Death Is Hard

When death strips away a child from a parent or a parent from a child, the earth seems a little bit duller. Death is hard. My heart hurts a little deeper when I learn of a kid, particularly a high school-aged kid, losing a parent. It hits very close to home for me. Last week, one of our students lost his mother. For a brief moment, when I heard all of my personal memories flooded over me. I watched and felt his grief unfold on the football field. Death is hard.

Losing a parent while in high school is a different kind of hurt. Oh, your friends are there; they try and comfort you, but the majority of them wake up the next morning with their familial unit intact. Nothing changes in their daily lives. However, your daily life is never whole again. Your literal day one sees no more of your days. No ball games. No plays. No graduations. No weddings. No births. No nothing. All of these thoughts permeate your psyche off and on during the coming days, months, and years, not to mention the initial shock of their death cripples you. No voice. No laughter. No smiles. No Nothing. Gone. FOR.EVER. All of that is a LOT for any teenager to handle. It was a lot for me. I cried every night for weeks. Cried until there were no more tears. I remember Will telling me he was worried that I may try to kill myself. I never considered that, but I did retreat from being social, outgoing, wanting to be-around-ALL-the-people to being around the bare minimum, if that. I was sad. I was angry. I was so confused. If it wasn't enough to lose my Daddy at 15, two weeks later (to the day) my granddaddy died. One month later (to the date) my dog got run over. The ole trite adage, "When it rains, it pours," never felt more accurate. 

Lucky for me, my faith was strong at a young age. I relied on it. I deemed it necessary to even begin to make sense of it all. Not all teenagers have that faith. And NOT all teenagers should be expected to gracefully carry the heaviness of such a burden. As weird as this sounds and as much as I'd love to have my daddy here with me, his death provided me with an empathy and compassion and vision that can only be earned through the grief journey. The lessons and love overcoming his death provided me turned me into ME. The greatest gift given to me is the insight of being a vessel for the greater good. 

A few years after my daddy's death, I ended up counseling at a conference where a young boy found out days before that his father had pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is a death sentence. He came to that conference knowing within six months his father would die. This is the moment when a purpose greater than myself existed through me. I sat with this broken kid on the front steps of his cabin into the wee hours of the morning discussing how death would invade his life in the coming months and years. We laughed and cried and hugged away as much pain as we could. Before my daddy died, I wouldn't have had the tools needed for that moment. "For such a time as this…"

Little did I know, this encounter would be the first of many. Thus far within my life, my path has aligned with so many teenagers who have experienced the death of a parent or loved one. I've also stood in front of a classroom full of students who are hearing for the first time their classmate and friend has died. Oddly, I've felt prepared to handle each situation that I've been placed in with an intuitive spirit. 

Living through hell, whether it be the death of a loved one, alcoholism/addiction, job loss, cancer, infertility, depression, or any number of devastating crises, can equip you to be the light someone else needs in their darkest hour. As hard as it is to embrace and love your hurt, your healing will heal others. Trust and believe.

For those of you who haven't experienced loss or hurt or uncertainty, count yourself as lucky. Or maybe not because you haven't been forced to grow into a more compassionate and empathetic individual. 

For those of you who have experienced loss or hurt or uncertainty, use your experiences to better the world and the people around you. Those people need YOU and everything you have to offer.