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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Carpe Diem

Watching the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, I wept to hear Theoden utter the words 'No parent should have to bury their child' (and not because the text is a Jackson invention, nor because I cry easily at movies). It's so easy to imagine. With each of my three children, I remember at least one time where I leaned across the crib and placed my lips near theirs to be able to feel the gentlest warm wind of their breath, to ease my anxiety that for some reason in their sleep they had just stopped.

Talking to parents in the US and UK over the last week, I have found to my surprise that my experience is shared by every one I have asked (apart from my parents, who say I snored right from the start, saving them from this one fear). We can all put ourselves in that place - we have all shared the fear and we have all felt the relief as we breathed that gentle breath and had our hearts beat a little slower again. We've maybe felt foolish to fear the fear, scolded ourselves gently as we once again delight in the gift entrusted to us, thankfully for a little longer than we foolishly feared.

But what if the fear wasn't foolish?

Instead of starting the last return step of my Asia-Australasia tour today, I spent the afternoon in a country village in England at the funeral of a child, a close relative I'll not name here. Back last week, on Tuesday, he has a laughing, lively three-year-old as usual, like any other. On Wednesday, after complaining to his mother of tiredness, he went to bed. An hour later, his father lived out the nightmare that happens when you find the fear is not foolish. The boy had just stopped.

We have all cried all week. Today the sharing of the grief with the wider family (and in fact much of the village) was therapeutic. But unlike the pattern of the funeral of an older relative, where we bravely try to embrace the wake as the end of the affair, the wake here seemed just to be a continuation.

I can do all the theology - just last month I sat talking theology with the boy's mother over dinner and late into the night. That was the day the boy and his brother jumped excitedly over my wife and I when we arrived, somehow managing to simmer into bed after a frenetic half hour. That night as we talked we shared assurance and doubt, discussing points from experience and faith with vigour.

But right now all I can think is to hug my own children a little more, treasure their every day, seize each of my own days and know with John Donne that the committal of that small, pine coffin amidst flowers and fields in the sunshine today could - will - so easily be even closer to me.

posted at 11:59 PM (UK) | |