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“Grief tells our heart things like, “How can I possibly find joy again when so much was lost?” Gratitude responds softly, “Yes, it hurts, but what a blessing it was, even if only a short time.”

Grief screams. It commands and demands. Gratitude whispers. It is soft and subtle.

Grief sees only what was lost, while gratitude sees what was gained. ”

— Christopher M. Jones | Mitchell's Journey

Mitch loved his puppy so very much and it seemed as if Marlie loved him just the same. For almost 6 weeks Mitch had the very thing his young heart always wanted, a puppy to call his own. They bonded instantly … and differently. While she was cute and loving to us … when it came to Mitch she was almost maternal.

When I think of the many tender mercies in my son’s life, I can’t help but think this little girl one of the big ones. She knew just what Mitch needed at a time he needed comfort most. 

The afternoon before Mitch passed away tiny Marlie, still a baby-of-a-pup, wobbled up to him and then pushed herself under his lifeless hand. Mitch, whose body was shutting down and unable to open his eyes, began to softly move his fingers through her hair. Marlie didn’t move a muscle – it was as though she knew he needed her … and she was not going to leave his side. Not for anything. I took photos of his hand softly caressing his little friend. I still cry when I see that photo sequence because I know just what was happening. As midnight drew near, and as Mitch was about to leave us, Marlie curled around his head as if to comfort him. I cry when I think of that image, too. I feel the strangest blend of grief and gratitude.

I have often wondered about the relationship between grief and gratitude. At first glance, they would seem polar opposites … as different from each other as oil and water, fire and ice, love and hate. Yet the more I come to experience grief and gratitude, the more I begin to see they play an important and symbiotic role.

Grief tells our heart things like, “How can I possibly find joy again when so much was lost?” Gratitude responds softly, “Yes, it hurts, but what a blessing it was, even if only a short time.” 

Grief screams. It commands and demands. Gratitude whispers. It is soft and subtle. 

Grief sees only what was lost, while gratitude sees what was gained. 

What I have found most interesting about managed grief is that can lead to more gratitude; and where there is gratitude, there is healing. It is not easy. In fact, grief is one of the hardest forms of work we will ever perform in this life. So, as strange as it sounds, I am grateful for gratitude, for I have discovered that is a key to healing.

I am grateful for my wife and kids and that I was blessed with Mitch in my life. I am grateful for a broken heart, for it has taken me to my knees and taught me deeper things. This puppy … what a blessing she has been, then and now. I am grateful for this most unexpected place called Mitchell’s Journey. 

Though I have come to know the pains of grief and loss, tonight my heart is overflowing with gratitude for the many good things in life. I am happier than I have ever been since I lost my son. Grief still screams inside me – and there are moments where grief is deeper than deep …. and I weep and weep. But I am also listening to the quiet whispers of gratitude. That gratitude is turning a once barren wasteland of sorrow into a garden of goodness. An invisible place of peace, not seen with the eye but a place where my mind and heart meet. Grief and gratitude are not so separate; at least for me, they’ve become one piece.
 

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A few years ago I took my kids camping high in the Wasatch Mountains on what turned out to be one of the coldest days that winter. The decision to go winter camping was last-minute, so I called my wife and asked her to throw our tent in my truck so we could leave the minute I got home from work. With that, my dear wife quickly gathered sleeping bags, extra blankets, dry clothes and made my famous tinfoil dinner. (I’ll share the recipe another time)

We raced into the mountains so we could find a camping spot before night came -but before we arrived at our destination, it was already dark and the temperature was falling rapidly. I carried Mitch on my back a few hundred yards because his legs were much too weak to walk through the snow. Within about 15 minutes we had started a roaring camp fire so the kids could get warm while I set our tent. Within minutes I discovered Natalie accidentally packed what was essentially a mosquito net for summer picnics. It offered virtually no protection from the bitter cold. I told my boys it isn’t a good idea to quit at the first sign of a struggle … that we can always find a way if we look for a solution. After some discussion, my boys decided they wanted to stay anyway. 

That was the longest and most difficult camping trip of my life. I didn’t sleep more than 15 minutes at a time. No sooner would I doze off that I would awake in a panic, spring from my sleeping bag and make sure my boys were covered and warm. I would then lay my head on the frozen floor and peer into the starry sky through the mosquito net thinking to myself, “What on earth are we doing?”

The next morning we awoke and started another roaring fire. A warm cup of hot chocolate was on the way when Mitch came to me and said, “Hey Dad, let’s not ever do that again.” 

“Deal”, I said with a chuckle and then kissed his face, “I am sorry you were so cold.” Mitch smiled and said, “It’s okay Dad. It was fun … but not that fun.” We drove down the mountainside and I took our kids to the first restaurant we saw and I ordered them each a stack of hot pancakes and scrambled eggs. As I saw my boys dig in and chuckle between themselves over the mosquito net, my heart was overflowing. I thought myself the luckiest man on earth. I was so glad to be a dad.

There have been times, in moments of parental doubt, I wondered if dragging my boys out in the cold, away from our warm home was a good idea when they were so young. But then I would find little folded pieces of paper on my nightstand addressed to me from Mitch. In each piece of childhood origami was a hand drawn picture of adventures past. Not once did he draw pictures of Disney Land or expensive vacations, instead he re-created fire pits and fellowship. He seemed to interpret struggle with a measure of fondness. He would draw pictures of our spring camping adventure when we nearly got flooded out by a torrential downpour. He made drawings of the winter camping trips we vowed to never do again. From the boiling hot deserts to the dirty, muddy hills … the things we disliked in the moment, turned out to be the things he remembered and loved the most.

