THE NIGHT YOU LEFT US
Today and tomorrow is a sacred time for my family. Just a few short years ago my son passed away on this very evening. We have healed a great deal since then, but there is still a sacred tenderness from a wound that still bleeds. A wound that still needs to be cared for.

This is a letter I wrote my son last year. A message of love from a heartbroken father to his son whose somewhere on the far side of the sea.

Dear Mitch,

The days leading up to your passing were surreal. It was cold outside. Snow everywhere. As the world spun madly on – everything as we knew it was coming to an end. It’s strange, you know, to live among a crowd of people yet feel like you’re worlds apart. That’s how it felt when you were slipping away. Everything on the outside seemed like a dream, oblivious to the hell on earth we were living. There we were, invisible to the world, living in the quiet of our home – and in the depths of our greatest nightmare.

With every dose of medication, you drifted further and further away. You knew what the medicine was doing to you – and you sometimes resisted it because you didn’t want to sleep. You wanted to be awake as long as you could – to live as much life as possible, as long as possible. I could almost hear it, you know … the crunch of the snow as death circled our home, every once in a while I could almost hear it gnawing and gashing at our door – violently trying to break through. I knew it was only a matter of time before death would take you away.

Just a few months prior, I wrote a letter to our family about your heart and how your life was nearing its end. I was careful never to let you see this letter because I didn’t want to frighten your tender heart. In the letter I wrote:

"Today Natalie and I sit with Mitch on the edge of an invisible cliff. He can't see it, but my wife and I can - and the mouth of the abyss is yawned and inching to devour our son. Yet, Mitchell looks out into the vast horizon unaware and envisions a long, bright future ahead of him. In his little mind, he is already making big plans. He wants to build a home next to ours with a tunnel connecting our basements so he and his dad can watch movies and make popcorn. He wants to work for his dad when he's older. He talks about his own kids one day and how he’ll raise them like we raised him. As he points to his vision of the future with youthful enthusiasm and a zest for life, he doesn't realize that he sits on the outermost edge and the ground from under him has crumbled away into the darkness – and his little body is hanging on by a pebble. What Mitchell doesn't understand is the beautiful horizon he sees is only a mirage, and in reality, the sun is setting on his own life."

It was surreal to be with you on the edge of life and death.

It was different than I imagined. More beautiful and at the same time more horrifying than I had a mind to know. But your time at home was filled with love and laughter – and for that I am grateful.

Your quiet, tender ways about you made your mortality and eventual death all the more painful to witness. How often I prayed for heaven to take me, instead of you.

Son, do you remember getting this gift? Well, there is a profound story behind it … a tender mercy put in motion almost six months earlier. I’ll tell you about that another time. But what I want you to know is – heaven was at work preparing the way for you. You were never alone. Not ever.

The people in your path were meant to be there. From your best friend, Luke, to your school teachers and your Bishop … it was as though everything was perfectly timed … just for you.

Your final weeks at home were a mixture of heaven and hell – all rolled into one. A beautiful agony I cannot to this day find words to describe.

There was a distinct moment I could no longer hear the crunching of the snow … the circling of death pacing around our home. I no longer heard the pounding and gashing of death clawing at our door. Death was in our home – and I couldn’t stop it.

Mitch, my precious child, I’ll never forget the time you wanted to be with me and play Legos. You were too weak to sit up on your own. You just wanted to be close … to lay on the edge of my lap and play like a little boy. Your muscles were so weak, and you were so tired that I had to hold your head in my hand to keep it stable. It was then I knew time had run out and whatever we had left was worth more than all the money on earth.

Time seemed to glitch. One moment it would stretch out … other moments went by in less than a blink.

Then, came the night you left us. The night we said goodbye. The night you slipped into the abyss, and all became dark. Never had I known such darkness, borne of grief and heartache.

As your mother and I were swallowed up in sorrow, we wondered how we could live without you. There, in a spiritual pitch of night, something happened I did not expect. As I prayed for understanding and pondered deeply on the meaning of life – almost as if against the backdrop of a darkened sky, I saw a little fleck of light. A tender mercy that until that moment I did not have the eyes to see. Then, the more I looked, the more I began to see – heavenly blessings that were meant for you … and some that were meant for your mom and me.

My eyes began to open. Over the next few years, what I began to see was beautiful. Like a heavenly constellation, these tender mercies, as if little points of light, showed that we are not alone – even in the pitch of night.

I’ll write you again, son. I have so much to share. I wish you were here – or me over there.

I’ve been traveling the broken road for five years now. Sometimes I travel through the wilderness of grief, other times the desert – where the scorched land burns my feet. And when I am lost, I have learned to look up and remember these points of light. For if heaven has played such a role in our past, you see, I can have faith in what is yet to be.

Sometimes I wonder where you are, exactly, on the far side of the sea. Maybe you will come to visit me – in the quiet of my dreams. And if you do, I want to know what you see.

Love,

Dad