Shortly after I posted my birthday thoughts about my nephew Max, I got a text from one of my closest friends.
It was short and to the point: “[My nephew] passed away around 6:15 this morning.”
I was actually expecting an update like this any day, but even when you’re anticipating news like this, it’s awful when it finally comes. It also hit me pretty hard considering the blog post I had just put up because I have so much to celebrate in the life of my own nephew. It almost seemed like a cruel irony in that moment, and so I had to take a long hike and spill some genuine tears to unravel my feelings.
The boy that passed away had just turned 16.
I never met him, but I feel as if I knew him a little because I invested so many of my prayers into his life for the past several months. And very recently, whenever I had a sleepless night with my pinched nerve, I found myself praying and struggling for this boy in the quiet of the night. He had a very complicated and aggressive form of cancer that he fought like a total champ, and when I heard about his fight, I just wanted to help him somehow.
As someone who has had cancer myself, and who has watched someone I love ebb away from the disease, the warrior feelings that rise up when it comes to that battle seem to always hover close to the surface of my awareness. But it’s difficult to know how to help someone in this position — especially when you don’t really know them.
But at the moment, I also have an incredibly brave cousin who is at war with this disease, and my niece, Leslie, has battled back from it, too. When I found out about their cancer, I didn’t know how to help these two relatives either, so I guess I can honestly say, knowing a person doesn’t make it easier to find a way to help. Words of comfort only do so much, and frankly, if there was something a person could actually “do” to help someone who has cancer, I’m sure everyone would be doing it!
So all I’ve ever known how to do is pray…
I spoke to my friend much later in the day to see how she was doing. Obviously, in the aftermath of this kind of thing, no one really knows how they’re doing. The numbness and the finality of the situation make all of the movements of your spirit feel thick and heavy. I recall telling my friend that grief comes in spasms sometimes — at least it does for me. Some nerve ending inside of you gets tired from being stuck, and without warning, an emotion seeps in that triggers the nerve, and something strange and painful blasts out of you at the most unexpected moment.
I’ve had several days to ponder my thoughts, which are admittedly selfish since I really didn’t know the boy who passed away. I almost feel wrong for inserting myself into something so profoundly personal in the lives of my friend’s family during their time of grief. I know none of this is about me, and I really can’t know the family’s real grief. But I do know mine. I took this young man into my soul when I prayed for him, and his life mattered to me. As my friend said, the only way she can make sense of all of this is to think of her nephew as a “teacher” who will leave a lasting legacy from a life that was blatantly cut too short.
If this boy was a teacher, than I will consider myself as one of his pupils…
My mom used to help me sort out a lot of my problems in life by encouraging me to “reframe” my thoughts to make them more productive. Whenever I was wrestling with something, and she was still around to talk to, she’d let me spill my guts and get it all out into the open. Then she’d say, “Well, that’s one way to look at it. But maybe if you reframe it, you might see things differently.”
I loved that saying, and in my lifetime, the technique of reframing my thoughts has really helped me. But when my mother died, I think the thing that stunned me the most was how suddenly my favorite picture in the world slipped away, and all I was left with was her empty frame… All of the color and beauty she added to my reality quickly faded out in the finality of her death, and it shocked my system when I fully accepted the fact that she only existed in my spirit and in my memories of her.
It took time to really accept the goodness of the empty frame that contained my mother’s life, but as I processed through my grief, I did find her words of wisdom coming back to me. And as I think of my friend’s nephew, and his family, I’m struck by my own familiar memories of my first days and weeks of grief. Right now, it’s a time of bitterness and sorrow…although I do hope and pray that those feeling are mercifully cushioned with love. But it’s simply too soon to to let the frame be anything but empty. No one can really fill it with anything at all that will make the picture of a 16-year-old boy’s horrible illness and his eventual passing make sense or help this loss be any less painful.
