Mercy. Please.

First of all, I think it is fair to say, that this isn’t my story. I had a brief intersection with this story for less than thirty minutes, but my heart gravitates towards it like a compass needle to north. I can’t change the direction; so I sit with this and hope to find some sort of peace were there is none right now.

I was walking out of my office (if you call it that. It is really a corner that houses my stuff) and the security guard called for me. I thought surely that was a mistake. What could she possibly want with me, but she was very clear, “Mrs. Addink, I need you. I need your help.” I followed her into the vacuous stairwell with dusty light shining joylessly on faded paint. I matched her steps and she said, “I have a kid in my office, and he just got word that his baby girl died.” I stopped. There must be some mistake. I stopped on the stairs. Trying to deconstruct the sentence to come up with some other meaning. Any other meaning. I put my hand on my throat, “God. No.” I wanted to turn and run. I can’t go in and talk to this kid. Where is the counselor? Not me.

But I continued to follow her, and I saw the open door. With no volition, I walked into the dark office. And I saw two young men. One leaning on the chair, lovingly rubbing his friend’s back and another crumbled by the weight of pain. And although I recognized the young man who sat with the receiver to his ear, and hand over his eyes, I felt so strange and intrusive. He didn’t want ME there. I could not do anything.

“Nate, Mrs. Addink is going to sit with you. You can trust her. She is awesome. Everything will be ok,” and Marshall left her office, leaving me with these two young men, a stranger in the most intimate moment of grief.

I am not awesome. And he wasn’t going to trust me. And nothing was ok in his life. Nothing would be for a long time. My eyes narrowed at the words, wishing there was some way that I could snatch them from the air and stuff them in my pocket where they could not breath.

I pulled up a chair. I awkwardly but firmly put my hand on his arm. He did not tense. He allowed it. He hung up the phone. And I stumbled to introduce myself. “Hey, Nate. I think I met you in the hall once, and asked you to go to class.” Silence. His eyes shifted to acknowledge me and then slid away. They were red. A sharp contrast to his skin. “What happened?” Silence. A few quiet tears.

“Nate, I don’t know how you feel. But I remember a day that I was told my daughter would die. I remember how I felt. I was angry.”

Silence.

“I bet you want to punch a fucking wall. I did.” And he looked at me, and nodded yes.

Time is so easily manipulated by memory. I remember standing in the hallway at Children’s Mercy, as they rushed us to the Parent Room. The chaplain was there. No one would make eye contact with us. No one could answer any of our questions about Noelle’s life without their voices being thin and tight with tension. I was helpless. I was lost. I was grieving. They believed she would die. You can’t pull that memory from your body like tumor. It grew too deeply in your brain; there is no way to cut it out.

“How old was your baby?” Long silence.

“Three.”

“Years?”

“Months.”

I prayed, “God, get me out of this. I can’t do this. I am the wrong person. I am doing this all wrong.”

No divine intervention.

“Nate, how do you feel? Do you feel anything?”

“Anger?” Nod.

“Shock.” Nod.

“Nate….” I was grasping for the right thing to say. I felt like I had to say the right thing. “Nate. You are going to be angry. And that is ok. You will be angry at yourself, at God, at her mom…. And you won’t know what to do with all that anger. You will be sad. And you will ask all sorts of questions that are not fair to ask because there are no answers to those questions. You have to allow yourself to feel these things. You have to live this out without self destructing because the reality is, tomorrow you are going to wake up and your heart will be beating even if you don’t want it to.”

He was looking at me. It was not the right thing to say, but it was honest.

“Also, I hated it when people told me that everything would be ok. So, it won’t feel ok for a long time. But, you will breath again without hurting. And…” great hesitation. “Nate, I wanted to punch people in the stomach when they told me they were praying for me. Not because I didn’t believe them, but I was angry with God. And I didn’t want to hear it. But I know that was the greatest gift they could give me. So, I am going to say this anyway. You look pretty strong and my stomach isn’t in the best shape, so don’t hit me, ok? I am going to pray for you. Because God is near even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

His mouth turned up for a moment in almost a smile.

But there was no changing today. His daughter had died. He would have to deal with that as a parent. He would have to grieve. He had, when I asked him, who he could trust, to walk through this with him, been able to identify only two people. Two people in his entire existence that he could trust like that. Two. I felt so helpless. It all felt so wrong. I wanted to grab God by the collar, and say, “Really?” But God is too big for my hands and my understanding.

I watched these boys… these men… one a grieving father of eighteen walk down the hallway and I felt so small. And I cried silently, “God! Mercy!” Mercy. Mercy on us all. Mercy on Nate. Mercy on tomorrow and the next one hundred tomorrows. Mercy on his life. On this young mother’s life. Be present. Be near. And God, don’t be silent.

Tonight, it is snowing. Not enough to cover everything. Not enough to make everything beautiful and new. Just enough to thinly cover what we know. Maybe it is that way with peace right now. And tonight, Noelle is snoring in her bed. I know because I have checked on her twice already. I stood in the darkness of her room, and thanked God for life, and snow, and mercy. I also prayed for Nate. Again.