Article: Swing Along Sweet Hope

This moving essay was written and delivered by Chris at her church – Feb. 4, 2007

In 2001 I was flying high. I had come through divorce and 10 years of single parenting, and I had recently remarried. I felt sure that the difficult and unwanted divorce was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, and I had survived it. I had earned a Master’s in nonprofit management as my divorce therapy, and had just begun my own business consulting to nonprofits. My new husband is Jewish, and I was basking in a rather cocky midlife state, feeling worldly and progressive in my embrace of an interfaith approach to my personal spirituality. I had been a member of Forest Hill Church since 1978, but I wrote John Lentz a letter, telling him that I was on this adventure, and that I might or might not come back to Forest Hill someday. Life was good.

And then, in the early morning hours of Christmas of 2002, my 24-year-old son, Tim, used a gun and took his own life.

Nothing in the world could have prepared us for this event. At the time I was concerned about his lack of direction, but he was working, and had many friends and interests, and I felt it was a stage of youthful indecision. He was a wonderful, creative, sensitive, talented young man. Since he was a child he had loved nature and animals, and we had every normal and unusual pet in our household imaginable, including baby raccoons he had rescued, a de-scented skunk, and a boa constrictor that, when it became ill, he learned how treat with injections. Once he and a friend made a 24-hour road trip down to the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia to release his pet baby alligator. He was insanely funny, and intuitive and wise beyond his years, often counseling and providing comfort to others. He was a loyal, loving and steadfast friend, and he deeply loved our large, lively extended family (here today). He wrote incredible poetry that was beautifully descriptive, starkly honest, and captivating in its depth and understanding of life. The title of this sermon, ”Swing Along Sweet Hope”, is a line from one of Tim’s poems.

I can look back now and say that I think Tim was affected by depression and alcohol. When I later read some of his poems that I hadn’t seen before he died, I found a lot of loneliness and despair. But he was a master of hiding whatever was going on so deeply in his soul, perhaps because he didn’t want to worry or hurt anyone, or, more likely, he himself didn’t understand. Tim and his brother Matt and sister Liz were extraordinarily close, and the four of us were very close knit as well. But at the time none of us saw anything to indicate what Tim was really thinking. In what you often hear about people who take their lives, in the days before Christmas he spent what seemed like normal, happy times with each of us and the larger family — in essence saying good bye.

On that Christmas day we were all gathered in Bainbridge, in a house on 90 acres on the Chagrin River that my grandfather built when my mother and her sister were teenagers. We waited for Tim, calling him often, wondering where he could be. When we got word that he had died, we all left there and came back to my house in Cleveland Heights , where we then found out that he had taken his own life. Quickly word spread among our friends and relatives, and the house was soon filled for three days with people who just needed to be with each other. We called John, who left his Christmas and came over immediately to offer consolation and advice about what the next steps might be. We planned a service. John spoke with grace and compassion. Somehow Matt and Liz and their cousins and friends spoke eloquently through their tears. All too soon, we were left to wonder how to go on.

I don’t remember much about the days, weeks, even months that followed. Somehow I showed up where I was supposed to, and did what I was supposed to do, but it was not my own conscious effort. I do remember saying, on the day he died, that I couldn’t let this ruin my life. I had heard once that it’s impossible to think two thoughts at the same time. So, during the agonizing, sleepless nights, I said the Lord’s Prayer and the Serenity Prayer over and over and over again. They were the only things I knew by heart that made sense, and saying them kept me from replaying the horror in my head. Because I am a fixer by nature, I did things I thought could make it better – writing endlessly, crying unabashadly, seeing a therapist, exercising like crazy, reading books by people who had experienced this, and talking to family and friends who were as devastated and confused as I was. Getting through was often literally one hour at a time. But somehow I knew that I had to do all these things to be strong for Matt and Liz , and I had to get started right away

And I prayed. I prayed for strength. I asked God to literally hold me up, because I could not do it alone. I asked God to open my eyes and ears so that I could see and hear what to do, and then give me the strength to do it. I told God I knew this would take a very long time, and that there would be times I wouldn’t want to go on, and at those times I would need more help than ever. And when those times came I started my prayers all over again.

