There are so many moments and many more memories in our times of loss, and though they involve excruciating pain, there is within them the redemptive element: our losses are ours and we can possess them—even as they possess us. Our opportunity for healing doesn’t come in running from our grief; it comes in facing it.
The funeral for our stillborn son, Nathanael Marcus (who had Pallister-Killian Syndrome), on November 7, 2014 was a surreal event full of salient moments, many of which are driven deep into our memory, however unreal those few hours seemed.
Our memories of not only the funeral, but of the birth, and of the passage of 179 hours with him, have been etched in our souls. Just like the memory we have of taking Nathanael with us, in utero, on dates, like the one depicted in the picture below, to the Old Roundhouse in Fremantle, Western Australia. We took him out on as many dates as our busy schedule would allow, given almost weekly medical appointments and amnioreduction surgical procedures—of which there were no fewer than eight in an 11-week period.
I continue to scour that time for meaning, for presences of memory to take hold of; to reclaim. One such memory was, at the finish of the service, leading Nathanael’s casket out, Sarah and I.
As we were walking out, I can distinctly recall thinking, “I’ve survived this!” With little doubt, we were both being carried by the Lord. It’s a bit like the moments immediately before you encounter your deceased child in the flesh — you find yourself in uncharted territory! “Will I be able to endure this?” “Will it completely overwhelm me?” “Do I have enough courage to do this?”
In the same chronological moment, Sarah whispered to me, “After the hearse leaves, can you say something to everyone?” because several of the assembled throng followed us outside the chapel, watched us gently place Nathanael’s little casket into the hearse, say our final prayers, as we waited there for the doors to close, and then as we watched as the hearse slowly departed from view.
It was at this point that it suddenly dawned on me that there was a moment I had completely not anticipated. I hadn’t prepared for this one. I felt I was equipped for the previous moments of horror. God with me, God talking to me, God saying, “You can do this, Steve.”
As that hearse got smaller, its tyres rolling forward, taking Nathanael from us for ever, I began to crumble in little involuntary heaves of unrelenting grief. As the hearse disappeared from view, I felt a new sense of brokenness descend over me, hard as that is to imagine. I suddenly realise I’d never see him again! Even as I type these words, I tear up for the sheer sorrow of such a thought. It was over five years ago!
That moment of fighting the tears back—whether we should or not is debatable—was palpable. I could not go with my son. I had to remain in the land of the living with my remaining loved ones, as his body departed for the next legal leg of his earthly journey, though his spirit had been with Jesus, in our time, for over a week.
In that moment there were a dozen or more people waiting a hundred feet away, and we had to greet them, so that brief glimpse into eternity was cut short by the will of God; to be there for those who are living and not be caught up with eternal things that are accessible in a moment of alone time.
Grief is a rocky cavalcade of a plethora of experiences. Some of these experiences we will not even perceive in their fullness, for every substantial moment is thick with meaning. We’re limited as far as our humanity. Often it is too much for us. And that’s okay. It has to be. We have no choice to accept ourselves, frailties and all.
The moment of seeing the hearse drive away was a single heartbreak moment within all the heartbreaking moments.
Even now as I watch Mercy Me sing “I can only imagine,” the processional at our wedding, my heart is caught high in the clouds, because part of my heart went to be with Nathanael that day.
He will not come to us. We will go to be with him.
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