Rare Bird, her son died!

It was a September hurricane that filled the ditches beside the sidewalk, and in the still warm rain the day after the worst, we splashed in the muddy water despite warnings not to take our shoes off.  It was the normal thing to do, and kids, still innocent of all the possibilities that dance around the edges of parental warnings are determined to get as close to danger as they can, not even recognizing it is danger.

Something like that happened to Jack Donaldson, twelve- year- old son of Anna.  It was something like that because no one ever knew exactly what happened, only that he was swept away in a rush of water during a late summer and windless but heavy rain storm.  A still warm day, five children play in the rain, only four of them coming home.  Sometime later Jack’s body is found in a culvert, and it would be cliché to say, and the nightmare began, but it is true.

The Donaldsons were the perfect family, the kind we dream about having when we are in the dreaming stage: one son, one daughter, father and mother in love, Christian school and church-going model family doing it all right.  And we wonder how a good God could snatch a sweet boy from his good family, but death does, and somehow that family has to find enough breath and faith to live all the days that follow.

Anna documents the journey honestly, using the kind of language only grief permits, and all the words and stages that you have read about in textbooks come alive as you watch her and her family try to come to terms with the horror visited on them.

Listen to Anna as she tells you that “Grief is my work right now, and I’m afraid to skirt it or run away from it, because I surely don’t want to be stuck in this place forever.  Everything I’ve heard tells me that if I try to stuff it down, deny it, or rush through it, I’m just going to have to deal with it later and then it will be worse.” (103) And later “Around this same time, I hear the terms collateral damage and secondary losses in some of the grief books I read and realize they give a name to the wider gulf between my friends and me as well as the many other losses we discover after losing Jack.” (178)

For several years, my husband and I led a grief recovery group in our church, and watched God heal broken people.  Oh, the pain never goes all away, but over time the wounds can heal, especially when the one grieving finds people who will listen without judgment, who understand in some small way. 

Near the end of the book Anna tells of a group of women she met with monthly, a club she never wanted to, they never wanted to, belong to, of women who lost a child.  She writes it this way, “I’m not sure how sharing the broken, hurting pieces of our lives helps us, but it does. Rather than wallowing in despair, this group of scrappy women cheers each other on, determined to find a way to live the lives we have now.  And in sharing our loss we somehow gain.  That is the mystery of a community of grievers.” (186)

So who should read this book – we all should.  Donaldson shows a path through to those who might face this pain one day.  However, she also shows the rest of us what happens behind closed doors and equips us to better come alongside and offer informed support.  Too often, well-meaning people say “Just give me a call, if there’s anything I can do,” but the sufferer does not even have the energy to lift up the phone if they could identify something they need.  And well-meaning people, too often, give the grieving a few weeks, before expecting things to be “back the way they were.”  And they ever really will be.

I want to say, “Suck it up and read the book,” because I know some people avoid anything that might hurt, and I know that sounds rather harsh and uncouth, but it’s not a bad idea.  And then talk about what you have learned with other people…and Jack’s death and Anna’s pain might in some small way be redeemed.