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.