Broken Wings
by Chris Erickson

I had just returned from a three-day snowmobile trip in Wyoming's Sawtooth range with my brother, Fr. Dave. I call them "retreats"-health, vigor, beauty, outdoors, time to reflect. My wife Jody and my seven children greeted me with their usual fanfare. My world was bursting with life! But that would soon change. The events that followed over the next seven months could make a sequel to the Book of Job.

It began in February with my dear friend Lionnel. He was in ICU at the local hospital. I arrived at his beside to see him arrayed in tubes and wires, his body worn from a life permeated with multiple illnesses. A tube extending through his throat to his lungs prevented him from speaking. I asked if he wanted pain medication, and he nodded emphatically, yes! The nurse gave him medicine and he soon fell asleep. That was the last time Lionnel and I "talked" to each other. He would be unconscious for the next three days until, at 4:00 a.m. Sunday morning, I received a call from the nurse that he had died.

I arrived alone at his bedside. His body was almost hot, remnants of a high fever the night before. Slowly he cooled to a deathly chill. As I was leaving the room I turned back for one last "So long, 'ol friend." Breaching the darkness were the sun's first morning rays peeking in the window, resting on Lionnel's face. I smiled momentarily. But I knew those warm rays wouldn't bring warmth back to his body-and that was reason for me to hurt.

Three months later I had put down my red ink after a routine day of editing Lay Witness, and drove home. I usually commute to work in our Geo Metro and leave the 12-passenger van for Jody to ferry the kids around town. On this particular day, however, it would be different. I took the van and left the Metro for Jody.

I arrived home to see my 12-year-old son sharpening his basketball skills in the driveway. Jody was preparing dinner. The baby was asleep. The other five kids were playing at the neighbor's-so we thought. It was hot, so I took an after-work shower. When Jody called the kids home for dinner, they all came running, except one. Searching for our two-year-old boy, Raphael, my eldest son found him "asleep in the car." Raphael had climbed into our Metro. He knew how to get in, he just didn't know how to get out. He was supposed to be at our neighbor's. It was the most tragic breakdown of communication a mother and her friend could endure, a scorching forever etched on their hearts!

I had just stepped out of the shower, and the words from my son will ceaselessly ring in my ears: "Daddy! Daddy! Something's wrong with Raphey! Call 911! Something's wrong with Raphey!" I dashed to the living room to see Jody anxiously administering CPR to our little toddler. The kids were crying. Jody shouted, "Call 911! Oh, my God. Call 911!" Raphael's big blue eyes were wide open. His pasty complexion sickened me to the core.

His natural color would return only after my neighbor's unrelenting effort to bring life back to our boy. Still, there was no pulse. The paramedics arrived soon after. For 45 minutes the doctors in the emergency room worked on Raphael. It didn't look good. Sitting in a private waiting room I prayed, "Lord, not my little boy. He hasn't even had a chance to live yet! My Father, 'let this cup pass from me.'" I would have much preferred to lay down my own life than to watch my son die. Jody and the children were at home fervently praying for a miracle-the intentions of this Rosary eclipsed any other! They prayed and waited for my phone call.

At last, the doctor entered the waiting room. "What happened?" he asked empathetically. "He climbed into our car," I answered. "Did you get a pulse?" But the doctor's silence and a disheartened nod from side to side meant that all the prayers in the world wouldn't change this now. It was all so sudden, utterly unexpected, and inexpressibly piercing!

Many thoughts ran through my mind, one in particular: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mt. 27:46). I had to give Jody the unspeakable news. I called home and quietly said, "He didn't make it." "He didn't make it?" she asked softly in disbelief. "He didn't make it," I replied even more quietly. "You need to come to the hospital with the children."

My neighbor and I walked down a hallway to a room. Behind the curtain Raphael's body lay motionless, his big blue eyes still wide open. Very dear friends entered the room one by one. Jody and the children arrived. Numb and weeping at the loss of this little life, Jody caressed Raphael and held him close to her. And "a sword will pierce through your own soul also!" (Lk. 2:35). She would forever know the knife-like edge of such a piercing.

Raphael's body was cooling from heat exhaustion. Again, as with Lionnel three months earlier, I was nose to nose with death in all its ugly detail.

When it was time to leave, a "So long, 'ol friend" wouldn't do. It was too unnatural-a father shouldn't bury his son! But Raphael was dead, and this was one fix the little guy got into from which Dad couldn't get him out.

