Lessons I've Learned From Grief -- Part Two

Life is full of grief.

When I was little, I grieved over my cat running away or breaking a toy. When I was older I grieved because the boy I liked didn't like the girl with frizzy hair and braces, because my grandparents had the German shepherd I'd grown up with put to sleep without letting me say goodbye.

By high school, it seems I grieved over everything.

I still remember how bad it hurt to find out that my first date had stayed for the second show at the movies and hooked up with someone else. I grieved the loss of my two best friends when the ex-boyfriend of one of them asked me out, turning me into a social pariah my senior year. I grieved that the boy who sat behind me in social studies and aggravated me would never ask me out because we were just friends.

Then real life came rolling along and I discovered there were bigger things to grieve about and bigger hurts that lasted longer, like a marriage where I was the only one who was ever at home, first in an empty house and then with a baby. I grieved for the dog I'd had since I was a teenager, the cat who wiggled her way into my heart then ran across the road, another dog, for the end of that marriage, the loss of my paternal grandparents, the loss of the job I wanted to do for all my life.

But I picked myself up and went on to another marriage where I learned about addiction and pain and the grief of loving a person who couldn't always be the person you loved, until I couldn't love him any more and be safe or sane and I grieved another marriage. I found another job I loved, and another, and wound up grieving for them as well. I grieved the loss of more dogs, a few more cats, my maternal grandparents.

I thought that each grief helped prepare me for coping with the next one, and maybe it did. Grief was brought on by losses that were harder to get over, harder to pick myself up from. Yet even as I mourned the loss of my Jack Russell terrier Al last spring I thought, "How do people survive those really big losses without some training from the little ones?" Saying goodbye to hamsters and cats and dogs, teaching our hearts about mourning and recovery, surely has to help when it's our grandparents, our parents, or someone else.

And maybe it does, but it seems that we're in training for those foreseeable losses. We have to be able to envision a world where we say goodbye to those people. It's part of the reality we accept as we grow older and those comparatively little losses, while they may stagger us at the time, are like the training wheels on our bikes and they teach us to balance and keep going.

I've learned, however, that nothing trains you for losing a child. Nothing prepares you, even the doctor's diagnosis, the sudden silence of a fetal heartbeat, standing by the bedside of a child who is no longer really in the body you've bathed and cherished, or watching them slip away through years of addiction. Nothing.

No matter how much you think you're prepared, as a parent, all you do is hope for a mistake, a miracle, even misidentification. It cannot be your child that is dying, or your child that is dead. Even now I wake up some mornings hoping it's all been a bad dream. I go to bed at night hoping I can dream about him, just so I can see and hear him again.

Losing Ethan taught me that there is no way to be prepared for dying, no real way to be prepared for living. Love opens us up to the most incredible pain that destroys us in ways that no physical trauma ever can. Yet we do it, and do it again because it also brings us unmatched joy and because it is who and what we are meant to be and do.

But just as I learned about grief, I learned about myself. There were lessons I learned on that morning six weeks ago, lessons I've learned every day since, and lessons I continue to learn.

I didn't know I'd be able to share my pain. Really. There was a while when it felt like something I should lock into a box in my heart and treasure as something that separated me from the world. It wouldn't take the place of Ethan, but I could love my pain and suffering. I could keep it to myself and take it out when I was alone to wallow in self pity. I could wall it up and, without meaning to, let that wall stand between myself and the people I cared about and who care about me. I could let that wall keep me from moving forward down the path I've been given to walk.

But somehow that didn't happen and I know from messages and calls, from unexpected hellos and hugs, that God is using me to help other people. I never aimed to be used in this way, but I cannot deny it and turn away either. I've always had words in my heart and although I've never used them this way, it was because I never had these words to use. There was a reason they were always there and perhaps this is it. I didn't know that so many people were hurting, and that my words would be more than a salve to my own battered heart, but perhaps the words that they needed as well.

I know that is a singular lesson of my grief, but there's a greater lesson in grief that many of us learn unexpectedly. As my capacity to endure pain has grown beyond anything I expected, I've found that I not only grieve for myself but for the world around me. When I learn of someone else's loss, I stand at the brink of the same pit they are falling into and remember the pain of the plunge. When someone is in pain, battling a difficult diagnosis, struggling with an issue in their lives, I want to help. I want to reach out and tell them someone cares, even if it is someone they hardly know or don't know at all. I pray for people I've never met because I cannot reach them to let them know I care.

It seems in tearing down the wall that would have held my pain in, I've also torn down the one that kept the world's pain out.

When I manage to leave the house, I realize that I see the world differently. I don't feel as harsh toward the less than perfect people around me, more caring toward the seemingly disenfranchised, a desire to hug people who look as though they need one. I'm less inclined to be judgmental because I realize so many people are like me, burdened with things that not everyone knows.

The world is a tougher place than we realize when we are living our blissfully unaware, day-to-day lives and dealing with the easy things like getting where we're supposed to be on time, doing household chores, paying bills and even fighting over the things which turn out to be inconsequential.

When we finally have to cope with the hard things, we realize we're actually not as tough as we thought.

If we're lucky, we realize that about everyone and like many things about grief and loss, it changes who we are.

He Was Just Another Addict, But Aren't They All?

Philip Seymour Hoffman was nobody special.

In fact, my reaction to his death last weekend was quite honestly, "Who?"

While a few of my Facebook friends noted his passing, and the talking heads began to proclaim the tragic loss of "one of the greatest actors of our time" all I could note was that his face was vaguely familiar.

But he was no one special, not to me, and not really to the thousands who will proclaim his loss and for a moment focus on the tragedy of another of our entertainment icons being consumed by his or her addiction, but who in a few months, weeks, or maybe even days will forget.

Hoffman was no one special to the people who will use him as another face in the war on drugs, another reason to beat their chests about how better laws, tougher sentences and more arrests will protect our society from drugs.

In reality, he was no one special to those who will try to turn the focus to the addiction, to people who are making their way through life seemingly complete but with holes that they try to fill with drugs. Even though they will be closer to the reality of what is needed to fix the problem, they'll be shut down by a society that still likes the idea of the gunslinger west where we could fight everything out. We can't fight mental illness and legislate it away, so we don't want to talk about it or recognize it as one of the biggest problems our society faces.

Besides, we want to think of mental illness as the homeless man in dirty clothes on the corner talking to himself, not the long string of a Hollywood millionaires and musical legends who despite fans, success and all the money they could ever need for treatment are found dead with needles in their arms or pills in their stomachs.

Often in their bathrooms.

Just like my son.

To be quite honest, my second reaction to Hoffman's death was anger. Anger that so many people cared about someone just because they were able to do the thing they loved and do it well. Anger that with all the success he had, despite the fact he'd been to rehab twice, he still didn't take advantages of the resources he had to get help. Anger that the media and our society turned him into someone special when in reality he was just another addict.

