Last night, I drifted off to sleep and started dreaming about my children. They were all playing together happily, the way they often do, running around in a spacious, hilly, green field, playing games and giggling and shrieking. Then suddenly, one of them told the others that she was leaving, and laid down and closed her eyes, and she was gone. I was probably only asleep for a few seconds, but it seemed like hours that I stood there looking at her beautiful, painfully silent face. The misery of it was so overwhelming, I think it was a need to escape that woke me. Doug was lying next to me, with his hand affectionately on my side, and I slid over closer to him, deeply relieved to be awake, to find that all was alright, that the misery was an illusion.
Six years. Today it is six years since Conner slipped away, and it is quite apparent that the pain of those first days and months still haunt some place in my mind; I remember all too clearly the overwhelming misery, wishing hour by hour and day by day that we could all wake up and realize it was simply a bad dream. Still wishing it could all be undone. Some miseries cannot be undone. Yet.
I am grateful to trust in the Atonement and the Resurrection, to know that someday we will see and hold that beautiful little boy again, and that his loving parents will have the opportunity to raise him to adulthood in a world free from pain, sin and fear. But that only takes away some of the sting, not all of it. Last week, one of the scriptures in the Sunday School lesson was from the Doctrine and Covenants, where the Lord promises that during the Millennium, children will not die in infancy, but shall live to old age, strong and healthy. How marvelous that must've sounded to the ears of so many mothers and fathers who had lost little ones to disease, cold, starvation, and accidents. So many of them, while trying so hard to be faithful and obedient, watched their children slip away from them.
I'm grateful that my babes are all healthy and whole and here with me, and I often pray for peace and comfort for my sister and brother-in-law, and the many parents like them, for whom the misery is not a dream from which they can wake, but a broken heart that can't entirely be healed. Yet.
Six years. Today it is six years since Conner slipped away, and it is quite apparent that the pain of those first days and months still haunt some place in my mind; I remember all too clearly the overwhelming misery, wishing hour by hour and day by day that we could all wake up and realize it was simply a bad dream. Still wishing it could all be undone. Some miseries cannot be undone. Yet.
I am grateful to trust in the Atonement and the Resurrection, to know that someday we will see and hold that beautiful little boy again, and that his loving parents will have the opportunity to raise him to adulthood in a world free from pain, sin and fear. But that only takes away some of the sting, not all of it. Last week, one of the scriptures in the Sunday School lesson was from the Doctrine and Covenants, where the Lord promises that during the Millennium, children will not die in infancy, but shall live to old age, strong and healthy. How marvelous that must've sounded to the ears of so many mothers and fathers who had lost little ones to disease, cold, starvation, and accidents. So many of them, while trying so hard to be faithful and obedient, watched their children slip away from them.
I'm grateful that my babes are all healthy and whole and here with me, and I often pray for peace and comfort for my sister and brother-in-law, and the many parents like them, for whom the misery is not a dream from which they can wake, but a broken heart that can't entirely be healed. Yet.
1 comment:
Sometimes, knowing that your kids are safe and sound and healthy is the greatest blessing! There are days when it feels like that's the only thing I have to be grateful for! Our health.
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