In like manner, when I think of our early days raising a family … when exhaustion and discouragement nearly broke us … those are some of our sweetest memories. I think little Mitch was on to something; that perhaps sometimes the hard times turn out to be our happiest times. Certainly not in the moment … and maybe not all the time. But sometimes.
 

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I remember walking into Mitchell’s room only to see him passed out at the head of his bed after a long day. My heart smiled to see how he gave the lion’s share of his bed space to his beloved toys – the instruments of his imagination and childhood development. 

As I left his room, after having tucked him in and kissed his sweaty forehead, I thought to myself, “What happened? We just cleaned this room an hour ago.” In his room and down the hall were toys scattered about like shrapnel from a childhood war story. An already long day seemed to get just a little longer. 

Then, like a whisper to my soul, came the words of Gretchen Rubin, “The Days are long, but the years are short.” I don’t pretend to know parental fatigue like my dear wife and every other mother in this world knows … but I do have a healthy respect for it. I try to help with parental duties but I am no match to a mother. And though there have been days where the hours seem to stretch out to infinity … where the end to a long day does not seem to come soon enough, I find myself looking back wondering where the time went.

Then enters my heart the words of Dorothy Eislin, “It will be gone before you know it. The fingerprints on the wall appear higher and higher. Then suddenly they disappear.” Sometimes they disappear much sooner than planned and in ways we wish were not so. 

I miss the mess. I miss the little fingerprints, the plastic shrapnel, and sticky counter tops. I miss the childhood tears and occasional temper tantrums. The older I get the more I want to revisit those messy moments because that was my life – and however messy and hard it may have seemed at the time, it was beautiful. 

The childhood messes of yesteryear seem less painful today than they did back then. I suppose a few short years from now the teenage messes I face today will be seen with similar eyes. And before I know it, my dear wife and I will be empty-nesters. Our home will suddenly be silent and we will long for the mess and noise we, in moments of fatigue, once wished away. Little Mitch taught me to slow down, unplug and enjoy the moment – for they slip through our fingers faster than we have hands to grasp.

The years are indeed short, and I intend to make the most of them.

This year I will share many new stories of Mitch. Some will be hard to read; others will be hopeful. Above all, I hope to find meaning, if not for anyone else … for myself. For the words I write here in this place are the aching and longing of my heart. They are a journal of whispers to my soul and trembling footsteps on the path toward healing. And I am healing. 

I am healing.
 

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It had only been a few short hours from the time little Mitch passed away. I felt like I had been thrown overboard into a vast sea of grief – how deep and violent that sea would become I never imagined. I had clung to a little raft of hope for so long – and in a moment, that hope for one more day … one more moment with my son was suddenly submerged in terrible waves of sorrow. 

It was that realization he was gone (I mean really, really gone) that was terrifying. My soul experienced a new, darker form of grief as what little hope I had was dashed and absolute. Like wading in the ocean; one moment surrounded in warm water then suddenly the water went cold, then warm again … our emotions were no different. One moment we felt peace, the next moment unimaginable horror. The nightmare I was terrified to imagine became a suffocating reality.

My dear wife sat on the edge of our bed quietly weeping when my oldest sister came into our room and began to console her, mother-to-mother. This is the same sister who knew Natalie and I sat in the hall outside Mitchell’s bedroom and wept while he slept and brought us cushions to sit on just days earlier. I made mention in a post how hard the ground felt and this good woman offered the only relief she could.

As a father, the death of my son stripped me of everything. I was no longer the protector of my children but instead a helpless, terrified bystander to the implacable force of death. I loved my son and wanted to save him – but I failed. My wife and I were terrorized by feelings of doubt, frustrated that medical interventions presented themselves too late, and panicked by an endless list of “what if’s.” Although the morning sun had risen, night had scarcely begun.

Then entered my sister, an angel made mortal. Like heavenly wings of comfort, she wrapped her arms around my broken wife and wept with her. I wept at this very sight – grateful for compassionate souls. Today, when I look at this image of my sister mourning with my wife, my heart is softened and my soul soothed. I don’t know much, but I have come to know we are comforted, as if by a whisper, by those who have gone before us. Though they want for our happiness, they mourn with us … not out of pity or disappointment that we are sad, but empathy. They understand that we hurt and they hurt with us. Sorrow over loss is nothing to be ashamed of. It is an evidence of love. I can see Mitch holding my wife, sight unseen, whispering to her soul, “I know mommy, I miss you too. I am sorry that you hurt so much. I understand.” 

I recently had lunch with a good man and colleague. He is an ecclesiastical leader and a man of great faith. He asked the question, “Why do some people really suffer by the loss of a loved one while others seem to accept it as a fact of life and mortality and move on?” I was a little surprised by his question and didn’t quite know how to answer it at the moment – I only said when my father passed away, that was hard. But when my young son died, it was life altering and soul shattering. 

Grief is hard. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. Ever. 

Sometimes grief comes barging into my heart at the most unexpected moments. I was on a business trip last Friday and everything went better than expected. I was excited about the future and my heart was filled with hope and anticipation. Then at about 10:30 PM, on the flight home, I dozed off. I began to dream of my dear son and somewhere between sleep and consciousness I realized Mitch was gone and my soul panicked. I awoke in a terror and my heart was pounding. I felt the pains of loss anew – with the same intensity as this very morning when I lost my son.

So, what is the point to all this suffering? The answer lives deep within - where secrets of the soul are ours to win. They do not come easy - in fact they often come at a cost ... sometimes at the hand of a terrible loss. But when we learn to look and see, our hearts will be healed by a most heavenly scene. Perhaps, after all, when we felt most alone, we were comforted by arms unseen and wings unknown.