Just like Ethan.

Following on the hills of my anger was sadness. Not specifically for him, but for everyone who battles addiction. It isn't the availability of the drugs that is the problem, it's the craving. It's the lack of understanding in our society. It's the lack of care that will see them beyond the intense period of rehab and support them through the days following when life is still lacking something that they feel only their drug of choice can give them. It's a society that makes seeking a facelift or fake boobs far more acceptable than seeking care for a mental illness, because it's OK to want to look good but if you can't feel better with a prescription, well there's really something wrong with you.

Somehow we think you can't really be successful, or attractive, or popular or rich if you have a mental illness. So if you're any of those things, or ever want to be any of those things, then you cannot have a mental illness. So instead of accepting counseling or being truthful, the rich and powerful and the poor and downtrodden and those who just can't seem to find their way or feel like they don't quite fit in anywhere choose to self medicate. And it feels good, for a while, and then they are addicted and no matter how they try to convince themselves otherwise, they still don't feel good any more.

So they drink and drive, or take too much, or kill themselves slowly over time by using up their bodies faster than they can repair themselves.

Just like Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Just like Ethan Dale Funk.

Just like the many boys I've come to know through the memories of their mothers. Just like thousands of boys and girls and men and women do every day, killing themselves in numbers we cannot even begin to comprehend or maybe even care about until one of those lost lives is one that touches our own.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was nobody special. He wasn't the face of drug addiction and the war on drugs. He wasn't the face of mental illness. He wasn't even the face of a Hollywood icon. There is no one face. There are really thousands and thousands of faces with blue eyes and brown, bright smiles and never seen laughs, impeccable dressed and in need of a bath, those mourned by thousands and those buried in a pauper's grave with the name John Doe.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was nobody special, just like Ethan Douglas Funk and all those other faces were nobody special -- except to the people who loved them.

Hoffman was special to a woman and three children who aren't yet in their teens and who will never know their father in the way they needed to know him. At his age, he was probably still special to his parents and to a best friend or two who knew the demons he battled, but couldn't help him fight them. Those are the people who will wake up every day as I do with questions about why, and what could they have done, and whose lives are irrevocably changed by his death.

For them, for Hoffman's family, my own, and the thousands like us, I grieve, I say a prayer, and I continue to hope that somehow we can take off our gunslinger hats and talk about the real problem, even though it scares us.

Everybody Hurts Sometimes

If you're on your own in this life
The days and nights are long
When you think you've had too much of this life to hang on

Well, everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody cries
Everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes
--Peter Buck, Bill Berry, Michael Stipe, Michael Mills (performed by R.E.M.)

The other day I was talking to a good friend on the phone and she said she just could not imagine what I was going through. She just wanted to spend some time with me.

Not too long ago, I remember when she was going through a really tough situation where I didn't think I knew how to identify with her and we cried and laughed our way through it. Since I've known her she's said hard goodbyes to parents and siblings and lives every day with the prospect of another heartbreaking loss.

Through the last five short, and yet seemingly endless, weeks, I've realized that most of the people we come into contact with on a day to day basis can feel some version of our pain.

As unique as my grief felt on Dec. 15th, it was like a drop of rain falling into a summer pond at the start of a storm. All around me, I've found there were nearly identical drops of rain falling, other mothers and fathers who have lost their sons and daughters, and different drops from the loss of siblings, spouses and parents. I've realized that there are very different drops from all sorts of losses -- the loss of health, the loss of independence, the loss of divorce, even the loss of a career. There is a storm of loss and grief going on around us while we are focused on our own individual drops of pain.

I've also realized that while the source of our grief is very different, making us think that our situations are so unique and sometimes beyond what anyone else endures, our pain is very similar.

Whatever loss we are grieving, what we are really grieving is the loss of the future.

As humans, we have the unique ability to think about the future. We envision watching our children grow to adulthood. We think about their lives and the spouses they may bring into our families, their future happiness, unborn grandchildren. Even if we don't sit down and daydream about the lives they will lead, our minds make these possible futures seem a part of the reality that we expect to live.

The same is true with any kind of loss. Either consciously or unconsciously, we plan for the future. We plan to grow old with the the person we stand beside and say "I do." We intend to be able to do certain things for ourselves. We plan to have our brothers and sisters to share our lives. We expect to have our parents until some undefined point in our future. We think we'll have our careers to support us until we retire.

Then those futures are gone and we grieve. Yes, some of these griefs are more intense and stay with us. In all likelihood, we will find another job and perhaps another spouse. We may adjust our expectations for our health or the health of those around us so that life goes on and that loss becomes our new normal. We come to accept the time that our parents leave this life, even though we still miss them. The loss of a sibling or friend varies with how close we manage to stay, and eases as life moves on without them.

Everybody grieves and hurts at some time.

Losing a child is a bigger ripple in the peaceful pond of our lives. I realize both from my own limited experience and that of people who have endured their loss years ago, that while the ripples from other grief may subside this pain will never pass.

I think in many ways it is still because we are grieving that future, because with the loss of a child we lose not only their future but our own. We lose a link to a time we will never see.

As mothers, we lose all the potential we created when we grew them inside our bodies for nine months of careful eating, swollen ankles and pain. As parents, we lose the baby we held in our arms and all the unrealized dreams we saw each time we looked at them as they grew.

We never lose the past, however long that was and however many memories we managed to store in our hearts and minds, but we lose the future. We lose knowing the person they would have become in a few more years. We lose having them to love, and to love us, as we grow old. We may lose the children they never had and all those possibilities as well.

There is a bond in grief that those who have not lost a child can retrieve and find some empathy for us, just as when they have loss we can relate with a small part of what we feel.

Everybody hurts. I've come to believe that the difference isn't so much in the intensity of the pain as in the duration.

Everybody hurts and I have come to realize that the pain for a while may seem unbearable, no matter what the loss. It's just that for some of us, it will never entirely go away.

A Month Ago, My Life Changed

con·do·lence noun \kən-ˈdō-lən(t)s also ˈkän-də-\
: a feeling or expression of sympathy and sadness especially when someone is suffering because of the death of a family member, a friend, etc.

I hate the word condolence, or condolences. No matter how the dictionary defines it, it has to be one of the most meaningless words in the English language to me, perhaps because it is a word that I would never use.

It may be a proper sort of noun, but to me it's proper in that unfeeling, keep my distance, I don't really know you sort of way.

Sympathy isn't a lot better.

If you are sorry for what I'm going through, then simply say it. Don't look for pretty ways to make it less painful. Tell me you're sorry. Although I've received some beautifully written sympathy cards, I've found the meaningful part is the "I'm so sorry" scrawled above the signature.

