The Long Losing

Today, on the longest day in history... the day between Good Friday and the Resurrection, the day when death seemed to reign and all was quiet and hopeless, we attend a memorial service with our dear friends for their boy who died here just a few weeks ago.

Do you ever stop the losing?

In that ever present moment, when

if he were here

with those doleful eyes like his dad

and the sun flecked hair like his mama

the freckles sprinkled across the bridge of his nose,

he would be here.

Three weeks older than he was

just three weeks ago.

And when you’re all sitting around the table for dinner,

And his seat is empty.

When the grades come home from school,

But for the first time there is his card,

Incomplete.

And next time, there won’t be a card at all.

Does it stop five years from now,

When he would have been sixteen,

When you imagine his body grown and firmed up,

the muscles sinewy and the hair on his legs coarse and man-like.

His eyes, still doleful like his dad’s

Still the sunflecked hair and freckles

Like his mama.

But he isn’t here, and you are still

Losing him

In these ever present moments,

days and years

That keep passing by without him

Though you still can’t imagine it so.

Do you ever stop the losing?

When it’s the year he would have worn the cap and gown

And you would have said a different goodbye

Sending him off with pride and expectation

And maybe a little sadness and apprehension

Except now you’re closest memories are still

Those of his eleven year old face

Still fresh from boyhood,

The year you lost him

And began the years

of the Losing That Never Stops.

Sister gets married and maybe younger brother next

And all the while you can

Imagine him standing there,

Clasping their shoulders,

Laughing with a teasing smile.

But his smile is lost to you,

To all of you.

Because he is not here

And you always imagined he would be

So you lose him all over again.

Does it ever stop?

Twenty years, thirty years? Fifty?

Do you want it to?

When you held him small and red faced,

Fed him through the night and

Watched him toddle first steps,

Did you think that if you might lose him,

You would rather not have these moments at all?

His life, a gift.

And your life, forever threaded and branded with it.

To stop losing him would be a sort of death to your own soul.

To lose him over and over means

You never stop magnifying the gift he was to you.

But will it ever stop hurting?

Can you endure this, the losing

Of him—your son?

Your precious, God-given

And taken

son?

The Son of Man once said,

If you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.

So maybe in the losing

All is not,

And he,

your doe-eyed, sun-flecked, freckle-faced boy,

 is not

Lost.

The Son of Man once said,

Cast all your burdens on him.

So when the losing grows too great,

Or swells with too many years,

Or even long before then,

May He, who was once lost to his own Father,

Carry the Losing for you.