A boy and his birthday

The stress of unshed tears, the pressure that builds in your head, the anxiety that flutters in your chest, and the absolute inability to concentrate, that is what Justin’s birthday feels like, there is a gnawing at you that won’t go away. His birthdays were always pretty simple, especially as he grew older.  Justin could keep a beautiful fast for Lent, better than any of us.  And it was rare after he turned 17 for us to have a birthday together with him.  He turned 18 at Franciscan University, turned 21 there also, was home for maybe one birthday after graduation, and then he was off to South Dakota for graduate school. We respected his fast and would try to make up for the missed celebration the next time we saw him.  He loved cookies, so I would always try to have a couple of tins filled with his favorites when he did arrive home.

I recently read that sometimes parental grief is dismissed if the child was an adult, a discounted grief, a disallowed grief. That somehow our pain is less because they had arrived at adulthood. But don’t you see, we lost our very best friend, he was our son and to each of us, our best friend. Life is hard and it is those relationships that bring meaning, that give purpose. Our son knew all our faults, seen us at our worst, and yet he loved us. Justin never found fault with us, never spoke ill of us, he just made room in his heart for all our numerous imperfections. He would tell us we were great parents, wrote us cards about how we made a difference in his life, and now that is gone.  You may say that it is not gone, you have your memories.  True, but we are in our nature sensory beings, made for intimacy with others, hardwired to be with those who know our stories and love us anyway. It is a lonely life when that is snatched away in a single sentence, “Mr. and Mrs. Jackson – I am sorry to tell you that your son, Justin, is dead.”   We had hoped to grow old with our Justin and his gentleness, his sense of humor – we took solace that he would always be there for  Ryan, that they would have each other.

Both Doug and I have more than enough to do today, work, project commitments–discipline keeps you doing, but our beings are standing still, remembering.

Justin, Franciscan University….2004