A month ago, I would never have given a thought to these things. A month ago, I didn't know the rollercoaster of my life had already jumped the tracks and was sailing through the air on its way to a heartbreaking crash. I didn't know that while I thought I was traveling a familiar road, there was actually black ice and everything was going to spin out of control.

I didn't know that about noon the phone would ring and I would learn my son was dead.

Now, a month later there is still an unreality to it all.

Next to Ethan being gone, the thing that disturbs me most is not knowing when. Even if the autopsy gives us answers as to how or why, I'm not expecting an answer to that relatively meaningless question. He's gone and I learned he was gone on Dec. 15. But when did he die? Why didn't my mother's heart feel that he was gone?

As I've slowly regathered the unraveling threads of my life (most of them anyway) over the last two weeks, I'm still troubled by that question. I'll be heading off to one of the activities that was a normal part of my life and I'll think, "The last time I did this, Ethan was alive." That thought is quickly followed by, "The last time I did this, I didn't know Ethan was dead."

That's such a horrible question mark to have hanging over my life. I don't even care as much about why -- why to me is dextromethorphan, whether it was an accidental overdose, chronic overuse that caused organ failure, a seizure from drug use that finally pushed his brain and heart over the edge. As far as I'm concerned, I know what killed him. It was the drug that took a healthy teenager and turned him into an addict with seizures and physical damage and all of the emotional pain that goes along with addiction. Knowing what finally couldn't stand the abuse any longer really doesn't matter to me.

Having Dec. 15, 2013 as his death date and knowing it's not right bothers me beyond all rational thinking.

Then I have to wonder how many other families of addicts wind up carrying this same baggage through their lives. A phone call that tells them a beloved was found dead, not that they died with someone nearby who at least gave a damn, they were found dead. How many people with a network of loving, caring family members push everyone away, don't answer the phone, and isolate themselves for so long that they die alone and are found dead? How many families never even know that they should have gotten that call because the isolation pushes the addict so far that they leave everyone behind and are not only out of touch, but surrounded by strangers who don't even know who to call?

A month ago, I didn't know my life was about to change, but in reality, it already had. Sometime in the days preceding that fateful phone call, Ethan had stretched out in the floor of his apartment, folded his legs like he was apt to do, and simply slipped away with no earthly fanfare or outcry over his going. Because he had spent so long extricating himself, bit by bit, from so much of what went on in our day-to-day lives, we didn't immediately notice he was gone.

But I know it now and I've known it every day for a month. I've felt the hole that the loss of his physical presence has ripped out of my life, the knowledge that this side of heaven I'll never hear his voice, see his smile, or feel his arms around me. I try to cling to that vision of freedom, a happy smile as an angel released him from his pain and addiction, but that's not really enough. I'd like to say, just one more time, but that wouldn't be enough either and that would be a lie. I'm human and still bound by tasks I've yet to complete and a path I have to finish walking, and it may be selfish, but anything short of having him here to walk it with me to the end isn't enough.

So I suppose Dec. 15 will have to do. A month ago today my life changed.

Can I Really Forgive Him for Dying?

Pushing myself through the rituals of Friday morning, thinking about Ethan, I had an unsettling thought.

Forgiveness.

Last year my goal for the New Year was to find a way to forgive someone in my life that I was struggling to love or forgive because the pain that person inflicted was ongoing. Through a lot of prayer, I was able to do that by focusing on the positive things in my life that were there because of them -- even if those things happened years ago.

When I saw someone's post on Facebook earlier this week about forgiving someone to achieve peace, I thought, yes, I nailed that one.

Then, yesterday morning out of the blue I realized I still have a lot of forgiving to do and at the top of that list right now is Ethan.

Although I learned a lot of lessons about love from him over the last seven years, I had not yet embraced the lessons of forgiveness.

Several years ago when I found him sleeping in his car in my driveway one morning, God drove home to me a lesson about love. Ethan was screwed up and not living the life I envisioned he would live; he wasn't living life to its full potential; he was wasting the gifts of talent, intelligence, love and support. Yet I still loved him with every fiber of my being. In that moment, I realized how the love we read about in the Bible -- the love that God feels for us when we mess up, sin, don't choose the path that He lays out for us to a full and happy life -- is real. There is such a thing as unconditional love, even when we aren't close to one another or denying its existence.

I loved Ethan unconditionally and did my best to make sure he knew it.

And time and time again I forgave him for the things his addiction made him do. I forgave him the physical and emotional havoc he left behind sometimes, because I loved him. Even while I did my best to limit his ability to cause physical pain, I didn't expect an apology after he called on a rant or neglected something that was important to me. I accepted that was the way he was and I was just glad he called again. I accepted and forgave every emotional blow in the hope there would come a time when things would be better and we could put it all behind us.

Until the other morning, it felt like I had done enough forgiving.

Then I realized I have to forgive him for dying. Even though he's beyond all need of anything I can ever give him, I have to forgive him for me. I have to forgive him every stupid mistake and bad choice that put him on the road to dying alone in his apartment. I have to forgive him for shutting us all away so often that no one missed him for days. I have to forgive him for squandering the life I fought so hard to give him.

Just as, at some point, I have to forgive myself for any way I may have failed him (a bridge I'm not ready to cross, and yes I know I did my best), I have to forgive him for things that ultimately slipped out of his control.

I have to forgive him for becoming an addict, because I know that once he found the drug that spoke to him, it was as powerful and insidious as Satan in the Garden of Eden. It whispered to him in lies and promises about special knowledge and gifts, special visions and experiencing the world in a way he could not without it. It made him feel things the real world didn't deliver. I cannot understand addiction and that desire to escape and I'm glad, but I have to forgive him for being overwhelmed by it.

I have to forgive him for not fulfilling the potential I saw when the doctors pulled him from my abdomen and placed him in my arms, a big, healthy, beautiful baby boy. I have to forgive him for disappointing my dreams, for not being able to find himself again and for not sticking around to take care of me when I get old.

Where time and again I've felt some version of survivor's guilt because of the families grieving a lost child who had done nothing wrong, who was caught up in some horrible tragedy of time or place or birth, I have to forgive him for no longer dodging the fate that had for so long been waiting. I have to forgive him for involuntarily choosing not to be part of our lives when he could have been, because now he cannot choose.

Ethan often said he wished he could die, and I have to forgive him for those thoughts and for finally having that wish granted.

I have to accept that he was doing his best to make his way through a world that was more painful to him than it is to me, a world that somehow didn't make his heart sing the way it sometimes does mine. I have to accept that while having people who love and need me is sometimes enough to get me through a day, it wasn't enough for him. I have to accept that he didn't always feel he had a purpose and that being without a purpose leaves you vulnerable to things you cannot control.

So today, in writing this and acknowledging the things I hadn't forgiven, I'm taking what I hope are the first steps toward letting those hard feelings go. Not because he needs me to do so, but because in order to live and breathe freely again, in order to have peace in my heart, this is what I need to do.

