When a Little Brother Dies

He is only in 7^th grade, but he has witnessed the effects of original sin. In my first weeks as his teacher, I heard his story while eating lunch with other staff members.

Five years ago, Justin’s mother was driving home after attending a fundraiser event sponsored by another teacher. She had two of their three sons in the car. Two-year-old baby Carson and four-year-old Sam. Justin wasn’t in the car.

The accident took the life of Justin’s littlest brother, it caused significant brain damage to his mother, and it left a long scar on the right side of Sam’s face.

Every time there is a field trip and parents are asked to chaperone, Justin looks up and says, I can go, but – well, dad’s busy.

His father is busy. He’s busy raising two boys and caring for his wife. Amy struggles to speak, she cannot walk, and she labors to complete simple daily tasks.

Justin asks questions every now and then. They are the kind of questions any student might ask in a religion class. But behind the questions, there is a sincerity borne of experience; there remains a desire for answers and a willingness to receive them.

“Mrs. Bossert, what happens to us after we die? I mean – you know…” and then he groans loudly and runs the palm of his hand up his face and over the short hair on the top of his head.”

“Are you wondering what happens to the body or to the soul?” I ask.

He gathers himself together and tries again. “Well – I mean – there’s just nothing there. I’ve been to funerals and the person just lays there. It doesn’t do anything.” His gestures are big and the whole class is quiet.

I nod my head and pray for the necessary grace to respond well. I listen to my own words and critique them as they come out. Are they enough? Will the words falling off my tongue help him to heal a little more? Do I see peace and understanding registering on that perfect face?

When we come to the part in his religion book that talks about original sin, he asks more questions. Other students are learning a lesson on original sin and gathering information that they can put down on the next test. Justin is learning something more.

He is making sense of the senselessness in his life.

This is not God’s plan. He did not want us to know the very thing the serpent wanted us to know. He did not want us to understand good only when we contrast it against the terrors or tragedies or temptations of a world marred by original sin.

God wanted us to be in perfect relationship with Him and with one another.

The Fall placed the entire human race under the scourge of original sin. And God grieved.

God is the redeemer and healer. He restores what was lost through Adam’s sin.

Justin gets it. I can see that he does – because he nods his head as I speak. The others are listening and learning. Justin is healing.

Another teacher at the school teaches reading to Justin’s class. She asked the students to write one thing they would change about the world if they could.

Justin wrote that he wished there were no such things as car accidents.

I don’t understand why a two-year-old brother was killed. Why he would never enjoy a game of kickball like his brothers, Justin and Sam. Why he would never carry the football into the end zone on St. Francis Borgia’s field like Justin does every fall. Why he would never be able to bring birthday treats for the class like the other students who are in the grade Carson would have been in.

I don’t understand why Sam will always have a scar. Why he has to look at it every time he looks at a mirror. Why he has to be the youngest boy in the family when he was really the middle child.

 

I walk Sam and Justin across the road every day after school, and I watch as they race each other down the long lane that leads to their grandmother’s house. And I think of the little brother who will never run with them on this side of eternity. I think of Carson and know if I turn 90°, I will see the cemetery where that boy’s body rests.

This kind of tragedy was not God’s plan. But I have seen a family’s strength. A father who works hard to do-it-all. A grandmother who bakes “the best food in the world,” according to Justin. A mother who suffers well and still takes delight in her sons. A community that joined together to fund and build a handicapped-access home in the months that followed that accident. A school where teachers intensely love the two brothers that remain.

Original sin has dealt this world a terrible blow. We know how “good” good can be because we have seen how “evil” evil can be. God was right about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We were not made to eat of that poisonous fruit.

But the Tree of Life brings us the fruit that is the antidote.

What happens to a little brother who knew the Sacramental life even though he didn’t live long enough to learn his ABC’s? What happens to a toddler who has been washed of the stain of original sin and didn’t live long enough to have personal sin of his own?

That’s the good news, Justin. While his body rests in the cemetery beyond the schoolyard, he intercedes for you every minute of every day at the Throne of God! For you. For Mom. For Dad. For Sam. For us all.

The Tree of Life has the final Word. And Justin nods his head knowingly.

When a Little Brother Dies

The Last Farewell

I blame it on the fall. If we didn’t have original sin, we wouldn’t have the word goodbye. No adiós. No arrivederci. No auf wiedersehen.

And Roger Whittaker would not have made a fortune on songs like "The Last Farewell."

Our hearts long for more. We want reconciliation, and reminiscing, and restoration. We love hello, a word that holds promise and hope.

Young people love the word hello. We remember the Renee Zellweger line, “You had me at hello.”

Hello is so much better than goodbye.

Couples who hope to reconcile wait for hello. They dread goodbye.

Old friends smile at the word hello and immediately pick up where they left off.

Parents need hello when their college-aged children have said that first serious goodbye.

I went to my thirty year class reunion a few weeks ago. I enjoyed seeing some old friends and reminiscing. Still, it left me a little sad. I realized again how time presses on - moving from first encounters to last goodbyes. Sometimes, it happens, and we don’t even notice it. We find ourselves checking in at a hotel a few miles from our alma mater and hours later, we’re chatting with a friend from junior high that we haven’t seen in three decades. At the end of the night, we hug and slip into our cars and return to our lives, doubting as the poet Robert Frost says, that “I should ever come back.” And that's kind of sad.

