My Spiritual Autobiography - Part X

The return to active parenting was a sweet one. Yet, it somehow wasn't about getting back to "the way things used to be". That might seem like it goes without saying, but I had gotten it into my mind that's what it would be. I discovered I was wrong. Having another child to parent didn't erase what had happened to Theresa. It didn't take away the loss. But it was a tremendous infusion of hope. During the first few months of our new life with 'Boo we heard through some friends that one of their adult siblings had lost a child very suddenly (as had been the case with Theresa). I went to the wake for this child and when I was introduced to the father he asked me, with tears in his eyes, "Does it get any better?". Recognizing that this wasn't the right question to ask, but sensitive to where he was at, I just said "It's still worth living". And so it is.

It wasn't long after 'Boo came home that we conceived again and had the sense that God had answered our prayer, which had been "for a child either by adoption or pregnancy", instead by granting one of each. The pregnancy was a little scary - my wife began to bleed considerably around week twelve. Another miscarriage seemed imminent. I was reminded of why I married this woman when, on the day the bleeding started, I came home and found her lying on the couch (per the doctors recommendation) listening to praise and worship music and singing the praise of God through the tears of her fear of losing the child. But it wasn't to be a miscarriage this time. The bleeding stopped and the pregnancy continued.

The 20-week ultrasound always seems like a huge milestone for us - it's the point at which I, as the father, have a chance to really "meet" the baby and I always look forward to it. We have been blessed to have "Level II" ultra-sounds, which are in higher resolution (meaning greater detail) and I cannot remain unmoved by the sight of the baby's face - moving in real-time. There are only two things we pray for at the ultra-sound - that the baby is viable and that we don't (accidentally) find out the sex. We don't want to know until birthday.

Our 20-week ultrasound in this case was scheduled for April 28th, 2005 (three-years ago today!) in the afternoon. I had a very peaceful feeling about it. I really felt that God wanted us to parent this child in this life. About 10 A.M., I received a unexpected phone call from my sister. My father had died suddenly that morning. It was another one of those surreal experiences. We went to the ultrasound and I met the baby all the while thinking about my mom, alone in Florida (where they had gone after dad retired) dealing with my dad's death.

A little more backstory - My dad was one of those dads that just wasn't into a lot of intimacy. I knew he loved me and I knew he would always be there for me. But there was a lot about him I didn't understand. One thing that had really blind-sided me was that as I had my conversion and began to embrace my Catholicism more, my dad became stand-offish as though he was threatened by this.

It got a little out of hand. There was a point where we couldn't seem to talk about anything for very long before my dad would be making some remark about the Catholic Church. I remember being non-plussed when, at the end of a fairly long session, my dad nodded his head toward me and said, looking over his glasses like he always did when in tended to make a "father"-type point, "I raised you to be a good person, not a Roman Catholic."

I knew that my dad had had some tough "run-ins" with the church, but he tended to be elusive about the particulars - something a priest allegedly said to him (i.e. "You need to toughen up boy" or something) as his mother was dying of cancer and receiving the last rites in front of him in a rural hospital in Indiana when he was sixteen - another relative who had taken his own life (with an arguable case of mental illness) and was denied burial in the church cemetery causing my dad's mother to remark "He's going in the ground like a dog". These discussions were intense - my wife would sit next to me and have her hand on my leg to keep me calm as my dad would say one provocative thing after another. By the grace of God, we never once shouted at each other.

I remarked to my friend Dan that I felt as though I had been in a process of digging down into a deep grave and was now standing on top of a casket that had been buried long ago and was full of rot and decay. On one side was my dad saying - "Don't open it, I don't want to talk about it" and on the other side was Jesus saying "Open the casket". At the time my dad and I had just had another disagreement and I was confiding to Dan that the state of my relationship with my dad was a problem. We both recognized that we only had a limited amount of time left with our dads and we each made a New Year's resolution that we would try to cultivate those relationships sooner rather than later. I made a list of things I wanted to do with my Dad - stuff he would be interested in. I also wrote a really long card thanking him for all the things I felt he had done for me. The key line from that card was this "I consider it my greatest gift that for so long I was able to be ignorant of the reality of so many failed fatherhoods in our society. In my ignorance, I just thought everybody had a dad as consistent, faithful and loyal as you."

