Pause

I'm convinced that as long as we live life on this side of eternity, we'll never fully recover from the deaths of our loved ones.  While we can attempt to live lives that move away from tangible reminders of our losses in order to lessen the daily blows to our hearts, some of the most painful grief triggers can never be removed because the love for our dearly departed doesn't end when their life on Earth does.   Love is as strong as death, it's never quenched, it cannot be replaced and it never ends.  (Song of Solomon 8:7)   The grief that continually resurfaces well after a loved one has died is living proof of this scripture.  Love never dies.  It isn't passive.  It requires action and when we can no longer act upon it in the physical sense, grief is the result.

We are reminded by Paul to NOT grieve our losses like the worldly without hope in Jesus do.  (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14)  It's fine to feel sad and miss our loved ones but that grief must be tempered with the knowledge that we will see them again.   For the Christian, physical death is simply a pause in the relationship, not an end to it.   If we believe Jesus died and lived again, so too, will we.  It's just a matter of time.

The dilemma for a Christian is, how to manage our heart's desire for love (grief) during this pause without allowing sorrow to get a foothold rendering us useless and miserable in the life we have left to live.  It's easier said than done but I am finding that the best way to conquer sorrow that threatens to overwhelm is by rekindling the love that has been paused.  Rather than dwelling on what was lost, I remind myself of what was gained and what is still yet to come when I enter into eternity.  I live looking forward because I have much to look forward to.

That said, "Hands Full" is taking a pause so I dump some sorrow. 

Here goes......

Mark's new work schedule has afforded me way too much late night time alone and my mind wanders into the dangerous territory of missing Samuel.  One thing hasn't changed since Samuel left; nighttime makes everything worse and I can attest that sorrow thrives in solitude and darkness.   It's been nearly 3.5 years since Samuel was last here and 99% of the nights that followed his death have placed both Mark and I in bed by 9pm.  After all those years of having to stay up with a very miserable Samuel, neither one of us has any desire to be awake when we could be sleeping. There were two things I always said I'd have time to do if Samuel died: sleep and cry.  I enjoy sleep; crying, not so much.  That said, staying up until midnight on purpose is much more difficult and painful than expected.  It's not so much the dark that haunts me as it is the "tired" and the loneliness that comes in the later hours.  Fighting "tired" reminds me of taking care of Samuel   It was so hard to endure all of those nights but I did it because I had to.  He needed me.  Fighting "tired" today feels exactly like it did when Samuel was here, except he's not here.  This is where the late night loneliness allows sorrow to creep in.  It feels like he should be here, but he's not and I don't wish him to be if that means he'd be miserable again.  I miss him knowing that late nights for us were not initially the result of pain and suffering.  Quite the opposite actually. They were our special alone time.

Prior to Samuel's cancer diagnosis, I was a total night owl.  Late nights were the only time post-children that I had a few hours for myself and I enjoyed the solitude.  After Samuel was born, he quietly inserted himself into "my" time. He was just so cute and well behaved that I could not tell him no.  So he stayed up every night with me, no matter how late, and then we crawled into bed together. Wherever I was during the day, he was never too far away.  He was like Ruth in that wherever I went, he went.  Whatever I did, he wanted to help, and as Ruth vowed that only death would separate her from Naomi, I believe that death is the only thing that would separate him from my side if he were still here.  (Ruth 1:16-18)  He was born with a "Ruth"  kind of faithfulness.   

What's interesting about this era is that he was less than two years old yet it sure seems like we had many adult conversations during that time.  In actuality, he never said very much at all. Our love for each other needed few words.  Just being together was enough.   I want to say that he seemed so much more like an adult than a child for his entire life but that isn't an adequate description.  I can count on one finger the number of adults I would want this close to me 24/7 (Mark).  No, he was surely a child - but no ordinary child.  He was very mature spiritually and I'm well aware now that this was because he had a very short time to do a very big job.  He set an amazing example of faithfulness, humility and love, not just to his family and those who read his life story, but also to God.   I am awestruck by they way he lived his life, even still.

I was looking in Samuel's journal late one night last week for a specific event that came to mind but I must not have written about it.  At least, if I did, I couldn't find it. I knew exactly where it should have been but it wasn't there.  Sometimes I wrote about events after I had some time to absorb them so I read a bit farther ahead.  Nothing.   There were a few things I chose not to publicly share and apparently this was one of them.   Reading the journal is still precarious ground for me.  Forgetfulness hardly touches that era so I choose to manage my thought life and filter out the bad as much as possible.  Unfortunately the "bad" in the journal can hardly be missed so I gave up looking but not before I found this.  In fall of 2007, I recorded one of his favorite little "funnies" which was to plug your nose and then say, "Try to sniff."  Of course after reading, I walked right up to Mark and said, "Tell me who this reminds you of," then I plugged his nose and said, "Try to sniff."  He remembered right away and then everyone else tried it so they could laugh and remember.  That one would have been lost to the wind had it not been recorded and I'm so thankful I jotted these kinds of things down because they bring much comfort when I'm searching through so much tragedy.