Three weeks later, I’m at a funeral.

It’s been seven years since I was in RCIA with Bob and Pat. Today, Pat is burying her husband. And I think of Roger Whittaker and last farewells and first hellos.

Yes. I'm convinced. This word goodbye is all because of the fall. This is not how it was meant to be. Wives are not meant to say goodbye to their husbands. Mothers aren’t meant to bury their children. Friends aren’t meant to drift in and out of one another’s lives as though friendship was as transient as a daffodil in spring.

I walked into the funeral home and saw Pat standing beside the casket, and I knew that goodbye was not God’s plan for us.

Bob had suffered from Alzheimer’s. Pat said that one of her best memories was visiting Bob during those last months of his illness. She already missed him, though he was still physically present. She looked at Bob one day, and asked – almost without expecting an answer – “Do you still love me?”

“I love you exceedingly,” he said. It was marital grace – as beautiful as their first hello. No. Even better.

It’s the human condition. Children grow up and move out. Friends drift apart. A husband outlives a wife, or a wife outlives a husband. Goodbye doesn’t get easier.

I began walking over to Pat as she stood there next to her husband, and I recalled meeting them in RCIA class nearly eight years ago. I remembered the story of their journey, how they had neither one been Catholic, but both felt the Spirit’s call simultaneously. I don’t know another couple that can say that. But as I watched Pat from across the room at the visitation, I realized that Bob had made one step in this journey that took him further down the path.

In the middle of their goodbye, I crossed the room and said, “Hi Pat.” My little hello, what good could it possibly do in an overwhelming and irreversible goodbye?

She reached for my hand and smiled.

Original sin may have given us the word goodbye, but God’s grace has given us the word hello.

At any given moment, there is someone who is waiting for hello.

I don’t know who it is in your world. But I think you probably do.

Go ahead. Say it to someone right now.

There is a wellspring of grace in the little word “hello.”

The Last Farewell

Like Seabiscuit

I can vividly remember two Christmas presents from December 2003. My daughter gave my father a plastic horse. Jennifer turned five right before Christmas that year, and she was determined that she would pick out and purchase a gift for everyone in the family. She didn’t want money or opinions from anyone. It was her year to be a giver. She chose a plastic horse at the dollar store and declared, “This one’s for Grandpa.”

I guess that Christmas was the Year of the Horse, because one of my older children received the movie Seabiscuit. On December 28^th, we finished the evening meal and sat down to watch the movie as a family. The phone rang in the middle of our movie night, and I went to the bedroom to listen to the message as it recorded. It was my sister. She was calling to say that our dad had just passed away.

We turned off the movie, and we never went back to finish it. My mother gave Jennifer the plastic horse. “Here. Grandpa would want you to have it,” She said. Jennifer received the horse with a heavy heart.

This summer I am taking a class on social justice through the Paul VI Institute in St. Louis. Today, the instructor showed us a clip of a movie. Mr. Kraus reminded us that our lives mirror the theme of the movie: we have risen from broken lives to discover what we were meant to be – who we are meant to be. Sometimes, we are pretty beat up by the world. We are so screwed up, sometimes, that we have forgotten that we have human dignity. We don’t remember that we are made in the likeness of God. And we fail to realize that our neighbor is God’s special creation as well.

And then he pressed play. The movie was Seabiscuit.

I swallowed hard and permitted the images and lines to wash over me. This was the movie I had refused to watch for nearly a decade. God seemed to say, it’s okay. You’re ready, and you know it.

This amazing line hit me. “I just can’t help feeling they got him so screwed up, running in circles, that he’s forgotten what he was born to do. He just needs to learn how to be a horse again.”

There was a peace in my spirit as I listened. Denise, you are Seabiscuit. The world did its number on you and you got pretty screwed up. God needed to get your attention, and that was painful. But there was an important lesson to be learned in the dying and brokenness. You needed to learn how to be the one I created you to be. You had forgotten who you are.

I was created in the image and likeness of God! There is a dignity there. I am not created for sin or bitterness or confusion or anger or selfishness or exploitation by anybody. I am made to be Christ to the world. To be His mercy. His love. His joy!

I carry the mark of the risen Christ!

But I had forgotten that.

I am an oblation. An offering back to my God. I am a libation. A pouring out of self for another.

In that same scene, Seabiscuit takes off and runs with such beauty and grace and strength that the jockey (Tobey McGuire) yells out, “You are an amazing animal!”

It’s been almost ten years since we paused the movie and began a season of grieving. In time, that grief turned to conversion. And conversion awakened me to my calling.

I remembered how to run with grace.

I can hear my Jockey sometimes. He says, “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got.” And, like Tobey McGuire, He laughs then and throws back His head, shouting with joy. “You are an amazing creation!”

Like Seabiscuit, there is a sweet release in each one of us when we realize that we are being healed. We run faster than we ever believed we could. Isaiah says it best in chapter 61. I proclaim a year of favor from the Lord. This is your vindication by your God. He will give you the oil of gladness. . . a mantle instead of a faint spirit. . . the planting of the Lord to show his glory.

Okay, so let’s see what you’ve got. It’s time to remember who you are. Giddy-up.

Like Seabiscuit