Exactly two years ago I stood in a church in Virginia before the casket of a seven-year-old boy. He was a boy who had been so full of vim and vigor last I'd seen him. A boy who, every time he spoke, made me smile. One whose violin ability progressed so quickly and so well, that I thought, "If any of my students ever become virtuosos, he will be one." And yet, there I was, that sunny day in Virginia, standing before his casket.
I didn't dare approach too closely. I didn't want to see him lying there, cold, still, empty. I wanted to remember him as I'd last seen him, the laugh sparkling in his luminous eyes, dimples on his cheeks, romping with his brothers in the sunny, dew-speckled grass.
When I first entered the church, a few minutes earlier, a swarm of unfamiliar faces buzzing about me, the first thing I encountered was the engulfing hug of his father who was almost as surprised to see me as I was to be there. I'd learned of my former student's passing only the day before and decided immediately that is would be worth the two hour drive to his memorial service the next day. I cancelled all my lessons that day--they understood--and drove the whole way, trying not to think of anything at all.
All I knew was that a darling little boy who showed tremendous promise on the violin, whom I'd seen less than four months ago, just before his family moved up to Virginia, was now dead. What was I to think? I'd encountered death before, but never before had it stung me so close to my heart.
I remember with razor edge clarity the exact circumstances I was in when I opened the email from one of Jacob's Aunts telling me of his passing. I still remember the exact angle of the sunlight slanting through the coffee shop window onto the table at which I sat. I remember clammy fuzzy feeling I felt as I read the email for the fourth time, still not fully comprehending what it said.
Jacob, dead?
Right then and there, I pulled out my notebook, the one which I reserve for some of my deepest musings, and wrote what may have been one of my worst poems. I had to. It was the only way I could immediately process the information. How ought I to handle a person leaving his body behind, going to another world where I cannot follow until God wills?
How can I gracefully drain the cup of grieving when it is passed to me, unexpectedly, unrequested?
That mirage had already been smashed more than once, but this served a more severe stroke.
I could say with Longfellow in truth:
What hope do we have in this life if even seven-year-old boys with dancing eyes lie in the earth? Almost as if God knew, I wrote a sequel to Longfellow's verse just three months earlier for a poetry challenge:
This is our only comfort in life and, yes, even in death, that we are not our own, that we belong, body and soul to Christ who has bought us from the consequences of our sin, from the evil under which creation daily groans. This is why in baptism we are submerged to represent the death in which we formerly lived before being raised with Christ to walk with Him in newness of life. "For you were dead in your trespasses and sins," Paul says.
Dead indeed.
Only in Christ are the dead raised.
Only in Christ can I now say, "Jacob is alive!"
And one day when I, too, shall crumble, and that which is left of Christianna Hellwig is committed to the grave, "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," it will be with the expectation that I, too, even though I died, yet live.
With this thought I want to close. For curiosity's sake I'll share the poem I wrote the day I learned of " 'lil Jacob's" passing, along with the song I sang the next day at the memorial service as requested by his family. A song I learned and performed long before I knew I'd need it. (Be gracious with me, friends, this was recorded almost five years ago.)
I titled this poem, as it should always be: To JacobI know the goodbye was only temporary for those of us who trust in Christ for our covering, as I know for a fact that Jacob did. It was a hard goodbye, but my Saviour did grant me peace, and may He do so for all of us as we walk through our own valleys of the shadow of death.
"For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.
Yours in life and death,
~ Christianna
P.S. The pictures were taken by my thirteen-year-old brother in and around Rolesville park during our brief snow of the season. He's rather good, isn't he?
1 comments:
Sorry for your loss! I am sure your singing of our Father’s peace was a balm to comfort the family and a witness at the funeral.
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