The event I was originally looking for is firmly implanted in my mind regardless of its omission from the journal.  On the surface, it's pretty awful; it was one of those moments where you really had to be there to fully grasp, and I probably chose not to record it because it would have hurt my GI's feelings if she read it, but in retrospect, it's just another example of Samuel's magnificent love.  He always knew what was most important in this life and he never let an audience stop him from doing what his heart told him was right. 

In August of 2007 when the cellulitis around Samuel's G-tube started killing the tissue, we were admitted to Seattle Children's where our GI was doing her rotation.  Her being there was a big relief to us considering how precarious every aspect of Samuel's life was then.  Under sedation, my GI removed the dead tissue around his stoma and bandaged it tightly.  Unfortunately, she used a lot of tape.  A lot! (I wish I could underline that ten times but you get the idea)   The surgical team came by that very evening and wanted to remove it all so they could look at the wound.  I was not happy and told them they were not taking it off as it was just put on.  They were not happy and called my GI immediately to complain.  She came to us right away apologizing profusely about the tape.  She never even thought about it needing to be seen daily when she taped it all up like that.  (Obviously, this was not her forte and she went above and beyond her usual scope of medicine to help Samuel.  That is something I will remember and appreciate forever.  She was a very rare find.  A Godsend.)  I let her know that I of course forgave her (and she felt REALLY bad) but that removing such a huge amount of tape was going to be very traumatic for Samuel so I would do it - not the surgical team.  He could hardly stand having the tape removed from his port and that was small compared to this mess.  I wasn't about to let the abhorrent surgery team near it.  These people had already proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they could care less about Samuel.

My goal was always to try to make things as painless for Samuel as possible but if pain was going to be involved, I wanted only loving hands inflicting it.  I knew that someone just doing their job would hurt him a lot more than Mark or I would.  I'm certain that all the "Help me, Mama's" that came with the initial people poking and prodding him in those first days after his original diagnosis helped fuel these kinds of decisions.  Painful things were worse for both of us when they involved me standing by and allowing someone else to hurt him while he begged me to make them stop.  As it happened, Samuel also preferred that we do all his care even if that meant pain.  His lack of trust for medical "professionals" was nearly on the same level as mine.

The wound care team was contacted to come up with other bandaging options that would not require tape and they gave us many options to choose from.  (This is not typical. Usually they bring you something and you use it.  If that doesn't work, they bring something else.  They never bring many things, leave them all and let you decide.  I know our GI had everything to do with this.)  Our GI also wrote in the "orders" that Mark and I would do all wound care while inpatient.  (Again, NOT typical.  Usually parents are allowed to do very little unless the child has an ostomy bag or a diaper and in that case, they leave the crap jobs for you)  Anyway, with our RN, our GI, several members of the wound care team, and Mark present, I went about carefully removing the tape.  Samuel came completely unglued, yelling and screaming at us, just as I expected in spite of everyone telling him how sorry we were and trying to console him.   I tried to be gentle but it was still horrible. So horrible that he actually grabbed my hand and bit me.  It happened so fast, I would have never in a million years expected it.  It was so out of character.  I jerked my hand back, whisper-hissed, "Don't bite me!" and finished up quickly.

As soon as the tape was off, Samuel got so upset that he began crying very very hard.   Everyone in the room thought he must be in excruciating pain. We all stopped looking at his stomach and started looking at his face questioning what was wrong.  The wound was awful but for all its ugliness, it hadn't been very painful in weeks.  Through loud sobs, he told me how sorry he was that he bit me, that he didn't mean it and didn't want me to be mad at him.  He needed many hugs and kisses as assurance that I forgave him that very instant before anything further could be done.   I, of course, forgave immediately and well before his tears flowed.
Samuel couldn't stand it if he ever thought I was mad at him. That upset him more than anything else in his life and because of this, he required very little discipline.  This was one of the few occasions I very briefly scolded him.  I guarantee you that not one person in that room would have held his behavior against him.  Medical staff are used to seeing kids act in all sorts of unbecoming ways to protect themselves.  Kids just generally do not apologize afterward and even if they do, it's certainly not in front of an audience.  There was a great pause in the room, everyone took a step back to give us some space, and a few including the GI, were wiping tears from their eyes in awe of such humility and love.  Agape has no pride.

Instances like this one I just recorded seem so painful in a surface remembrance that they almost deter a person from looking past the suffering to find the love.  Yet it overflows with love,  Before Samuel went to Heaven, he told me he'd always know how much I loved him and those words are more precious than gold to me.  The recollection of this event brings immense comfort too because I' reminded of how much he loved me as well.  Just remembering and writing it out has turned grief into gratitude for the amazing blessing that he was to me on Earth as well as anticipation for what's yet to come when I step into eternity where we will never suffer separation again.  

It's taken a long time to get used to living without Samuel's love.  No one on this Earth has ever loved me with such intensity and it is only by my hope in Jesus that I go on living without the one who inserted himself so deeply into my heart and soul. Sharing Samuel's amazing love is one of my favorite subjects to write about and every time I do so, I cannot help but be filled with his love all over again.  It's that strong, that alive and so completely overwhelming that it chases sorrow away. While our lives lived together may be paused for now, my love for him continues to grow stronger with each and every savored memory. 

Our love is without end.