Already I feel lighter and I think the journey toward forgiveness is underway.

Angry at Life, Angry at Death, Angry at Myself, Too

Forty odd years ago, a look at the grieving process identified five stages of grief, beginning with denial and isolation, followed by anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance -- a generally accepted pathway for grief that of course, isn't a rulebook.

Yet I find that when I looked up the steps, they have indeed been the ones I've begun to stumble through, although I think bargaining will be more of a series of "what ifs," or perhaps a battle with the guilt I feel looming, as there is no negotiation with death.

A week ago, when I got the call, I sat alone and cried. I had stayed home sick from church after inheriting some upper sinus crap from the children, and when my husband called after service, I told him the news and sent him on to the the grocery store. I didn't want anyone to cry on. I didn't want to be comforted. I didn't want it to be made more real by existing in some space other than my telephone and the virtual world of my computer. I sat and spilled out my pain in the blog I sent out the next morning -- the blog I've shared repeatedly and begged people to share because it hurt, and I wanted it to mean something by helping someone.

For the last week I've done a fairly good job of hanging on to anger, but I know that will wear thin after a while.

It's easier to be angry at the young man who destroyed his life over and over again than it is to deal with all the other losses contained inside his death. Just like blowing up because his lousy father didn't even come to his funeral, I know I probably have to let this anger out to move on and really grieve.

So yes, I'm pissed at Ethan. I'm pissed at him for using drugs, for not calling except when he wanted something or was so messed up that he didn't make sense, for never seeming to care about anyone but himself.

I'm pissed at him for not going to the doctor because maybe, just maybe, there was something else going on that could have been treated.

I'm pissed at him for dying. At Christmas.

That's a lot of anger and it's not all purely true, but this last week it's been easier to hang onto those bits of anger because anger makes you stronger sometimes. When you're angry, you do things you wouldn't normally do. Like laugh at a funeral. Like let myself live because the depths of that the grief that consumes me might just drown me if I didn't have anger to hang onto right now.

But the facts about what I'm angry about will help me breathe a little easier, too.

I'm angry that Ethan decided, when just a little kid in middle school or maybe just as he was starting high school, that getting high might be cool. But I know that there was a time that he was very unhappy with the heavy boy who wore glasses and braces and that he couldn't see past that temporary reality to the man he would become. I know that his friends were doing it, and that he craved their approval more than I ever understood. I know that the DARE program that had warned Ethan about the dangers of alcohol and illegal drugs, hadn't caught up with the abuse of prescriptions and darn sure never touched on the dangers of dextromethorphan, which was so easy to get and deceptively safe.

I know that despite being so much alike in appearance and personality, Ethan wasn't a carbon copy of me. That loner streak that saw me through my middle and high school days didn't run through him. Unlike my first dog, the dog he loved wasn't the constant companion that got him out of the house and helped him find happiness in a world that didn't rely on friends (no fault of the dog's, mind you). He didn't develop the desire he had to create and do and accomplish things. I didn't have the addictive genetic makeup he apparently inherited.

I know it was an innocent choice at first, and that he was lonely and angry and confused and terribly young, and by the time he started sorting himself out of those feelings, he was addicted and it was really hard to fight. Addiction doesn't go away just because you aren't taking your drug of choice, it hangs around and whispers about the good times you had. It changes the way your mind works. It comes up in conversation with your friends to remind you how you miss it. When something goes wrong, it's there waiting to welcome you back. It takes over your brain so that other things that people think will bring you pleasure just aren't that great. It deceives you, like the Devil, promising only wonderful things while it wrecks your life and you cannot even see it happening.

Despite our efforts to help him negotiate being clean and learn to function without his old friend, Ethan just couldn't. I know he did his best, and while I'm angry, it's beginning to be the at the drug and its availability, not at the boy/man who couldn't escape it.

And no, he really didn't just call when he needed something. Sometimes I know he called just to hear my voice and that he missed me as badly as I missed him. But our connection was damaged and neither of us could fix it or say the right words. The love that pulled us so close meant we hurt each other, that I was the one he lashed out at in his pain. It was probably easier to ask for money than to ask for some less tangible thing he couldn't identify. It was probably easier to lean on the friend he could find at the Dollar store than confront the tangled emotions we had toward each other. And of course, we both thought we had time, a lot of it.

I know that he cared. Sometimes he would tell me I worked too hard. Sometimes he would admit he was glad I had a husband that took care of me. Sometimes his conversation was mostly about how things were here because he didn't have a life he could share, and sometimes a rambling, adolescent tale about what he wanted to do with his life. He still dreamed of doing things, but like a kid, not a young man, because the drug had stunted his emotional and mental growth. And how many kids actually remember a parent's birthday? But just this year, when he'd been clean for ages, he skipped a Mother's Day get together when I was so looking forward to seeing him. The little cards and gifts that other moms can count on never came from him. He was a tornado, taking everything in his path and needing more and that hurt and still hurts. Those moments of compassion were so consumed by his needs, by the fact that the drugs made him focus on himself because nothing else could bring him pleasure.

I wonder why we could not persuade him to see a doctor when he was in so much pain the last couple of weeks -- not just the emotional and mental pain that I think he dealt with almost constantly (and which he also refused to accept help for), but the physical pain. He'd never resisted seeing a doctor before when he felt bad. Had he done something he didn't want to deal with in a doctor's office? Was he afraid he knew what was wrong?

I'm angry that he died, not at him. I'm angry that whatever demons drove him were too much. That God decided he'd had his share of pain (how selfish is that?) and let him finally escape. I'm angry at God, and He knows it.

I'm angry at the people who went with him down the path of addiction, not so much the kids that he stumbled into it with, but the men who were still involved in it with him and eager to help him return whenever he got clean. I'm angry at everyone that failed him in any way, because it's almost impossible to accept that something could not have changed him.

To be honest, I'm angry at me. I'm angry that I couldn't force him to be different, better, happy, clean. That I couldn't find the words that would make him change. I'm angry because there is a part of me that no matter how many times I tell myself I did the absolute best that I knew how, that I prayed and wept and talked and gave and gave and tried to practice tough love too, feels like I failed.

I'm angry at me because no matter how much I love him, I couldn't save him.

'I Just Don't Know What to Say'

Ten years ago, a friend of mine lost her daughter in a car accident. I knew she had to be in such incomprehensible pain, and I didn't know what to say.

We didn't have the fairly safe option of sending a post on Facebook, or a text message. I knew that to offer any sympathy, I would have to confront that raw pain. I would have to pick up the phone and let myself dip my toes in a dark lake where I didn't want to go, a dark lake where it would be too easy to drown.

