Do I Really Have Anything to Say?

I dug this up from before I was posting things online. It’s from 2009. Have a look (consider it a bonus post):

I’ve lived a charmed life.  Nobody close to me has ever died and I’ve never been close by when any family pet has.  Even then, I moved out and was in college by the time the only dog and cat I ever knew moved on.  So I’ve never experienced the pain that comes with losing someone – or something – that I love.  Then, my son’s fish died.

My middle child is called Parker.  He’s a mysterious child to me.  I don’t know that I’ll ever fully understand what goes on inside his head, but there is one thing for sure: his heart is pure.  He can be a rascal, but he wears his emotions on his sleeve. He understands enough to say “I love you” and mean it.  He tells my wife, Erin, and I when his feelings are hurt.  He does a lot of what a 4-year old should do.  He’s very bright in school, good with other children, and generally sweet.  But what sets him apart from any child I’ve ever met is that he also has a tremendous amount of faith.  The real kind.  In God.

The irony of this whole thing is that it happened on a Sunday.  Just the day before, my mother gave him one of those ever-changing cubes that unfolds in every which direction that you might get as a marketing piece at a trade show.  Except this one tells the story of one’s journey to spiritual maturity in Christ.  He spent an hour that morning playing with, rehearsing, and re-stating each phase of that walk, to himself, while sitting at the dining room table.  We went to church.  He came out smiling, as usual.

We spent the rest of the day playing in the house and doing some projects, we watched some football, played some soccer in the backyard, and ran some errands.  Then we had our family pictures taken for our Christmas cards followed by a trip to Wendy’s, so by the end of the day he was pretty tired out.

Parker is a very structured child.  He gets home from school and has a snack, but not too big a snack.  That way he can have dinner on his Parker plate with his Parker cup and then have 1 scoop of vanilla ice cream in his Parker bowl.  He usually asks for seconds, but don’t bring him two at the outset; that would upset the natural order of things.  That same sense of routine comes into play at bed time.  6:45 comes and it’s upstairs for showers.  We wash hair, then body, then brush teeth.  In that order.  Don’t upset it.  Then we read a book (he likes the Bible), feed our fish, and turn out the light.

Tonight, when I went up to get the PJs in place and turn down the beds, I noticed something amiss in Parker’s fish bowl.  Sunday night is always “clean the fish bowl night”, but I could tell pretty quickly that I only needed to clean our oldest son Ryan’s bowl.  I whispered down to Erin, “Parker’s fish died!  You need to go to PetSmart tomorrow and get another one.”  In her wisdom, she thought about it and said, “No, this is something we need to use as a learning experience.”

If this had happened to Ryan, he would have been OK with it.  He likes his fish but there’s no emotional attachment there.  Connor, our youngest, probably would be OK, too.  Parker?  Not so much.

Erin came upstairs after showers were done and it was time to feed the fish.  She knew exactly what to do.  “Parker”, she said, “we need to talk.  Your fish was sick and now he went to be with Jesus.  I’m very sorry, but he died.  We can go get another one this week when school is closed on Wednesday if you like, OK?”

Here’s where my lack of experience comes in.  I’m a logic guy.  My world is black and white.  I’m in IT.  There are answers to just about everything I tackle at work and those answers are often binary.  This is probably why I find Parker so fascinating.  He can blow me away with a question I just never would have thought to ask because I always accepted things as they were.  Just another problem to solve.

Erin is different.  She’s patient, understands emotion and, most importantly here, understands loss.  She’s lost a lot.  Her childhood was filled with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and parents all summer long every year until, well, it still is.  Growing up, they would vacation in packs.  Her cousins were built-in friends.  Her grandparents were a second set of parents and people she continued to visit weekly until I dragged her across the Hudson River into New Jersey.  Then, it went down to monthly.

Erin lost all of her grandparents in the span of about 5 years.  Each one has been incrementally “easier” for her but I think most of that is distance.  We’re in South Carolina now and we have 3 kids of our own.  Time, distance, and a busy life drew her further away from her Long Island roots, but until she was 30, she was with them all the time.

We were still in the area when her first grandfather died.  I’ve never seen so many people laughing so hard at a funeral.  They loved him and remembered him the way I hope to be remembered.  Sure, they cried, but someone would always interject a joke or a story about Pop that would nip that in the bud right quick – and that was usually Gram, his widow.

When Gram’s time came, Erin went up and I watched the kids and there was more of the same.  This family knew enough of their dearly departed to grieve but not sulk, feel without being overcome.  There was a real sense of what to do with the loss, where to put it, and how to move on after it.

When Parker heard that his fish was with Jesus, he was OK with that.  When we talked about replacing it, he cried like I’ve never heard or seen anyone I love cry.  As I write this, I think I understand why.  He doesn’t want to replace the fish.  He can’t.  It had its place and always will.  But this is not a quid pro quo.  It’s not a broken toy we can replace.  He wanted time to grieve, remember, and let go of this one.  He may get another fish, but he’ll do so when he’s ready.  He has a sense for when that will be.  And with that, he’s one step ahead of me.

Tags: blessed, children and faith, faith, fish, god, jesus