever stop asking this question. There is a part of me that is still overwhelmed by the thought that I am here, flesh and blood and breath, and my boy is not.
My beautiful mum-in-law rang me one year and said “…You know I always think of Jordan safe in the arms of Jesus”. She sent me a note in the mail, and wrote in her characteristically shaky hand, the lines of an old hymn;
Safe in the arms of Jesus
Safe on his gentle breast.
There by his love overshadowed
Sweetly my soul shall rest.
Free from the blight of sorrow
Free from my doubts and fears.
Only a few more trials
Only a few more tears
Then she wrote: “I trust in God. Jordan! He is safe.
I must hold these two things in tandem. I trust God…Jordan my child, my heart, is safe and happy. He is home. But I will never stop grieving, because he’s gone from the Earth. They say our loved ones are with us, closer than we think. It’s the idea of the ‘cloud of witnesses’ who are ever present, cheering us on. But most often, Jordan seems so so far away. I feel like a blind person groping around for clues.
Perhaps, we are suspended on the edges of the Real World. On the edge, things are out of focus and unclear. And though we are unaware of it, ‘God is not far from any one of us’ (Acts 17:28). And we are all, whether living or departed connected by the same source of all Life.
Alyssa's Art Garden 