As more and more people from my high school and college years discover Facebook, I’m getting the question more often - who is the pretty, smiling girl named Lee? She is my daughter, who would be 26 now.I lost her three years ago in a car accident. She had been drinking, it was very early in the dark hours of the morning after a party, she was likely sleepy, she was driving a friend’s car, it was a dark two-lane road. Any one of those factors, or all of them, could have been the reason she crashed and died, taking a friend with her. No one really knows.For a long time normal emotions weren’t on my menu – it was like my sea level was a little lower than everyone else’s. That initial numbness has passed, however, and most of the time I go about my life, feeling frustration, happiness, anger, all the normal emotions just like everyone else. Most of the time I am engaged with my fellow humans, laughing, working, loving and living. But occasionally, if I’m tired or worn down by other things, I am caught off-guard and the thin coating of familiarity with the pain opens up, and I realize it is yet the enemy.It has been a painful trip from that day to this. What I’ve come to understand about that pain is that it doesn’t lessen over time, it doesn’t fade, it doesn’t cede space in your mind to happy memories, or any of the other fictitious things we try to ply upon people who have lost someone significant. It remains, raw and dangerous as ever, below the surface. We simply become accustomed to it. This is an example of how the human mind can accommodate, and still function.People say about the loss of a child, “I couldn’t survive it,” but few actually roll over and die. What we really mean is that once we’ve gotten to know and love our children, none of us wants to imagine living in a world that doesn’t contain them. We may not *want* to survive, but we do. I was incredibly angry about that for a long time.And yet, here I still am. Moving forward, unwilling to be numb, however much smoother and calmer and softer that makes things.
Link to original post on Facebook
I received a really nice note from a writer I sent a note to a few weeks ago, and it couldn't have come at a better time. The mental image it brings up is comforting and peaceful, the day before I need it most, and I wanted to post it here hoping someone else would find it so also. Here's the link to the article I read that day ... if it doesn't go straight to it, the title is "A Whisper". http://www.tonywoodlief.com/archives/week_2006_10_15.html#001125
On 10/18/06, Walker, Julie (Atlanta) JWalker2@> wrote: Tony,I've been reading your blog since you started your site, and just read it again for the first time in about a year. And it was the Thank You blog. Perhaps God's hand is evident in my life after all ... I'm still not there - where I can be anything but angry with God and the world, the loss of my daughter is too recent. But I'm getting the sense that I might get there someday, and reading that someone else has made it through helps ... it makes the path there seem like a real possibility instead of a pipe dream. Thank YOU.
Dear Julie,
Thank you for writing to me. I'll pray that you'll get there. It doesn't make sense, that we should bury our children. It doesn't make sense, and it isn't fair, and often the burden is so much that it's all we can do to get out of bed in the morning. I still don't know how God can allow it. The place I got to was an understanding that he, who gave up his own child to death, doesn't let our little ones die lightly. And he takes them up into his arms, where there is no more suffering. We would rather they be with us, but at least there is this mercy, that they know nothing of heartache or pain.
People who haven't been scarred so deeply like to imagine that God makes everything work out of the best, in our lifetimes. But I don't think there is ever an answer in the face of something like this, where if we were to know it we would say: "Aha! Now I see why you let my child die. It all makes perfect sense now." Perhaps there is some purpose, but it is not for us to know, nor would we care. We can only take solace in the assurance that this present suffering will end, and there will be a reunion, and then the very memory of the heartache we feel here will be blotted out, and all things will be right again.
Blessings to you,
Tony
As more and more people from my high school and college years discover Facebook, I’m getting the question more often - who is the pretty, smiling girl named Lee? She is my daughter, who would be 26 now.
