What Year would Nathanael be in, Dad?

“What year of school
would Nathanael be in, Dad?”
My 7 year old son 
asked of me recently.
“Pre-primary this year,”
I said in response,
“‘This’ big he would be.”
“Oh,” my son said,
A little surprised,
and kind of curiously pleased.
That was that as we sat
quiet and reflectively thankful.
It was another moment of which
in the silence of being
to just be pensively grateful.

Don’t be concerned that our seven-year-old would be grieving.  He’s not grieving, he is just remembering.  We don’t forget Nathanael.  We keep talking about him because his memory is alive with us and keeping his memory alive is important to us.  He is part of us.  It doesn’t make us sad.  Not all the time.  And besides, why would we be afraid of our sadness?

Of course, we would have him with us in a heartbeat.  As a school chaplain, I’m particularly mindful when I walk into a pre-primary class of children who are approaching their sixth birthdays as Nathanael would be at the end of this week.  I look at the way they walk and talk and share (or not as the case may be).  I see them laugh and cry and I know that this is what Nathanael would be like.

And yet, Nathanael, had he lived, would have been a very special child.  Nathanael had Pallister-Killian Syndrome — it’s extremely rare; only about 300 children in the world at any one time have this syndrome affecting the twelfth chromosome.

One thing we like about the fact that we’ve lost Nathanael from now to eternity is we get to practice the art of loss with our son.  Perhaps that sounds weird, and certainly countercultural.  We get to practice the idea that we cannot control all the things that happen to us.  We try on the clothing of acceptance and we get to wear it as long as we think about him.  We get to face those things with our son in ways that show him that facing things is the way to life; that turning away — dissociating — from stuff is truly death.

We don’t like everything about that fact that we’ve lost him; how could we?

We don’t like the fact that Nathanael never had a chance.  We hate that.  But we’ve learned to accept that we’ll have our day with him one day.  And that hope is beyond words and meaning in this world.  We’ve learned that he’s safe with Jesus.  Never more do we need to worry about his welfare; that is sealed.  Our anxieties for keeping our child safe have been replaced with a gentle and patient longing for not having him.

I love those moments when we sit together — literally a few seconds — where it’s the peace of acceptance, where the fear is stripped away from sadness, where acceptance is grief resolved, where the sting of wanting things differently has been replaced with silence in our souls.

None of us need to tip-toe around the gorgeous subject of our dearly loved son.

He has earned his way to heaven in a way that none of us in this living realm can.

Isn’t that good?