So, for a long time, I didn't talk to her. Our jobs had changed and we weren't in as much contact anyway. Then came the day when I saw her across a drug store parking lot. I still remember thinking she hadn't seen me and I could just go in because she was almost to her car. Instead I called her name and walked across the lot to talk to her.

I still didn't know what to say, but it didn't matter. She didn't need to hear my words, she needed to feel my support and caring. She needed to talk about her daughter, her family, their process and pain, and for a long time I stood and held her and listened and cried.

This week she came to my house and held me and listened to my rambling voice and ignored the uncombed hair, wrinkled clothing and unmade face and the chaos of three small children and three small dogs beneath our feet. Before she left I apologized for not coming to her sooner.

In the last few days, I've received support from strangers who somehow found this blog and sent me comments or Facebook messages. I've been overwhelmed by the calls and texts and visits. I've been lifted up by the people in my life, some of whom I don't really even know beyond casually, who have gone the extra mile (sometimes literally) to let me know they care. But like my friend, who may have noticed that I didn't call, there have been people I know and care about who have been absent.

While I have wanted them to call or reach out in some way, I understand their absence, because at one time I did the same. Although we're fairly comfortable talking to someone who has lost a parent -- after all, that's the "natural" order of things -- and we come closer to being able to deal with the loss of a spouse or sibling, the loss of a child is something that we don't want to think about.

I understand that you don't want to get near a parent's grief because you think you can imagine how bad it is and you just don't know what to say or do. For a parent, the loss of a child is the worse thing you can imagine, and I can tell you it is worse that you can imagine. You don't want that pain to touch you, even from someone else. You don't want to imagine being pulled into that dark lake and knowing that your child, that baby that you held when they were born, that you helped learn to walk, ride a bike, and all the millions of things along the way to whatever point they have reached, is gone.

I understand, because that knowledge will knock the breath from your chest, set your heart racing and send you reeling through your days, looking for bits of a normal life to hang on to.

But from this side of the invisible wall that separates parents with living children from parents who have lost a child, I can tell you that reaching out is what we need.

Except for those few special people who I know who have already walked this path for different reasons, you won't know what to say. And here's a secret, even if you've lost a child, you still don't have any words that will take away the grief from another parents' heart, all you have then is the knowledge that it is something you can survive.

However people have reached out to me, they have said, "I don't know what to say." And do you know, I don't expect them to? I don't expect my pastor to have some magical answer from God or some scripture that will give me understanding. I don't expect my best friend to be able to make me smile. I don't expect the people that I've worked or played alongside to have the words to help fill this hole in my heart. I don't expect other parents who have lost children to be able to do more than offer me hope.

All a grieving parent needs is a hug, a shoulder to cry on and an ear that isn't already tired of hearing the same broken story that we come to feel we've repeated a million times. We need to cry. We need to touch life. We may find a hug that reminds us of the one that is gone and if we do, I'm sorry, but we may ask you for a hug a hundred times before the pain in our hearts eases one iota. We need to talk about our child because we know that child is dead, but we need to know that others remember that he lived. If you were the child's friend, share your memories and pictures. If you never knew them, let the parent give a memory. Just be there.

This week, my words have been about the struggle to save him from himself. Sometimes they have been about my guilt, because whatever happens to a child, a parent will feel some responsibility. With some people they have been about my hope that this can somehow be part of helping someone else and making a difference. There will be a time when I want to talk about how wonderful he was before he changed, when I let myself take down the photo albums and cry over the baby, the little boy, and the adolescent that I lost inside the broken young man who died. There will be a time when I slowly begin to take out my dreams for him and weep over them because they will never come true.

Everyone who has reached out to me, be they fellow travelers in this land of grief, friends, or strangers, has helped me keep going. They've helped me hold myself together because they have said they care, because they've sent up prayers, because they've been willing to listen in one way or another to what I needed to say, because they've let my son into their lives and grieved along with me.

No, there is nothing anyone can say that makes it better. As my friends who know have said, it's not something you get over, it's something you get through and live with. This will be my reality for the rest of my time on earth. Maybe there will be days when I don't think about it, and I'm sure in time it won't consume me, but it always will be a part of me.

So what can you do when there's nothing you can do?

Don't flee from the pain of a grieving parent because you don't know what to say. Don't avoid talking about the child you knew or mentioning the loss. Don't worry about doing the wrong thing. Don't feel helpless in the face of our pain.

Open your ears, your arms and your heart and be honest. Go ahead and say, "I don't know what to say." It's OK. No one does. We'll do the talking for you.

'Don't Cry For Me Down Here'

Yeah, when I get where I'm going
There'll be only happy tears
I will shed the sins and struggles
I have carried all these years

And I'll leave my heart wide open
I will love and have no fear
Yeah, when I get where I'm going
Don't cry for me down here

Melvern Rivers Ii Rutherford

Getting ready to go bury my child yesterday, this song as sang by Brad Paisley began playing in my head. Not word for word, but the chorus. Funny how my country roots have been showing this week.

I fumbled for the right things to wear -- somehow I'd never purchased a wardrobe for burying my son -- finally settling on black pants and a dark shirt, the black leather coat I bought the winter I was expecting Ethan and couldn't button when I was pregnant.

We were running late driving the 30-minute route from our house to Galax. Of course, I was riding shotgun, and the roads were more familiar to me so I might have made better time, but I was reasonably sure they wouldn't start the procession without me. His sister and her family were caught in traffic on the interstate, so I was glad we went the old roads. An accident clogged northbound traffic all day, but she was at the cemetery about the same time we were.

Traveling through Galax, I put my head down to pray for the strength to make it through yet another tough day. I had no more uttered the prayer than my mind was filled with a vision. It was Ethan, stretched out in the floor, but there was a figure of light above him and it reached down toward him and pulled him free of his earthly shackles. He rose up with a light of his own, and his face was split by the biggest smile I've seen in many years. I knew that he'd shaken off the addiction, the pain, the suffering that only he could understand and that he was free. God had sent me what I needed to know and the strength to get through the day. I could miss him, but I couldn't want him back in those bonds.

His best friend and that young man's mom, who had like Ethan and I battled the same addiction, were the first people I went to at the funeral home. They were Ethan's second family, just as in many ways my house was his second home, for years. He has a family, escaped the addiction, had to make the difficult decision to not spend time with my son, and I just wanted him to know that he did what he had to do to survive. I wanted him to know that some of the love I can no longer give Ethan will be his as he goes forward.

I cried with his mother, who had known both the little boy and the angry young man and, like me, loved them both. I am sure there was a part of her that shuddered at how close she came to being where I was at, a part that mourned and was also thankful that she wasn't bearing the full brunt of it. Had the roles been reversed, I would have felt that way as well.

