Lamentation I. (January 8, 2020)
The hymn, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal have mercy on us,” came out of my lips today, when I got in my car leaving work. I sang in the same tone that our priest sang as we walked Elliot’s coffin to his grave. While driving, I began to weep. I was a mile from the cemetery, and so I stopped there. The bare ground was frozen and hard beneath his temporary marker. The gifts his sister had bought him for Christmas were frozen to the soil. Again, I burst into tears.
Then anger overwhelmed me, and I yelled at him, “It is not fair that you hurt us all so badly, that you caused wounds that will never go away.”
And then, a wind chime from up the hill interrupted my rage. The chime lasted for just a second. Just long enough. It was as if he cried, “Dad, I’m sorry.” The chimes made me remember Elliot’s pain, how great it must have been that he was unable to think about anything else but escaping.
In the last two months and 28 days, I have cried out to God many times, “Why couldn’t you let me carry his pain, he was just a boy. I could have handled it.” I am carrying some of it now. I carry it every day. I hope to live a long life and carry the pain to my grave which is right next to his. Perhaps in the end that will draw the two of us together.
