Never had the closing of a door been so terrifying. The funeral director reverently moved the flower arrangement so the casket could be sealed shut … sealed for as long as the earth would last. My hands began to shake, and my knees trembled as I stood agonizing over the finality of it all. My little son, who loved life and thought I could save him from harm, was gone.

This moment that you see here was one of the hardest moments of my life. I couldn’t bear to see my little boy’s likeness being swallowed up in the shadow of the casket door. I had to look away, for I could not bear the sight of it. I looked down and wondered if I could ever gather up the broken pieces of my heart … for there were more than any mortal could count.

Desperate for comfort, little Wyatt leaned his tear-drenched face into me and wept. And my sweet, tender wife felt a grief so deep, death would have been a sweet release.

Everyone in my little family was broken, and I couldn’t fix it.

C.S. Lewis, an author I have long admired, said this: “It is hard to have patience with people who say ‘There is no death’, or ‘Death doesn't matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.”

If life matters, so does death … and every moment in between. Those who walk in grief carry a heavy burden and pain that cannot be seen. Some are impatient or insensitive with those who grieve … others are simply mean. To them I say, it matters, the life and death of a human being.

It hurts because it matters.