In a twist irony, the words I had written and intended to send to him on Father's Day became the eulogy I delivered at his wake. An interesting "rite of passage" happened for me on the trip to Florida to bury my dad. My father's authority and protection had always been subconsciously symbolized to me in his signature. His signature was definitive for me, it made things happen and I could count on it. While it may not necessarily always have been so, I always pictured my Dad's signature in black ink and mine in blue. In the course of making the funeral preparations for my dad, it was necessary for me to sign many papers and in this I felt his authority as patriarch of the family pass to my shoulders. I signed in black ink.

Two small anecdotes that followed: My mother remarked to me that a few days before his death my Dad had come to my Mom and told her he was going to the sacrament of reconciliation. It wasn't that my dad didn't go to confession, but he normally did this at the usual "special" times of the year - Lent and just before Christmas. For dad to just go "out of the blue", and entirely at his discretion, was pretty unusual - maybe unprecedented. I am so thankful for that grace. While I'm not one to read a lot into dreams, I had a particularly vivid one shortly after his death. In my dream, I was back at the University again walking somewhere when I realized I had dropped my briefcase. I turned around and ran back to find it. I saw it and ran up to it and when I got there, I realized it was sitting at someone's feet. I looked up and saw my dad standing there looking as he did when he was younger. He smiled and picked up the briefcase and handed it to me. I said "You look good Dad, you look strong". He didn't say anything, but instead smiled and shrugged his shoulders. I took the briefcase, turned around and walked away.

My dad had always spoken plainly about his own death "When I'm gone, don't worry about me, just take care of your mother." In one more pesky Roman Catholic act of disobedience I only followed half of his instructions. I'll take care of Mom, Dad, but I'll never stop praying for you.

My Spiritual Autobiography - Part IX

In the time between the miscarriage of John Nicholas and the "rest of the story", Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" was released. I recall being struck most by the scene of Mary Magdalen, as she watches Jesus carrying the cross, reflecting in her mind on the the earlier event in her life of Jesus saving her from those who were about to stone her. The sequence is filmed in slow motion for dramatic effect and I remember really connecting with it in the following way: The movie shows Mary Magdalen face down on the ground reaching for the foot of Jesus, as we see in the distance the men who were about to stone her dropping their stones and walking away. Jesus then turns to her, grasps her by the hand the lifts her up while looking intently into her eyes. This is the experience that I feel I had at the time of my conversion - Christ stared down the "demons" of my vices that were seeking to kill me, turned to me and put me on my feet. For some reason the phrase "Be who I created you to be" came into my head as I watched the movie. At the time, this wasn't any sort of consolation - I was struck by how "far away" my conversion seemed from where I was then. I wrote at the time that in the light of Theresa's death, my conversion seemed to be a worthless sham. I'm not saying it was, but that's how if felt. After we saw the movie we attended a discussion session where there were a lot of people we knew and many we didn't. One young woman came to ask for our prayers for a friend of hers who was contemplating an abortion (I seem to recall she was drawing a thematic connection between us unwillingly losing a child versus this mother contemplating willingly losing a child). I looked at my wife and read her face. I said "Tell the woman we would be willing to adopt her baby".

Adoption had been a touchy issue for us. We were afraid. We had heard stories of children being placed with families and then the placements falling through when birth mothers change their mind. We were leery to risk this - the thought of "losing" another child was a place we weren't ready to go. But in the face of abortion we were willing to go beyond our fears.