Within weeks Tim came to me in two dreams. In one he was sitting on a simple wooden chair, suspended in a blue sky. I was kneeling at his feet, and hundreds of family members and friends were behind the chair, reaching their hands out to him. He was sobbing, telling me he was so sorry, that he didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I was saying “Of course I forgive you, of course I understand.” In the second dream we were in an indistinguishable room, surrounded by lots of people. I asked him if it was OK, where he was. He said “Yeah, I don’t have to be what I’m not.” So I asked God to take care of Tim, because I at least felt sure he was in a good place, free to be who he really was. You see, the irony of what Tim did is that he never, ever would have wanted to hurt any of us.

I used to believe there’s a plan, and a planner. I used to believe that everything happens for a reason. But I don’t anymore. I can’t believe that God is responsible for happiness and joy for some, because then what do you say about the pain that happens to others? What I have come to think is that there are random miracles and random tragedies, and our job is to learn to live with the mystery, the in-between, the unanswerable – and that’s where God comes in.

The strength I prayed for came, and it came to me through people, so many people. They were there to hold me up, to feed me and care for me, to recommend a wonderful therapist, to be that therapist, to talk to me, to cry with me, to encourage me, to take me in at a support group, to let me pour out my heart in emails, to listen to me curse God and Tim, to help me memorialize him, and to give me reason to go on. I can say that almost every need I had was tended to by someone who most often didn’t even know they were doing it — a word, a hug, a prayer, a look, a card, a ride, a plant, a suggestion, a story, a casserole, a walk, a song – I was amazed at how it seemed that time after time I prayed for strength or insight, and they appeared through someone’s gracious, unknowing gift. And it has been a long time, and those wonderful people are still with me.

So just what do I believe now? I believe that God is as close and small or as large and vast as we need Him to be. He’s in the details, and he’s in the big picture. I cursed him and Tim for Tim’s death, and He backed off and let me be angry. I couldn’t stay angry at either one for long. I think God is the best that’s in me, encouraging me to do what’s right and good, and showing me the resources to do it. I believe He is my partner, and that when we listen and talk to each other we make amazing things happen. We need each other – together we make better anything that either of us could do alone.

I couldn’t look at Tim’s pictures for a year. Now I can. I was obsessed with “why?” for a long time. I’ve let that go. It took almost three years for me to feel close to Tim, to fully allow him back into my heart. That Christmas Day we waited to hear about him, a huge Great Blue Heron lifted up from the river bank and flew off to the east. Tim had written about the herons, the river, the frogs, cardinals, hawks and other parts of nature that he loved so much. At that place in Bainbridge we carved a heron into a live cherry tree. He’s facing the river, standing tall and regal on his long, skinny legs, just like Tim — quietly observing everything, ready to lift his massive protective wings to shelter us. Now Tim is with me everywhere, all the time – in the cardinals at my feeder, in the brightness of the moon, in pennies I find on the sidewalk, in a song that sings of him, in a tender, funny memory, in my vision of seeing him when I die. And his ashes have traveled with us everywhere – they’re next to a hippo pool on the plains of Africa, in the Indian Ocean in Southeast Asia, off the edge of a cliff in Haiti , on the shores of Homer, Alaska , — and they’re even lost in a bag in the Miami airport. I can finally say that he is with me everywhere, everyday, all the time. I didn’t get to this point by myself.

I’m still not sure what to do with Christmas. And it’s hard when someone asks me how many children I have. I often think I see Tim in a crowd or walking along the sidewalk. But I know that while we’ve had some rough times, Matt, Liz and I are doing well. They say losing a child changes you on a cellular level. It’s true. I like the phrase that a broken heart is a heart made bigger, because that’s how I feel. God has understood, and been very patient with me. I believe now that my job is to live fully, and to help others do the same. I believe that what sustains me is the community of God — the wonderful people in my life who were, and still are, there for me, whether we are celebrating, mourning, or just being. That community is bigger than any pain, larger than any loss. It is the essence of God, and God is the essence of it. God is a flow of living relationships, a family that we can enter, feel, taste, experience, and engage. But sometimes in life there are no words, and there are no answers. There’s still no acceptable reason to me why Tim died, and I don’t believe it was part of a plan. But I do believe we are on this earth to witness each other’s journey, to help each other live with the mystery. And we do that together, lovingly embraced in the community of God. Amen

Christine E. Henry February 4, 2007

February 4, 2007 Linda