“I’m so sorry. How long ago did she pass away?”

“Sixty-two years ago,” the woman replied.

used by permission

As I’ve spoken about grief and loss in many places, I’ve heard amazing stories of people who are now a decade, two decades—even many decades—down the road from their grief.

The pain is different. It isn’t as intense usually, thankfully. But it isn’t entirely gone, either. There is still a nagging sense that something is wrong, that something is missing.

David Wolpe describes well the process of healing:

“When we experience loss, a hole opens up inside of us. It is almost as if the loss itself plows right through us, leaving us gasping for air. We bleed through that opening, and sometimes old wounds are reopened. Things we thought were safely inside, patched over, healed, prove painful again in the wake of the new pain.

“Very slowly, the immediate agony subsides. Around the edges of that opening, things begin to heal. Scar tissue forms. The hole remains, but instead of allowing only a constant stream of emptying, it begins to permit things to enter. We receive some of the love and wisdom that loss has to give us. Now is when loss can have content beyond the ache. This is the time to create meaning. Pay attention to what comes in that open space. Nothing can make the pain go away. Making loss meaningful is not making loss disappear. The loss endures, and time will not change that truth.”

Slowly, slowly we begin to see ways in which our losses can be formative. If we don’t allow ourselves to become withdrawn and bitter (all too common), we can find ourselves becoming more compassionate and more centered. We realize that much of what occupies our time and worry just doesn’t matter all that much. We reach out to others. We learn the skills of friendship. We become more dependent on faith and our faith community.

But trust me on this: no parent who’s lost a child forgets. If you mention the child (a story, their birthday, the anniversary of the death), you will be a cherished friend. And if you have a new friend whose child you never knew, ask them to tell you everything about him or her. Ask to see pictures. Your friend will need you to know that child (in most cases) in order to let you into the deep places of their heart.

And trust me on this, if you’re a parent who’s recently lost a child: life and joy will re-emerge. One day you’ll realize, without warning, that you just laughed at something funny . . . that you were whistling a joyful tune . . . that you are looking forward to the day. You may be surprised and even feel guilty about it. “Does this mean I’m forgetting my child?” Oh, no. You won’t forget. And there will be plenty more sorrow-filled days ahead. (Grief has a way of looping back around for repeat visits.)

But time does help. You will, with the help of God and friends, survive!

What do you say? In the previous post, I encouraged grieving parents to receive everything as a gift.

But that’s not easy for them to do—especially at a time when they are confused, sad, and uncertain about their own future. (Who envisions their own future without their kids in the picture somewhere?)

Let me start with what not to say:

1. Do not — repeat! — do not pretend to speak for God. Keep your theology to yourself. If you think God needed another little flower in his garden, please don’t share that saccharine image with the parents. Trust me: it won’t help. (“God ought to get his OWN flower” would be a likely unspoken response.) Don’t say:

“Everything happens for a reason” (I heard this a lot)
“God is in this”
“We just have to trust that God’s doing something”

Please—this particular blog post isn’t the place for me to try to respond to these theologically questionable statements. From a merely practical side: these comments won’t help! When a child dies, everything is delicate. Don’t take a chance on tying God to the loss in ways that God hasn’t specifically told you to. The Christian conviction is that God is with us in our loss. He grieves, too. But the parents will have to come to know that through the dark valley of experience. It’s also true that God will “use” (that needs to be unpacked, I know) even this loss for his purposes. But again, this is something the ones in grief will have to recognize in the rearview mirror someday.

2. Do not attempt to diminish the pain.

“At least you have other kids.”
“At least it wasn’t like losing an older child.”
“At least she isn’t suffering any more.”

Rule of thumb: Don’t say anything that begins with “at least.”

3. Do not tell them you understand. Ok, if you’ve lost a child perhaps something like, “Our stories are so different, but they overlap. And as one who understands the pain, I’m so very sorry.” But other than that, don’t do it! The parent may come back and point out that you understand something about suffering. Great. But let the person in fresh grief make that connection.

4. Do not oversell the future. God will one day make things right. But this is not that day. As the writer of Ecclesiastes knew, there is a time to weep. This is that time.

So . . . what do you say? Here are some ideas:

- Nothing. Seriously, you don’t have to say anything. A nod, a hug, a tear—these are tomes of love. I remember an older woman putting her hand around my neck, kissing my check, and nodding. Her eyes were leaking. She spoke not one word, but all these years later she’s still comforting me through that moment.

- “I’m so sorry.” Less is more. This is enough: you’re sorry, you hate this for them, you’re with them.

- “I will be with you.” The fear is that everyone will rally around the funeral and bring chicken spaghetti for a week and then return to their lives and forget that your grief has just barely, BARELY begun.

