Evidence – Photo: L. Weikel
Evidence
I remember the night after we received the call about Karl’s death. Twenty four hours after we received the news, we were attending a cross-country track team banquet. We kept our loss quiet, the three of us pretty much navigating the festivities on auto-pilot. (Our middle son was making his way home from another state where he was working his first job.) Oddly that night remained in my memory – not because of the cross-country banquet – but because of the evidence we received of a truth much bigger than ourselves that night.
I distinctly remember walking out of the church basement where the meal had been served and feeling the overwhelming beauty of the sunset practically pound me on the chest. The reds, oranges, purples, and blues all seemed to wrap themselves around me in a literal embrace of love and knowing. I felt my son’s arms around me. He was there. He was more palpably close to us in that moment than he’d been a week earlier, when he was still in his body.
The photo I took of that powerful sunset was the background on my iPhone for years from that day forward. Evidence that Karl’s essence did not die with his body.
Tonight
I’m recalling that night tonight because another family I know is encountering a similar life-altering reality – an adult son lost in a car accident.
I don’t know the details, whether he died last night or this morning, but I know that tonight was the first full day of him being ripped from the fabric of their lives. I’d been thinking about his family all day, remembering the shock of trying to wrap my head around the fact that I would never see my eldest son alive again. It doesn’t compute. It takes a while. And it makes you feel nauseated every time you try.
As we walked this afternoon and crested our favorite hill for weather and astral observations, we could clearly see rain cascading from the clouds in the distance. It felt like a metaphor – my holding space for them from afar as the rain pelted down in their lives.
Photo: L. Weikel
But about an hour later, another moment arrived. A sign, a message, a small but potentially powerful indicator that, while the pain is exquisite and they may feel they’re drowning in their loss, his spirit shines on.
It’s in times like these, of sudden shock and great loss, that we owe it to those we’ve lost to take solace in their best efforts to send us signs of their continued existence – and undying love.
Yes, we yearn for signs when tragedy strikes. But who are we to deny those who’ve departed our respect for their best efforts to reach out, make contact, and comfort us?
(T-222)