Last weekend Lori and I went to a MercyMe concert. She had planned it months ago when she saw where the popular Christian band would be performing in Louisville, near the date that marked the one-year anniversary since our son, Harrison, died suddenly from a fentanyl overdose, our casualty in the ongoing opioid crisis.
Just months before Harrison’s death, the three of us had seen the movie, “I Can Only Imagine,”about Bart Millard, the band MercyMe, and the story behind the song that became the best-selling Christian single of all time. That day, Harrison was full of smiles and laughter as he was beginning to reap the joy of living a clean and sober life. So, attending the concert had, in my mind, a double purpose: get away from the house where Harrison died a year ago, and enjoy the concert by this band which carried a good memory for us.
As we drove to Louisville, I thought of how, many years ago, when I was a child, our family had driven all the way to Mexico City because my mom didn’t want to spend that first Christmas without Dougie, my seven-year-old brother, who had died in a car accident a few months before.
And, on the way to the concert, Lori and I heard the sad news about the death of TobyMac’s (Toby McKeehan), son, Truett, of an apparent cardiac failure. TobyMac is an icon in the Christian music scene, so the tragedy colored the evening with something of a blue backdrop.
So, there we were at the concert—hoping it would in some way be an island of escape from last year’s pain—singing, clapping, sometimes laughing, sometimes tearing up. But the truth was so evident to me it may as well have been emblazoned on the big screen behind the band, like the words were for Kevin Costner at Fenway Park in Field of Dreams.
And the words for me were: “You can’t escape grief.”
There is no escaping the far-reaching grasp of our loved one’s hands. They grab us at the very core of our being, twisting our emotions until they give way to embarrassing physical contortions where we blubber and slobber all over ourselves, like little children who can’t seem to get themselves together but let it all hang out in the open for everyone to see.
No doubt, it’s good, yes, sometimes the right thing, a healthy choice, to remove yourself from the proximity of a loved one’s death.
But, please take note: it’s no escape.
That’s because, although memories of your loved ones may be attached to a certain place and time, your love for them isn’t. Love transcends the address of a morgue, or a marking on a highway, or a room upstairs, or a bed in the intensive care unit. Your loved one is wherever you are, because you carry their love with you. And grief is the price you pay for that love.
Concert tickets, or a hotel in a far-away city, or a seat in a darkened theatre, none of those are redeemable coupons for your love’s absence. You wouldn’t take it if it could. That’s because whether it’s a death-date anniversary, or a deceased one’s birthday, or any random day where you see a kid on a bicycle that reminds you of him, or someone standing in the airport like he used to, each are reminders that you can’t run and hide and come back like it never was. That’s because it is, and they are. And youwantthat, just like you want them, as much as it hurts.
You were never meant to cover that grief, as if you could shovel dirt over it and tap the dirt with your feet to set the death firmly in place forever. No, it’s always messy ground where loved ones die, with their graves closing and opening, again and again, just like they are in our lives: gone and here, present and absent, known and unknown, leaving us with a strange montage of emotions: sad while happy, grieving your loss while loving others, reclusive while generous, wanting to hide under the bed covers while desiring to reach out with opened arms to others.
Nora McInerny had it right when she said that although we don’t close our lives around our loved one’s death, neither do we “move on.” Nothing could be further from the truth. What we do is move on with them.
Walking away from the concert, I felt warm and whole and complete. A part of me was missing, yes, but, at one and the same time, that part was and is.
And I thought to myself: yes, and one fine day, someday, we will all be There.
And what will that be like?
Mercy me, I can only imagine.