- “I will never forget her (him).” Saying something about the child means that you will miss them but you will NOT forget them. We need that. (Just last week, a man who’s in his mid-40′s told me a Megan story from his college days—a story I either had forgotten or never knew. I felt like a little bit of her came back to me.) Eventually, this is something the parents may want you to explore more. What do you remember? What did you love about the child? What stories will stay with you?

- “I’m praying for you.” Good! You can work out all your theology in prayer. But the parents just need to know that others will be praying for them when they feel prayer less.

I’m guessing some will look back and wish you could take back some words you’ve offered from the past. It’s ok. We all learn as we go. I offer these suggestions not as a person mad at the insensitive things people say (although, trust me, I haven’t even begun to share the worst ones I’ve heard!) but as a friend who knows you mean well and want to help.

Remember this rule: if you don’t know what to say, nothing is just fine. Being present is the gift of gifts.

(More to follow in the series.)

used by permission

My next post will be about what you can say to someone who’s lost a child.

But first, a few words to those who experience the death of a child. My advice to you is this: receive everything as a gift.

People mean well. They are horrified for you. They know that nothing fits. Sometimes profound words come from them; at other times folks will say things that are stupid—things that could make you mad if you dwelt on them; and still others will tear up and have nothing to say.

But receive everything as a gift. If others had the perfect words to comfort you, that’s what they’d say. But they don’t. So they open their mouths, and stuff comes out. But the translation of that stuff is this: “I love you, I’m so sorry, I don’t understand, I’d give anything to remove this from you, I’ll be praying for you.”

You don’t have to respond with anything more than “thanks.” If you’re up to it, you might tell them that it’s important to you that people who knew your son or daughter help keep his or her memory alive. They’ll understand. (And you’ll understand many years later why that’s so important . . . when everyone else’s life has gone on.)

There are so many things to say about grief (and I tried to say some of them in Megan’s Secrets). But I’ll start here: receive everything as a gift. Even the most vacuous, ridiculous piece of pop theology (death brings out the worst!). Don’t analyze it; don’t rebut it.

Just receive it as the best gift your friend had to offer on that day.

Here’s just a sample:

Megan was a flesh-and-blood display of the topsy-turvy economy of the kingdom of heaven. She was one of the least of us, yet she occupied the apex of our care, absorbing all the loving service we could offer, and able to absorb still more. Without any “thank you,” without any false reticence, without even seeming to notice, she took all that we could give her, and still we were left with the sense that it was not enough. And yet, to anyone who held her down for a breathing treatment, or marched with her through the church parking lot, singing “I’m in the Lord’s Ar-my, Yes, Sir!”, or changed her soiled undergarments, or tried in vain to rescue some semi-edible artifact from her unbelievably quick hands, or held her as she gasped for breath–to anyone who ever poured a minute’s worth of love down the bottomless pit that was Megan, the blessing which followed beggared any other reward. Megan taught us all the difference in value between receiving and giving. We only wished we could have done more: there was no question of doing less. And all the while, we were the ones being made over by her innocent carelessness and her shattering need into a closer imitation of the one who poured out his life as a ransom for many.

Megan Diane Cope (born August 26, 1984)

Megan Diane Cope died nine years ago today [now thirteen years]. Who — in our success-driven world — would want her genetic make-up? She was, after all, mentally retarded.

Her ten years here were too short. So today, again, we grieve her absence, and we look forward to seeing her again to thank her for helping to set our worlds right.

Despite what many assume, it doesn’t appear to be money. Studies show that there is greater happiness in wealthy countries than in poor countries. But, “once a society’s level of per capita wealth crosses a threshold from poverty to adequate subsistence, further increases in national wealth have almost no effect on happiness. You find as many happy people in Poland as in Japan, for example, even though the average Japanese is almost ten times richer than the average Pole. And Poles are much happier than Hungarians (and Icelandics much happier than Americans) despite similar levels of wealth.”

Well, what about close relationships? It is true that people who have close marriages and/or close friendships are happier. But Schwartz suggests this may be a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Which comes first: happiness or relationships?

“Miserable people are surely less likely than happy people to have close friends, devoted family, and enduring marriages. So it is at least possible that happiness comes first and close relations come second.”

So much of happiness comes down to decisions we make to be contented. The problem with a maximizing approach to life (see the last two posts) is that we’re never quite satisfied. They could have chosen (a car . . . a spouse . . . a church) better, perhaps, so they’re always looking over their shoulders and living in regret.

So, “What to Do About Choice?” he asks in the final chapter. Schwartz offers 11 suggestions, of which I’m passing on just four.

1. Choose when to choose.

With an overabundance of options surrounding us with almost everything, we have to decide how many options we’re going to consider and how much time we’re going to expend.

“Restricting yourself in this way may seem both difficult and arbitrary, but actually, this is the kind of discipline we exercise in other aspects of life. You may have a rule of thumb never to have more than two glasses of wine at a sitting. The alcohol tastes good and it makes you feel good and the opportunity for another drink is right at your elbow, yet you stop. And for most people, it isn’t that hard to stop.”

