Children Are Not Supposed To Die

One fall, back when I was a student at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, five of us rode together from Minnesota back to the apartment we shared. It was a hot, muggy afternoon when we arrived. Someone suggested that we go swimming in the Missouri River. I merely went along for the drive, because I had never learned how to swim. When we arrived at a park along the river everyone except me dove in and began to swim around, splashing and laughing in the refreshing coolness. I puddled along the bank and watched.

Suddenly I heard David cry out something. He was maybe twenty-five feet out into the river in deep water. For a time he seemed to splash and thrash and then his head disappeared. I screamed at the others, "David, David, he went under! Help him!"

I remember feeling so very, very helpless. There was no boat, no lifeguard, no rope to throw to him, nothing. Vic and Wayne swam out to where he was last seen and began diving down, searching, hoping, but he was gone. We never saw him again until the police divers pulled his drowned body from the river.

David was from southern Minnesota. The next week those of us who had witnessed his drowning made the sad journey back from Missouri to Minnesota to attend his funeral. David's parents and his mother in particular were devastated by his death. For years after she kept his room exactly the way it was before he died. She could not let him go.

Many have said that the death of a child causes the most intense grief known. David was not supposed to die. He was well on his way to becoming a pastor. Suddenly that dream was all ripped away and with his death a part of David's mother and father also died. For a long time after they were disoriented and confused. Like so many parents they were forced to confront something extremely painful. They needed to deal with the overwhelming pain of his death and move on, but how? They also needed to keep his memory present. How can you do both?

When a child dies parents face a wide variety of issues as they deal with their grief. The process of grieving is complex. Though we all must grieve in our own way, the process of grieving will always include the so-called 7 stages of grief. These do not happen in a particular order and you may cycle back to any one of them again and again.

1. Shock and denial - It didn't happen. It couldn't have. This is a way to protect yourself from being totally overwhelmed, even though you're not consciously aware of why you feel this way. 
2. Pain and guilt - The pain is unbelievably deep and seemingly unbearable. Why did  I or why didn't I? . . . The temptation is to drown your sorrows and escape the pain with alcohol or drugs. 
3. Anger and bargaining - Others are at fault. Why me? If only I had . . . Oh, God, bring her back and I'll never . . . But that doesn't work either. What can I do? What?!
4. Depression and loneliness - Especially as you reflect on what has really happened. And then your friends try to talk you out of feeling so down. But you need time, time to yourself, time to focus on the past, to feel empty and to despair. 
5. The upward turn - Ever so slowly things become a little better, more organized. Your depression begins to lift. But even then you may drift back to an earlier stage. 
6. Reconstruction and moving on - Maybe, maybe you can deal with life without your child. Oh, you do not want to, but you must, somehow you must move on without him. 
7. Acceptance and hope - You begin to accept the reality. It happened. I can't change that, but he is in the hands of Jesus. We will meet again. My life will never, ever be the same, but I see now that there is a way forward. 

David's death touched each one of us in a different way, but none of us grieved in the way that David's parents did. In my next postings I'd like to look at some examples of parents grieving as recorded in the pages of Scripture and see what the Holy Spirit has to tell us about how to deal with this most painful reality.