The drive to the cemetery was peaceful and the weather was warmer than expected. The leather coat went in the back seat by the time we reached the rural cemetery where Ethan was going to join generations of his ancestors, my grandparents, and a whole sea of people I didn't ever know. My parents plan to be buried there. The view is rolling hills, trees and fields of cattle. The sun was shining bright as we gathered around the grave.

I expected a small, sad gathering of family members who could get away from work, maybe a few folks from the Hope House where he lived a while (they agreed to be pall bearers) and some people from his church. I was totally overwhelmed by the number of people who were there. It was rush of activity to get us seated and everything ready for the service.

My chair almost toppled down hill when I sat. My first thought was how funny it would be to just fall over and topple the whole family like dominoes down the hill -- how Ethan would love it.

The pastor from the church where Ethan had found the only job he liked, but where he still couldn't manage to stay on track, knew the young man that he spoke about. He said that he knew we were all asking if we could have done things differently, and the answer was yes, because we are all fallible. That nothing could separate Ethan from his God, including the demons who drove him. We shared a few stories and a prayer and the Vince Gill song "Go Rest High On That Mountain" was played. We gathered in a gusting wind and released 23 bright colored balloons into the heavens.

After that, I had a chance to see who had come. I was even more blown away than I had been at the sheer number. There were people from Virginia who knew and cared about him, many of whom I never got to meet. People from North Carolina who knew and cared about us. People who came just for me and brought love and support and an outpouring of grace that I never expected from the time we've spent together. Family that I hadn't seen in years and years. The love poured out on me at the side of my son's grave wrapped round me like a warm blanket and helped carry me through the afternoon.

While the gravediggers finished their work, several of us gathered in the old wooden church and sipped coffee. E1 and E2, who had hardly got the chance to know their uncle, ran the aisles and played, freed from the need to keep their good clothes nice for the ceremony they did not understand. E3 cruised the pews and complained about the disruption in her eating schedule.

Before we left, my husband and I walked back to the grave topped with holiday flowers. We knelt and prayed individually, then stood and prayed together. I thanked God for giving me Ethan and for the blessing that was his life and the lessons I learned from him. I wished I could have kept him longer. I questioned why his life had to follow the course it did. I asked if there was any way to let him know how much he was loved and missed.

Of course, there was food and conversation at my mom's house following the ceremony, more noise from boisterous little girls, a drive home in the cooling afternoon to resume the routines of life, late night texts from a sister who is now an only child and beginning to feel that loss more keenly.

This was the day I buried my son, still with no answers as to how he died, but I think, thanks to a gift from God, some understanding of why. The time was not right for me, or for his sister, or for the many people who cared about him, prayed for him, and held onto a hope that one day he'd be all they knew he could be. The time was right for Ethan, walking with God, to be free of the pain of this life and get on with what comes next.

From a day that I expected only sadness, I found the closure I did not think I'd find. I found a peace that may make it easier to deal with the sadness. I found the strength everyone had said I had, but I found it did not come from within, but from without from those same friends who gathered around me and from the God who made the decision I still wish He had not made.

Why Did He Have to Die? Searching For Meaning

I remembered to feed my house dogs last night.

I'm not sure if anyone fed them the two days before or not. Maybe my husband mentioned it. Although my hens and outside dogs all are part of a routine that I've stumbled through blindly this week, the three little dogs who cuddle around me when I sit down are used to having food dropped in their bowls whenever they are empty. I honestly hadn't even looked at their bowls.

Of course, Monday I didn't even remember to eat until someone from my Sunday school class came with a box of food. I had started a pot of soup, because I knew in my head that we would need to eat. I had even forced my granddaughters to sit down and eat at lunch time, but food wasn't something that I wanted.

Once upon a time the death of a family member would have filled a home with visitors and food. Not too long ago, the phone would have carried the word from place to place. People would have stepped forward to make sure you ate and do what needed doing. Now I can't even think of what I might need when people do call or ask. There's no drawing together because life is so demanding that if you're not the one blindsided by the loss, it's hard to pull yourself free to do more than express condolences.

Now it's this glowing box that draws me like a moth each morning. Not long after I received word, it was Facebook where I turned to let my friends know. It's this blog where I poured out my feelings in an effort to find healing for myself and to try and wrap my head around the the way my life had suddenly changed. It's Facebook where I've found my friends and Ethan's friends reaching out and sometimes sharing memories, pictures, their pain and their prayers for us all. It's my infernal cell phone that I struggle to keep charged because of the texts and calls.

I've had so many people tell me I'm strong, but I don't feel strong. I get up in the morning and heat a cup of coffee, then sit by my computer for as long as I can stand. I write -- not everyone's response to what I'm going through, but what I feel like I have to do -- and I read and I cry. I do the same thing again at night after the children leave and my husband goes to bed. Those are the times when the house is absolutely quite except for the hum of the electric heater in this room and the click of the computer keys.

Part of me wants to stop the blog. Part of me says it's my lifeline. And then every day I look at the statistics on it and wonder if I've helped just one of the people reading it. Sometimes a stranger sends me a comment that makes me know I have and as I search for some kind of purpose in what God has chosen to work in the lives of my son, and I and all of our family and friends, some part of me believes this is it.

I prayed for so long that he would find sobriety. I realized it was not a gift I could give him, or something I could force on him either, so I prayed that God would do it. Every time he stumbled down another long hole that I never expected him to live in -- months in jail, a month in the hospital, months in physical rehabilitation, living in a homeless shelter -- I prayed that someone he might not have otherwise met would be able to say the words he needed to hear and show him the way to another life.

I pleaded with God, argued with God, tried to accept that there was a reason that he had to suffer so much. Although Ethan sometimes argued that he was happy with his life, with his drugs and addiction, there was often pain in his voice, his body was damaged from the drugs and accidents. He could never see it was his choices or seem to see a way to change, despite months of sober living, support groups, the kindness of strangers, and the deep well of love of his family and friends that as often as not he would turn his back on.

When he died, I asked why. Not why was he dead, because lately there had been so much pain in him that I had prayed for peace if not sobriety. Peace was what he was finally given. It wasn't the answer I wanted, but it was one I felt I could accept. Instead I asked why it took so long. Why did he have to hurt so long? Why didn't he die one of the times he was hauled to the ER unresponsive from an overdose? Why did he survive an accident that should have killed him? Why did he have to keep hurting?

The answer is that I don't know. I don't know how his experiences changed his soul. While he couldn't escape his addiction, he also couldn't escape his salvation, and perhaps there were things he learned about himself and his God in those months that he had no way to share with us.

Perhaps while he stumbled through a life that was destined to end too soon, he was the tool that changed someone else's life, if not in how he lived, then in how he died. Perhaps the people who helped him, or who tried to, learned something from the experience that will make them better at helping someone else. Maybe his friends who are still stunned and wondering what happened to the wonderful kid they grew up with will remember the path he took and not only avoid it themselves, but watch for those signs of danger in their friends, siblings, and their own children.