2. Satisfice more and maximize less.

“Learning to accept ‘good enough’ will simplify decision making and increase satisfaction. Though satisficers may often do less well than maximizers according to certain objective standards, nonetheless, by settling for ‘good enough’ even when the ‘best’ could be just around the corner, satisficers will usually feel better about the decisions they make. . . . Becoming a conscious, intentional satisficer makes comparison with how other people are doing less important. It makes regret less likely. In the complex, choice-saturated world we live in, it makes peace of mind possible.”

3. Make your decisions nonreversible.

When a decision we make is final, our mind moves toward ownership of the choice. Schwartz points out that this is clearer with the big decisions, and there’s a lot of street wisdom in these words about marriage:

“A friend once told me how his minister had shocked the congregation with a sermon on marriage in which he said flatly that, yes, the grass is always greener. What he meant was that, inevitably, you will encounter people who are younger, better looking, funnier, smarter, or seemingly more understanding and empathetic than your wife or husband. But finding a life partner is not a matter of comparison shopping and ‘trading up.’ The only way to find happiness and stability in the presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, ‘I’m simply not going there. I’ve made my decision about a life partner, so this person’s empathy or that person’s looks really have nothing to do with me. I’m not in the market — end of story.’ Agonizing over whether your love is ‘the real thing’ or your sexual relationship above or below par, and wondering whether you could have done better is a prescription for misery. Knowing that you’ve made a choice that you will not reverse allows you to pour your energy into improving the relationship that you have rather than constantly second-guessing it.”

4. Practice an “attitude of gratitude.”

“We can vastly improve our subjective experience by consciously striving to be grateful more often for what is good about a choice or an experience, and to be disappointed less by what is bad about it.”

He suggests putting a notepad by your bed and every day, either when you wake up or just before you fall asleep, jotting down five things from that day (or the day before) for which you’re grateful. Most of the time those things will be small, but the practice will help nurture a spirit of joy, contentment, and gratitude rather than one of disappointment, regret, and dissatisfaction.

And with that — Happy Thanksgiving!

- – - -

I hope you saw these words yesterday from my buddy Richard B., who is a researching fanatic. (He’s also a rock star on the ACU campus — with the huge Walling lecture hall filling up for his classes.)

Two summers ago I worked with some students on research in this area. We expanded Schwartz’s maximizing and satisficing into the “religious marketplace” (e.g., people who try to look for the “best” church, or “best” worship, or “best” preaching). Our results mirrored Schwartz: These people were much less satisfied with church and tended to switch churches more often. By contrast, “religious satisficers” just picked a church, settled in, and went to work. And were much happier.

- – - -

An example of why I try not to miss what David Brooks writes.

“I have a rule, which has never failed me, that when a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the Left Behind series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down because the author either doesn’t know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith.”

- – - -

Today makes twelve years. My, how quickly they’ve flown. We still miss her.

- – - -

I still have my program from the 1968 World Series between the Cardinals and the Tigers. I hope there will be a repeat this year.

- – - -

Congrats to the ACU football team. They’re 6-0 for the first time since 1950. Saturday they blew away their rivals from Angelo State in the Homecoming game.

- – - -

Yesterday afternoon we saw the Homecoming musical, “Singing in the Rain.” Since I have all the theater majors in my “Life and Teachings of Jesus” class, it’s fun to watch them as they continue their theater careers. Ryan, Jason, Jessica, Shannon, etc. — wonderful job.

- – - -

Yesterday our “other daughter” (she has her own parents but she became part of our family when she helped take care of Megan and Chris) had her second child, a daughter. She called last night to tell us that they named the little girl Zoe Megan. She liked having the words “life” (zoe) and Megan together. So do we.

- – - -

God is working to repair this world. He’s doing it in obvious ways; mostly, he’s doing it in ways that don’t catch headlines. The whole mustard seed thing, you know. He’s inviting us to join him in that. In big ways, and small ways. Keep your eyes open today for opportunities.

Here is my post from last year, changed only to account for the extra year.

My Dear Megan,

Tomorrow you would have been 22. Every year since your death we’ve continued to have a birthday cake on August 26 and to tell “Megan stories.”

Last week when I was looking for your old percussor, Mom said, “It may be in Megan’s toy box.” Without thinking, I began digging through the box, and then it overwhelmed me. I was immersed in you: your shoes, a couple of your favorite blouses, the stuffed cat you loved, etc. I could smell you, hear you, even feel you there.

All that to say that I’ve never stopped missing you. It’s been eleven years and nine months; but in grief-years it’s been so much less in some ways and so much more in other ways.

