On these days surrounding the second Sunday of Advent, I wear a chain around my neck. The chain holds the wedding band that used to be worn by my first husband, Layton. He wore it from the day we were married in the sweet summer of 1999, until the 8th of December, a year and a half later, when a nurse delivered it to me in a denture container as I sat in the waiting room of Spectrum Butterworth hospital. That morning, on his way from Grand Rapids to Lansing to teach music and coach basketball at the Christian school, he had been in a car accident. Three and a half days later, just before midnight on the 11th of December, he died.
Every year I honour his memory by wearing this ring around my neck. I have a new chain this year that I particularly like because it is built with two interlocking little rings. To me, these little rings represent my marriage to Tim – my beloved husband of sixteen years. I love Tim deeply. And the chain of my memory holds the truth of my time married to Layton. Love and loss are built into and carried by the chains of our lives.
I carry another memory on the days surrounding the second Sunday of Advent. On the sixth anniversary of Layton’s death, I found myself in the same hospital, wearing Layton’s ring around my neck and holding Tim’s and my three month old daughter.
This picture was taken as Samara was waking up from being anesthetized for a CT scan and minutes before Tim and I received the news that our only child had neuroblastoma.
The chain of Samara’s life is built with the truth that God healed her. Within months of her diagnosis, her cancer was gone. On the first anniversary of her diagnosis (which was also the seventh anniversary of Layton’s death), I wrote a poem. It felt like it came out of me in one breath. This poem is a chain that holds two memories – linked by love and loss and by the date they share.
The love of my heart.
The fruit of my womb.
On the same long advent day strung apart by years
you both lay in the same building.
Whirring machines breathing your breath and beating your heart –
A whirring machine looking inside you
As you slept an unnatural sleep.
“He’s going.”
“She has cancer.”
I’ll never forget what you felt like in my arms that day.
How warm you were.
How heavy you were.
How still you were.
How light you were.
I lost you that day.
I thought I was losing you that day.
I let you go…
Into the Father’s keeping.
And now you dance and have our being in a place or time or dimension
so far away, or perhaps so close?
Perhaps as close as you – who dance in winter boots
and holiday dress by the Christmas tree.
A saint above.
A saint below.
You are healed.
O Child of God, I miss you.
And I will see you someday…
O Child of God, I miss you.
And I will see you this afternoon, after work.
Your mothers’ arms long to hold you
on this long advent day.
I’ll never forget what you felt like in my arms that day.
How warm you were.
How heavy you were.
How still you were.
How light you were.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Each of our life chains holds love and loss. Some of the love and loss feels built in; some of it feels like things we carry. In this advent season, may we steward and honour both the love and the loss as we long for restoration of all things.