Nothing came of that first encounter (I'm happy to report the baby was born), but a door was opened. Later in that year, that door lead to a young woman who really was looking to place a child for adoption and by then, we were ready. The details are private (of course) but there is one that must be shared. My daughter (I'll call her "Boo" - her nickname) was born at United Hospital which is the building next to Children's Hospital where Theresa died. I very much wanted the birth experienc to be about the new baby and to this end, I was careful to steer clear of Children's Hospital - I even went so far as to walk to the far entrance to United when I came in to avoid the association. But, as we left the Hospital, something unexpected happened. The state-mandated protocol, for a domestic adoption, is that when it is time for the baby to leave the hospital, the birth mother is taken to the door in a wheelchair by a nurse (representing the hospital), the baby is on her lap, the licensed social worker representing the adoption agency then receives the baby from the birth mother, turns around and presents her to the adoptive parents. Some papers are signed and everyone leaves the hospital at the same time. It is a poignant moment to say the least. In our case, "Boo's" birthmother, not having the association with Theresa, had parked in the ramp for Children's Hospital since it was closest to the Labor & Maternity door for United. Thus, we followed her out that way. My heart was racing with all that was going on. The common lobby between United and Children's in that location was unusually busy that day and it didn't seem appropriate to have such a solemn event in what was bascially a bustling hallway. So the birth mother suggested that we move to a quieter part of the lobby. There is no way she realized that she had pointed to a spot near the door of the emergency room for Children's Hospital - the exact door we had come through in a panic when Theresa was having her stroke - a place I will never feel "neutral" about. We followed her there in a sort of emotional fog and when the time came, I dropped to one knee and received the baby from the birth mother directly. One word came to my mind powerfully: "BEHOLD!". A statement had been made.

My wife and I recall the remainder of the episode with a chuckle - we smiled and said goodbye, and walked a few steps where we couldn't be seen. I turned to her and said "I'm not going to be able to drive the car for a few minutes" and we both collapsed into tears. The day of prosperity had returned.

My Spiritual Autobiography - Part VIII

Sorry for the delay in posts, I have been on vacation and otherwise pre-disposed and unable to write.

After the death of Theresa Rose, it goes without saying that there followed a period of intense spiritual dryness in our lives. The death of a child is bitter. I can't think of a better word to describe it. I reflect now that this bitterness is largely due to the innocence of children. Thoughts like "She didn't deserve this" or "Why is it that other kids are good enough to live and she wasn't" were constantly running though my mind. We also found that many things we had taken for granted in our lives suddenly became difficult. I used to say things like "She's still dead". I even still say it now. It probably only resonates with people who have lost kids. The death of our daughter colored everything that I heard. We used to say it was like we heard everything with a pre-qualifier: "Theresa Rose is dead, and whatever else you said". The proverb "The day of prosperity makes one forget the day of adversity, and the day of adversity makes one forget the day of prosperity" came home to us. I found myself saying that the death of Theresa Rose was going to make a grown-up out of me.

A key memory I have of this period happened in the week immediately following the funeral. Some friends had lent us their cabin near Taylor's Falls to get away. We spent the days there mostly doing mundane tasks, just trying to go on with life. One particular day we took a bike ride around the lake. At the opposite side from the cabin was a small, fairly old Lutheran cemetery. Having just had an intimate encouter with death, we felt somehow drawn to this place. It was very quiet there, a rural setting, and I remember a strong breeze blowing off of the lake that day. The sound of the breeze in the trees sticks in my mind. As we looked at the old tombstones, most from the middle of the 19th century, I became suddenly aware that nearly all (if not every single one) of the families in that cemetery had at least one, and in some instances many, markers for children that had died in infancy. This was for me a gigantic experience of setting of context for the death of my daughter. It was as if I could hear the people buried in that cemetery saying: "We know". I had nothing to say about this experience at the time. I felt compelled to listen to something I wasn't hearing with my ears.

My wife and I sought help in various grief groups but we were never quite satisifed. They generally focused on validating our feelings of grief without really addressing the loss in any larger context. We also discovered that the process of grief is an foreign one to our society. In our grief, we found ourselves receiving "help" from many people. Some of what was given was truly helpful. But some really wasn't helpful. We received it anyway. We also found that there are many who toss around the Christian revelation about suffering, rightly expressed in a humble whisper, with an certain pithiness. And I'm sorry to say that I didn't always find the best solace and comfort in my co-religionists. Sometimes, my struggles with the starkness of the loss were met with what I call "sermon in a box". Yet, I did find solace in many of my fellow Christians and it was my faith in Jesus Christ, as I have it in the Catholic Church, that ultimately provided the context for understanding and making peace with the situation.