I don't believe that his life or his pain, or mine for that matter, were in vain, even though I may never understand it. Not in this life, anyway. And when the time comes that I could gain that understanding, it won't matter any more. I'll be able to put aside this pain and anger and leave it all behind, and if understanding comes, it will only be as a brief ah-ha moment when we're together again with our Savior and celebrating freedom from this world that is not our home.

So I sit at my computer, because while God gave him pain and addiction, for years he has given me words. This process is my therapy, but maybe someone else's as well. Just as I originally committed to writing every day just to get in the habit, now I'm committed to writing because there may be someone else who needs this as badly as I do. I know that grief consumes me now, that maybe it hurts as badly to read it as it does to write it some days, and that many people will never understand why I do it. And that doesn't matter.

I know in some bright, sunny future time I can hardly imagine now while I'm cloaked in this dark blanket of grief, the things that make my day once again will be lighthearted and the ups and downs that I once knew. But through it there will still wind a thread of pain and loss that I've got to learn how to live with and accept. Thanks to this blog and my inability to be less than honest, I know there are so many other parents and families struggling with that same fate and I'm going to be here so they know they're not alone.

One Last Christmas

What would you do if you knew this would be your child's last Christmas, regardless of their age or what's going on in your life?

What if it turned out that his last Christmas was already behind you?

A song on the Christmas CD I've been listening to called "One Last Christmas" by Matthew West about a family and an entire town rushing Christmas so a dying boy could enjoy it one more time already moved me to tears before this weekend's events. I think I'll be hitting the skip button when it comes on now.

What if I could have Ethan back for one last Christmas, knowing it were the last one? How many times are we celebrating one last Christmas when we don't even know it at the time?

Why did our last conversation have to be me telling him that I couldn't see any way to give him the expensive gift he most desire when he was so badly in need of day to day essentials? But then, why did Christmas come to mean gifts and financially straining ourselves to give those gifts that we should sometimes say no to? Would I really feel better if that gift he had wanted were sitting unopened under the tree?

Somehow on his journey through addiction, my poor, broken boy had forgotten about everyone but himself. I think that's a common trait of addiction. He blew off Mother's Day, which I was really looking forward to, because he had just moved into his apartment and met a girl (and was probably high). He blew off Thanksgiving, which his nieces were eagerly anticipating, probably because he was still angry with me for telling him I knew he was using and I was not going to fight or make an issue over it. It would probably have required the presence of that gift under the tree to get him to sign on for Christmas.

If I could have had anything I wanted for Christmas, it would not have come from a box, it would have been time with him clean and sober, just one more day, one last Christmas. Now with this year's holiday breathing down my neck, all I can cling to is the memory of Christmases past -- when I did have the gift he wanted; a violin one year, a new Nintendo or game.

The gift I would have wanted is as unreachable as the gift he wanted, even if I'd had his present wrapped under the tree. He wouldn't be here to open it.

Monday was a really tough day. I don't know that it would be one bit easier at some other time of the year, but I do know there wouldn't be this feeling that I need to force some joy into moments that right now aren't filled with joy. I know that routines that help me navigate my week and balance my needs with the needs of the little people in my life are being doubly derailed by death and the holiday and I'm just not sure from one minute to the next how I'm going to hold it together.

Christmas Eve, when the family has for the last several years gathered at my house, is a week away. How am I going to pull myself together for that? How are my parents going to do it? And Ethan's sister?

But just as I'd been trying to focus on what was right about the holiday -- mainly three little girls with beaming smiles who slammed into me with wide arms this morning yelling "I love you, Ma" -- I know that this focus is one I'll have to use to get through the coming weeks. Not everyone in the world is grieving because I am and I can let their joy infect me rather than letting my sorrow pull them down.

We're never promised another birthday, Christmas, or even just another morning to say hello to the ones we love. Somehow, instead of letting the pain of what is missing from the holiday ruin it, I have to let the joy of what is there carry me through. I have to muster up the energy to wrap the gifts stuffed in closets and the man cave. I have to buy and cook the holiday ham.

Just like much of today has been, I have to go through the motions until they feel right. Because I know, eventually, they will.

Sometimes, I know I'm going to falter like I did today when I abandoned the dinner table to take shelter in the bathroom so two little girls wouldn't see me cry, again. Sometimes I'll laugh at the story of the baby's diaper blowout, or smile at getting a dance step right in Zumba, and have a little more faith that it will get better.

This is a rocky road I'm walking, but it's a road that too many of us can suddenly find ourselves on without any warning signs.

So I'm just urging you to treat this Christmas and every Christmas as one last Christmas -- not to be loaded down with gifts that aren't the real meaning of the holiday any way -- but to hoard memories and photographs that will make the day live again for many Christmases to come. Make Christmas really count and wrap your love tight around the people you care about.

Just in case it's someone's last Christmas.

Remembering The Woman Who Defined Ma

Eight years ago today my Ma Mary, who had been sick for much of the summer but rallied in the fall, got up, had breakfast and coffee, and sat down in her recliner with her husband of more than 60 years in his chair next to her. They were going to go lie down again, but she wanted to catch her breath.

She'd had surgery and was dealing with the effects of Type II diabetes and glaucoma. She was worried that she was having trouble getting around on her walker and didn't want to get to the point that she couldn't.

A few minutes later Pa looked at her and she was gone. He later told the preacher, "She was just smiling cause she knew she'd beat me."

Like she tried to do most of her life, Ma managed to get away without a lot of fanfare. Always in the background of family pictures, unless you snuck up on her or corralled her, Ma didn't want the spotlight. Losing her, however, took the nucleus out of our family so while she never looked to be in the center of it all, she was exactly that.

When I was growing up, Pa and Ma lived across the rural road from us. Pa was the easy one; Ma a bit tougher (gee, that sounds familiar). He would take us to the store for chocolate milk and goodies. Ma was always busy cooking, cleaning, working in her garden (where we loved to run the rows of towering corn), sewing shirts at her textile plant job. She made my dolls the most awesome clothes and salvaged my much beloved "Susie" doll when her body rotted after years of loving and neglect. The dog that was set out nearby and that we claimed chose to live at her house with her dog.

As we grew up, it was always Ma who would give you the unvarnished truth, whether you wanted it or not. You couldn't pull things over on Ma, and she was far less trusting than Pa. She was always the family's best cook and in many ways most progressive thinker. She had the first color TV, the first artificial Christmas tree. We never left her house hungry and she made the world's best mashed potatoes, stewed beef, chicken and dumplings and chocolate pies. If she had none of those things on hand, she would always offer you a cheese sandwich and my lasting love of pimento cheese sandwiches, grilled and dripping, comes from her. Her chocolate pie recipe is a family treasure.