You rocked my world, my precious daughter. You didn’t enter this world with a bright intellect like your brothers did. You were, we eventually learned, “mentally handicapped.”

Big deal. There were so many other ways in which you were so precocious: in love, in forgiveness, and in joy. The only full sentence I ever heard you say in ten years was “I’m Megan”–and yet you became my minister who led me further along the way of Christ. Without even intending to, you exposed the shallowness of this world–a world obsessed with externals.

You were a jar of clay.

It’s hard to picture you at age 22. You have remained ten in our minds.

Since you died, life has in some ways been easier. You never wasted much of your short time sleeping! Easier . . . yet sadder. We would gladly go without sleep to be able to hold you and sing with you. (”I may never march in the infantry . . .”; “This is a song that doesn’t end . . . .”; “Jesus loves me . . . .”)

We would have loved seeing your joy at Matt and Jenna’s wedding. (You never got to meet her, but I think she would be your best friend.) And I imagined you there in ICU patting Christopher’s broken and bruised body after the wreck.

Your simple faith still guides us. Your love overwhelms and empowers us.

Soon and very soon, my dear . . . .

Love, Dad

It is good news — the good news that Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and the Lord of the whole world, was raised from the dead by the Father and continues to live and rule.

All of our existence is lived out of this good news. It’s an actual event from an actual Sunday morning one actual Spring day in the real land of Palestine.

It altered history. Nothing will be the same again.

It is called by Paul the “firstfruits” (1 Cor. 15:20). In other words, it ushered in a whole new creation which God is continuing to form. And especially it guaranteed that all others who die in the Lord will be raised to live again in the “new heavens and new earth.” Not a bunch of disembodies spirits flying around “heaven” — but resurrected people finding supreme joy in the new creation of God.

For us this means that we’ll see Megan again. Some day that body that we loved so much will be called out of the grave. It will be transformed — just as Jesus’ body remained the same (even bearing the scars) but was transformed. We’ll join with her in the ongoing celebration of the rule of God.

Is it true? Maybe. Maybe not.

By faith, we believe it is. And we’re willing to bet everything on it.

Happy Easter.

Through the years, Grandma and Papa have been lifesavers. At times, the kids have gone to Missouri; at other times Grandma has come to our home.

When Megan was alive, once a year Mom would keep the kids for a week. It’s hard to explain what a gift that was. Megan, our beloved daughter, was challenging. Mentally-handicapped, of course. But on the go all the time, seldom napping and sleeping very little at night. In her stronger days, she marched around the house getting into things 22-7.

Family was wonderful. But marriage was hard. We were always tired. Those trips always rejuvenated us.

Once we left for 10 days. I was a guest speaker for a Christian group on a cruise. (I believe with politicians we call this a junket.)

When we returned we were tanned and rested. Mom was looking a bit worn. She smiled and said, “I think I’m a 7-day grandma.” We learned later that she had called a friend and offered her a hundred million dollars to come take over for half an hour.

Now it’s not quite so challenging, but there’s still no one better than Grandma to take over when Mom and Dad are gone.

To Chris, no preview could justify those tears — unless they were tears of joy for the release of the next Bourne movie or perhaps a discovery that King Kong II was being filmed.

I gave him a short, brush-off answer. It wasn’t the time or place.

But what I wanted to say was:

Because we’re here. In the dark. In this theater. And you’re sitting next to me. All week it’s been coming, and now that we’ve slowed down and you’re sitting next to me, the dam burst.

Plus, sometimes grief gets confused. And I still cry about Megan.

That would have been the long answer. But no seventh grader wants to hear that with a bag of popcorn and a great sports movie coming on.

Thanks so much for your prayers for our church this past year.

There is this wonderful country cemetery just outside Neosho, MO, where generations of my family are buried. But when my daughter died in November of 1994, we couldn’t bury her there. It was just too far away.

I know that may be hard for some to understand, because we couldn’t visit her,anyway–at least not like when you visit someone in the hospital.

But we still did need to visit her . . . to drive out to the little plot of ground where she was buried.

It was/is holy ground. When my daughter’s body was lowered in that spot (just outside Abilene on 277 — Elmwood Cemetery), it was a cold, rainy day. I remember hating that it was so wet and cold. She liked being warm and snuggling. I wanted to put some plastic over the fresh dirt to keep the rain off (but didn’t).

For the first few months, we drove out there often. Nearly always we went separately, lost a bit from each other in our grief. Then as the months rolled into years, our visits were less seldom but still regular.

Now, eleven years later, I rarely go to Megan’s grave. There are the three regular dates, of course: Easter (most important), Valentine’s Day (when I lay roses), and November 21 (the date of her death). There are other times, like when visitors come to town and want to drive out there. And usually when I’m doing a graveside service at the cemetery, I’ll stop by on my way out.

But for the most part, the need to visit has diminished through the years.

It is still holy ground, however.