Losing a child: grief and hope

As I mentioned, Maddy was asked to sing at a funeral on Saturday, and so we left our family gathering to go. I believe - and am trying to teach Maddy - that this is a singer's responsibility in a situation like this, to put her own agenda aside for a while and do her best to bring catharsis/healing/remembrance/tenderness to a sorrowful time when people gather together to mourn.

Had the funeral been for an adult, I would have allowed her to pass the task on to someone else and to put her family first since we had only five hours together. But this was for a five-year-old girl who had died as the result of injuries sustained during a skating party. I have been told she fell twice, but got up and skated on, apparently unharmed. A day or two later, she fell unconscious, was medivacced to the hospital, but her life could not be saved.

Maddy was having a hard time preparing as the last time she sang at a funeral at our church - Father Kelly's - she broke down while singing his favorite hymn - "Lead, Kindly Light." Saturday, she was to sing "Hallelujah" (Cohen), "Ave Maria" (Schubert), and "All Through the Night" which was Sara's favorite lullaby. She's also been on an emotional roller coaster with her job, moving and preparing to leave for college.

But Maddy knows that the discipline of a singer in this situation is that it's not about her - which was affirmed when we were walking towards the church and Sadie's mom Sara - whom we had never met - so graciously came out to greet us. She told Maddy that Sadie had been to hear her sing and had wanted to meet her afterwards, but that she (Sara) had discouraged her from interrupting Maddy talking with her friends.

On the way home, Maddy said "I wish I had met Sadie, Mom." I told her that even though she hadn't met her on earth, that - as Fr. Escalante reminded us during the funeral in so many ways - she has met her spiritually and can continue to do so. I also reminded her to always be looking out of the corner of her eye for someone who wants to say hello. I think this is a lesson she will never forget.

Still, through Fr. Escalante's homily, everyone in the church - and our church was packed, though most were not Catholic - knew Sadie very well. Sadie was a baptized Catholic and deeply committed Christian. Her grandparents cared for her while her mother worked and brought her to church on Sundays, where she waited after Mass to say hi to Fr. Escalante and usually ask him a question. Fr. E said the last Sunday he saw her, she had already said goodbye to him twice when he felt a tug on his vestments and turned around to find her there again.

"Sadie, are you back again?" he said.

"I just wanted to say goodbye one more time," she answered.

By all accounts, Sadie was an unusually spiritual girl. While she was only five, she was reading at a third grade level and so was able to read the Bible.

A few days before the skating party, when Sara picked her up from her grandmother's, Sadie gave her mom something she had typed out and printed up herself - a short summary of the Book of Job, which she had been reading. It went something like this: Job was a good man who loved God and had bad things happen.

Sara's Word of Remembrance about her daughter were real and raw - and I'm sure every mother in the church appreciated her complete selfless honesty. We all know that our bond of love with our children makes us vulnerable to the deepest hurts. Even if we barely know each other, we grieve intensely at the loss of someone's child.

And I know we each wonder how we could endure.

Sara - though she never would have chosen it - has become a role model for those of us who were there that day. No sugar-coating, no pretending to be a Bible scholar or a woman spiritually equipped to handle this tragedy. And yet she remembered little things Sadie had said or done in the weeks leading up to her death that would point her mom to the way out of the darkness in which she found herself cast. Most important was the slip of paper with Sadie's summary of the Book of Job, which Sara felt compelled to read and which she credits as the only thing that kept her alive. She closed by sharing Job 1:20-21:

"At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."

So reassuring to see how much God loves us that even though we must go through suffering, He carefully plants seeds of hope - seeds we can discover and nurture. I have hope too that this hope will continue to grow in all of us privileged to be there Saturday to say farewell to Sadie's short life on earth.

Sara's remembrance was followed by Maddy singing - or attempting to sing - Sara and Sadie's favorite lullaby:

All Through the Night


(tune)


Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and dale in slumber sleeping
I my loving vigil keeping
All through the night


While the moon her watch is keeping
All through the night
While the weary world is sleeping
All through the night
O'er thy spirit gently stealing
Visions of delight revealing
Breathes a pure and holy feeling
All through the night


Love, to thee my thoughts are turning
All through the night
All for thee my heart is yearning,
All through the night.
Though sad fate our lives may sever
Parting will not last forever,
There's a hope that leaves me never,
All through the night.

Maddy didn't make it through the lullaby, but as she feared, began to cry - and as she has noted, while a musician can get away with crying, a singer can't. We had to leave quickly as she was so depleted afterwards. That's when we had the conversation in the car where she said she wished she'd had the opportunity to meet Sadie and I assured her that she certainly had today. And that she now has a very close friend in heaven.

As a Catholic convert - after 20 years of evangelicalism - I have to say how much I appreciate Church teaching on the communion of saints as it helps me understand the reality of this situation.

I've heard Christians ask, "Why do you pray to dead people?" Excuse me, but I thought all Christians knew that those who've died and risen in Christ are not dead. Neither are they on the other side of an Iron Curtain. We are not drastically separated from those now alive in God's presence. I find great comfort - and common sense - in that.

Yes, we grieve the loss of Sadie's presence on earth - and we will continue to pray for her family's comfort in their grief, but I believe Sadie saw it all Saturday and was very pleased that everyone picked up the clues she left behind.

And now the book of Sadie's life has been opened for many more to see. How many lives have been touched by this sweet girl who loved God with such purity?

"When Jesus saw [the disciples shooing the children away], he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

"I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

Art Note: Jesus Welcomes the Children by Carl Heinrich Bloch

Sadie's Remembrance Page