There were probably many times during my younger years when she wasn't my favorite grandparent. The truth isn't always what you want to hear. There were probably times I avoided talking to her so I wouldn't get a good dose of it.

Yet, when I became an adult (not a magical number but a state of maturity), I would have to say it was Ma I looked up to the most. Ma was the one I wanted to sit with and talk to. Ma was the one with the best hugs, the best ear for listening, the best things to share.

I'd give about anything for one of those good, soft hugs now. I'd love to sit with her and catch up on everything she's missed. I'd love to spin her a tale about my week and watch her smile and listen to her laugh. I'd love to hold her hands again.

When she died, Pa's heart, like the center of our family, was gone as well. There was nothing we could do to pull his interest back to our world. He woke at night to hear her call and see visions of angels and Mary. I didn't wake, but I dreamed of her regularly. Neither of us really believed they were dreams, because in them, I knew she was gone. Once she had my dog, Lucy, who had died a few years earlier and who adored my grandparents, with her. I remember hugging the dog and wanting to hug Ma.

Shortly before Pa died just under 11 months later (the day before my birthday), Pa fell and was hospitalized and largely unconscious. I stopped having any "dreams" about Ma and haven't had one since. Somehow, I think, she was waiting on him.

So when I became a grandmother, although my name was supposed to be Mimi, I considered it nothing short of an honor that E1 chose, simply out of the blue, to call me Ma. (No one had selected that title so no one had been referred to by that name.) It was like a gift had been handed to me. I got to be Ma, with all luggage and honor that came with it.

While my ma didn't have the freedom to keep me (she still had a "real" job when I was small), she was always willing to have little people around when my children were born. I'm betting they found the same no nonsense Ma I did, and I'm afraid my little people are dealing with the same.

I hope that if I'm not always their favorite grandparent (and Lord knows when Papi comes home, I'm apparently not) that I can give them the same gifts Ma gave me. I hope I can fill their hearts with love and memories, their tummies with recipes they'll want to pass on, their heads with honest advice even when they don't want to hear it.

Every time one of them randomly spouts "Ma, I love you," my heart just about breaks with joy, especially when we're doing something as random as loading the car to go to church and I feel like I've not been the ideal Ma because of some disagreement earlier in the day. I hope I was able to give Ma Mary that same joy, and a part of me know that I, my brother, and my cousins all did.

So, although I cannot hug or converse with Ma any more, she's not gone. She's still in my heart and a very important part of the Ma I am every day. That's who I want to be to my little Es. The person that, when I'm gone, they remember with the love and gratitude I feel for her even today.

Watching the Grim Reaper

Have you ever seen anyone die?

Unless you're a medical professional, emergency responder or hospice volunteer, the answer may well be no.

That's what most "normal" people get to say. My past profession as a journalist, however, puts me in a different category. Although I wasn't necessarily up close and personal with the people I saw die, I was standing nearby when I saw that the fight was over, when emergency responders stopped their frantic efforts. Sometimes they walked away. Sometimes here was another soul still trapped in the mangled wreckage of what used to be a car, and the efforts continued around a sheet draped body.

I can remember the majority of those deaths, even if I cannot tell you the names of the people who died. I remember where they were at and what happened. Depending on my overall mood, sometimes the roads I travel are virtually haunted by those memories.

Lately, however, I've been grappling with the memory of a different death. A song by Brandon Heath, "Dyin' Day," which is on the CD that has taken up residence in my SUV's stereo system, has me thinking about execution. It's about a man facing his execution, witnessing to the guard who has treated him decently. He explains that Jesus has come to visit him every day since he invited him in three years earler. That Jesus made him an innocent man.

Nearly a decade ago I was one of the official witnesses to an execution by the State of North Carolina. Steven McHone(Wikipedia helped me to recall the name) had shot and killed his mother and stepfather in a rage. Shortly before his execution, his siblings had begged the state to commute his sentence. His step siblings, however, were not as forgiving and neither was the state.

The morning of the execution, after driving the long route to Raleigh and passing by protestors in the chilly night air outside the prison gate, I was seated with other witnesses in a small room. The man, who looked far different than the man in the mug shots I'd seen, was on a hospital style bed on the other side of a large window. When the set hour arrived, the witnesses watched the life drain from his face and the pallor set in.

At the time, it seemed his death was, if anything, just too easy. His jailhouse conversion was too pat. I had seen too many people die when there were people fighting for their lives, when they had done nothing wrong other than circumstance. I'd watched a firefighter carry a dead toddler in his arms when her car was run over by a truck loaded with steel pipes and her car seat wasn't properly secured. I'd seen them weep when the CPR they'd administered to a 5-year-old boy wasn't enough to save him from the head injury he suffered after his drunken uncle slammed head on into another vehicle on Christmas Eve. I'd seen them put down IV bags and walk away from the remains of automobiles as others draped the vehicle in a tarp to protect it from prying eyes.

His mother died knowing her son had shot her and asking them not to blame him. His death was just too easy. The judgment was what he had earned. My biggest problem with it at the time was that it really served no purpose and cost so much. It was so isolated from society that it couldn't possibly be a deterrent because no one who had not witnessed it would believe in it -- and even then they would likely never envision themselves in his place.

Now, I'm not so sure. Judgment isn't mine to make and it would seem living with the knowledge of what he had done would be the more difficult of the two sentences. I'm looking at him through different eyes and after using the vision I'm used to for so long, I admit I find it troubling. I'm probably becoming one of those people who would have to say I could not impose the death penalty based on "religious" views.

I know all Christians, and a lot of non-Christians as well, don't take that point of view. I've heard it from the pulpit many times. But I've also heard that sin is sin and can be forgiven, no matter how minor or major we may see it. That judgment isn't up to us because we're all sinners. I'm not sure that I would go so far as to say I would be able to forgive him if the people he had killed were my loved ones. But it's a goal I'm working toward. I know that a friend who lost two of his children to a drunk driver and was able to forgive the man has a much easier load to bear than anyone who drags around anger mixed in with his grief for the rest of his life.

And I have to believe that if he was genuine in his profession of faith, that when he was executed he was welcomed in heaven. That he was greeted by Jesus, and perhaps his mother was among those who were there with open arms. That a forgiven killer is as innocent in God's eyes as a forgiven adulterer, as a child who has never sinned. That's a hard concept to wrap my head around.

Maybe it wasn't that his death was too easy after all, but that death for the rest of us is just too hard. Many of us don't get the chance to make peace with our family, time to seek salvation and forgiveness for our souls. We die suddenly from strokes and heart attacks, from someone's mistake on the highway, from violence -- from the mortal fallout of living in this world.

So this week, I've been working within myself to find the person who would answer yes to that man on his dyin' day. The person who would pray with him and share his last meal.

Because I know that every day I touch the hands of a sinner, even if they're only my own.