The next morning we endured a highly charged investigation by the prosecuting attorney's office and social services, and a media hungry for "a story." The days that followed were strenuous. The nights were daunting. What possibly could heal these broken wings?

Family, many friends, and a wonderful community in prayer lifted us "on eagles wings." Even so, they couldn't bring back our little boy. We would begin to heal in our own way. Jody looked to friends and books to alleviate some of her torment. I sought solitude. There I found God's grace brimming with peace and courage. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9). And was I weak-physically, emotionally, and mentally drained.

From reflective moments in quiet prayer and a lot of thinking in the great outdoors, I would try to comfort an aching, wounded family. "He who knoweth how to suffer will enjoy much peace. Such a one is a conqueror of himself and lord of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of heaven" (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ).

"Raphael" means "medicine of God" or "remedy of God." The Father's medicine can, indeed, be bittersweet. Christ knew that from the agony of the Cross. Yet He had the strength and courage to persevere to the end. Jesus always had His Father's "eternal perspective." I've come to understand that nothing in life, no matter how hard the blows or how long the road, can rob me of my peace or steal me of my courage when that "eternal perspective" remains my lens, too.

Suffering from the death of my child, I saw before me a life-long ordeal, a perpetual wound that wouldn't heal and a bottomless void that wouldn't fill until I embraced my lost boy in heaven. I yearned for that future embrace! But it seemed so far off, some hidden, unapproachable outpost beyond the stars. Jody was drawn the other way-to the past. Time relentlessly presses on, and with each passing day she feared that Raphael and her memories of Raphael would fade into a distant past. Suffering here seemed almost endless any way we looked at it.

But that's not God's perspective, and therefore it couldn't be mine. I declared war on my mind, pressing it to reflect on our time here from God's perspective. It wasn't easy. My thoughts preferred to run wildly untamed. So I fixed them to the rack and lashed them with the truth. I looked to people like Nero and Attilla the Hun and Adolf Hitler and Slobodan Milosevic, even Osama bin Laden, who reminded me just how fast their power comes and goes. On the horizontal timeline of human existence, they were but a blip on the radar screen of creation. And far less on the infinite horizon that knows not beginning nor end. For all "our years come to an end like a sigh. The years of our life . . . are soon gone, and we fly away" (Ps. 90: 9-11). Heaven really is close by-uncomfortably close for many of us.

I also had another paradigm shift, but this was one of proximity. An almost unbearable cross came home to roost! This wasn't child's play anymore, this was more than reeling from a friend's insult or enduring a financial crunch. This was war! It lanced my heart and it cut deep. But in the end it steeled my resolve, in the same way the attack on the World Trade Center buttressed the resolve of a nation. No longer would I ponder the sting of acute suffering from the comfort of an armchair and explain its meaning in theological essays. I knew it through a torrent of tears.

The Holy Father reminds us that Christ didn't give abstract answers about the meaning of suffering. Christ said: "Follow me!" "If any man would come after me, let him . . . take up his cross daily" (Luke 9:23). The more I'm afflicted, the more my spirit is strengthened by God's inward grace. A morbid view? Are we merely walking shadows fading in graveyard sunsets? Only if we sever our suffering from Redemption-because only there is love stronger than death. It would lead St. Thérèse of Lisieux to admonish us to pray for an increase in faith so that we might welcome our cross for the treasure it was. And that's God's perspective, too.

I also looked to another truth. If given a choice, would Raphael want to return to the comfort of his mother's arms? Our Lord says, "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Mt. 25:34). Raphael was before the age of reason. In other words, he had no actual sin and therefore went straight to paradise. Unless heaven turns out to be a big disappointment, Raphael's present happiness should give rise to my joy-if I truly love him. He delights in company with the communion of saints in his Father's house. I can focus on my loss or his gain. Grieving for a time is good. Letting it denigrate to self-pity is unwise. My focus is obstinately upon Raphael's joy.

In August, three months after Raphael's death, my Mom suffered a massive "brain bleed" that left her in a coma for five weeks. She died on September 15, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

The loss of Lionnel, Raphael, and Mom in a span of seven months has disciplined me in love, steeped me in hope, and refined me in faith. "Behold, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction" (Is. 48:10).

Lord, you have done more than that. You have mended these broken wings.

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