The death of the innocent Jesus Christ in the form of crucifixion, coupled with His exhortation to "take up YOUR cross and follow me" is, in my opinion, the beginning of what is arguably the hardest religion ever conceieved of if you consider it seriously in human terms. The cross is not "No pain, no gain" but rather, "Pain, no gain".

But the cross doesn't tell the whole story, and the purpose of this blog is to tell of the things that God has done in my life. One of these happened at Theresa's wake. The wake was a surreal experience - Cathy and I were on our feet literally for four hours greeting people coming to support us in our grief. The receiving line was out the door until the wake was over. I saw friends from high school whom I hadn't spoken to in years but who drove and hour to support me in my loss. To this day it makes tears well up in my eyes when I think of the love they showed me in supporting me at that time. The tears run down my cheeks when I see beyond the action of these people to the action of the hand of God who brought them to me. Toward the end of the wake, there was a brief prayer service. At the end of the prayer service we prayed the rosary. I saw nearly 100 people that I know and love dearly drop to their knees to pray, as did I. About halfway through the rosary I felt my heart start thumping hard in my chest. As I looked around the room, I saw priests, nuns, mothers, fathers, and children. I realized that all of these people were in the practice of praying the rosary every day, they understood the communion of saints. I knew that they also understood that Theresa Rose, by virtue of the graces she had received in baptism, was in heaven and no longer in need of prayer. I realized that, even though it wasn't explicitly said, in the absence of needing to pray for Theresa rose, they would all naturally be praying the rosary for my wife and I. I had a feeling like I had just finished loading a giant spiritual "cannon" of prayer, lit the fuse, stepped back and then realized that it was pointed at me. Here again (pardon the pun), I was blown away.

The path that we trod in dealing with the loss of Theresa Rose was ultimately a process of moving the abstract concept of the "communion of saints" into a concrete reality. The day after Theresa died we were at mass at Assumption Church in downtown St. Paul. The altar there has many statues, but the largest are the two on the ends, one of St. Paul the other of St. Peter. As I was distracted thinking about Theresa during mass that day, my eyes were unconciously resting on the statue of St. Peter. As I "came to" and realized that I was staring at the statue of St. Peter, the thought went through my mind: "My little Theresa Rose is in heaven and it is entirely possible that she is talking to St. Peter himself. What is my little Theresa Rose saying to St. Peter?" In the communion of saints we found the context for Theresa's death - she isn't dead, she has entered life eternal and she waits for us. We aren't called to "let her go" but rather to re-connect with her in a way that corresponds to the spiritual reality. She prays for us in heaven at the foot of the throne of the Most High. The Lord has graced my wife and I with a mental image of Theresa that corresponds to the spiritual reality. Theresa exists now in a state so filled with light that if we could see her as she actually is, we would be tempted to fall down and, in our confusion, worship her as a god. The Lord has given her the full realization of her potential. She is beyond us now. The brightness of this image of her spiritual reality holds the darkness of despair at the loss of her earthly life at bay like soap cutting through grease on the surface of water. We have found that the real challenge is to still find meaning in the dull greys of this life that stand between the two extremes.

Five months after Theresa's death, my wife and I conceived again. But there was a problem with the pregnancy. We miscarried again. I can remember sitting in the quiet car in the dark after the ulta-sound showing us that this new baby had died and looking at my wife. We were both numb. She shrugged her shoulders and said "What now?".

There is a quote, I don't recall who said it, that goes like this: "One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a long time". After Theresa's death, and the subsequent miscarriage of John Nicholas (as we named the baby) we lost sight of the shore for a long time. There were times where it seemed as likely to us that one of us would be a widow as that we would ever parent another child.