Hard Lessons (That Helmet Part II)

There’s a deep dent in the helmet you wore when you died.  It’s the point of impact where your head hit the rock.  The medical examiner who accompanied us on our pilgrimage to the site, he showed us the rock you were lying next to. He surmised that that's what created the dent based on your body position. 

We won't ever know for sure, but it seems probable. So many questions without answers, still sit deep in my heart.  I look at the deepness of that hole in that helmet.  Depth, I contemplate with my heart. I feel it.  It represents how hard the impact of your fall must have been, hard enough to kill you.

I think of the deep impact that dent has had on me.  I feel sometimes, it’s hard enough to kill me too.  I also know it can’t. I won’t let it.  I choose to look at all the beauty of what true faith can fill in place of the deep hurt created by that dent. 

The hurt is there, that’s real for both of us. It's knowing that despite what’s lost, I have faith I will end up in a better place on the other side of this, just like you will too, if you choose it.  That’s not up to me.  Just what I choose is up to me, so I will be better for this. 

We didn’t just lose you.  We lost all we meant to one another and all the plans we made and the future we had. These are all gone, not just for me but for the boys too. The impact is deep, painful and hard. Yet, I know that somehow I will be better after all this, in spite of all this, in spite of you.  Maybe even because of you?

I see in that dent, the impact that caused your death. I see all I have to deal with because of the impact. The dent and its impact though, only started in motion the events of our lives.  I feel the impact of that dent emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.

As I manage and deal with the outcome of what that dent created for me, I imagine you are having to manage and deal with the outcome of what it created for you. That dent reminds me again of how quickly things can change. Being flung, like you were in just an instant, into a completely new life for both of us.

It reminds me how instantly life can completely change to something that you never thought you’d have, nor even contemplated as possible. It reminds me of the learning curve that comes with life experiences. And I get to learn all this while in my own pain and mourning. 

Learning doesn’t only come in the comfort and quiet moments of life. As I try to see and help heal the pain from this in my children, I learn.  The need of those 4 little boys to be supported in all those ways a mom and dad should and it’s me that does it all. At least it feels like it sometimes. Are you helping from over there!? 

Many times I must deal with and succor our children before I can support even my own pain and healing. Yet, even in all this, my faith tells me everything I need IS here.  Everything they need IS here, present already even without your physical presence.

In that adjustment required, I know my faith is growing stronger. I can finally just begin to see it. The impact of faith is far more powerful than the hard things that happen. It’s even more powerful than that deep hurt.

I know that I am loved, taken care of and known. The truth of that is what this faith I have shows me.  I can see through the pain now, not because it’s no longer pain, but because I am more able. Especially when I feel like I can’t see through the pain, faith fills in that gap.

Even so, it doesn’t negate the impact that took your life and how that impact, impacts my life so deeply. It doesn’t change how hard both are. You hit the rock, they believe, almost directly. That’s what took that chunk out of the helmet; and that hard impact, on such a solid surface, well that was what created bleeding on the brain. It was by itself fatal without all the other injuries. 

I pick up the helmet and run my fingers along the outside and over the dent.  I pause for just a moment as my finger runs along the jagged edges. I dip my finger into the gaping hole it left, that is the sign of death.  The irreversible evidence of what took the life from the wearer, the proof.

It was one of the many fatal injuries you sustained in that fall. The blessing is in the fact that your head hit that rock and not the softer dirt. Even though it killed you, it was also hard enough to take your consciousness immediately.  You didn’t suffer as you would have if the impact had not been so hard. 

It’s a hard blessing that you were immediately unconscious. It’s a hard blessing that when I remember it, I relive it and I am not unconscious for that, but in fact I am more conscious and sober and aware in each minds rehearsal.

Ahhh… I think I see that lesson too.  The hard things help us too, even when it doesn’t seem like it.  Even when it is so hard, it feels like it’s taking everything, not helping.  That’s the truth.  There is more than hurt in what hurts.  There is a blessing in it too. 

Faith - to see things that aren’t apparent but believe them and know their truth.  That hard rock, even though it hurt you and had its fatal impact on you, it also took all of your suffering away ironically, because of the fact that you didn't die on impact.

When I can see or even just believe that there is a greater blessing and great mercy in those literal and metaphorical hard things, then I have remembered my faith. Whether I see it now or not right now, it’s there.  Faith.  I remember the lesson the helmet teaches me every time I see it or touch it. 

I am living the truth of the lessons. I know them and that is creating beauty in this hard part of what life is.  It is in how precious this present moment is and how there is life all around me.  The evidence of that is expressed in the joy that happens when I experience the light of the life I’m in. I’m getting there.