Angel's Wings

There’s a 12 year old girl on the other side of the world waiting for God to take her home.

I’ve never met her- or her mother for that matter- but my heart is breaking for them both.

As a parent, you never expect to outlive your children. It’s just not the way it’s supposed to be.

And as a mother, you simply never expect there to come a time when your child decides it’s time to stop fighting, and asks you let her go.

But as I write this, that’s exactly what’s happening in a home and a hospital at the opposite end of the earth to where I sit.

You know, I can feel their sorrow from here.

Miss M is 12. She has been in pain her entire life. She was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta and Cerebral Palsy. She also has Juvenile Arthritis (a disease we know only too well and the reason I ‘know’ this family) along with the Uveitis that can come with it. Miss M has also suffered Primary Immune Deficiency and Disseminated Histoplasmosis, Diabetes and Behçet's Disease. Plus other things too horrible to imagine.

If there was a lottery for drawing diseases, this little girl had the winning ticket.

She has had too many broken bones and countless operations, tried more medications than most of us combined, and spent too much time at her home away from home- the children’s hospital.

Now she wants to go to her ultimate home in Heaven.

Not many adults I know could take what this young lady has, and make the decision she has.

Practically no one could do it with the same grace and maturity.

And it is a decision I would wish for no child to have to make, nor for any parent to have to accept.

But after too many days of terrible pain, Miss M has asked the doctors to stop her treatment, and let her go.

So now we are taking what time we have to say goodbye to an angel, and wish her well as she finally gets her wings.

It’s often said that funerals are for the living. The departed don’t know what kind of fuss is being made about them, it’s more relief for the grief for the ones who are left behind.

It’s also been said that sometimes the ones we love the most feel they need permission to leave us, they feel they are being selfish by wanting to be free of the pain and find some promised peace.

I know when my much-loved Nana was close to her time (after a very-well lived nearly 94 years, mind you) and when our beloved Aunts were battling cancer, the family felt we needed to say it was ok for them to stop fighting; while we would certainly be sad to see them go, it was worse to see them suffer. Oddly enough (or perhaps not, depending on what you believe) once we said our goodbyes and thanked them for being part of our lives, each one went quickly and peacefully. Still cried our eyes out at the funerals, but our hearts weren’t quite so heavy knowing that they didn’t hurt any more.

And 10 years after a favourite cousin was killed, I know another Aunt still suffers for having to bury her only son, much too young at 27. I sure miss Mick still.

I can only guess how the family feels of this brave little girl who has asked to be set free.

So now we wait for word that another little angel has taken flight, and instead try to imagine how happy she will be to finally be free from the pain that has plagued her earthly existence. To think of her soaring high and happy as she watches over her family while she waits for them to join her.

In the meantime, I am hugging my kids a little tighter, and a whole lot more often than is usually possible in the day-to-day scheme of things. And I’m making the time to pause what I’m doing whenever they want me, no matter how important all that other stuff can seem.

Heaven forbid I ever have to say goodbye to them.

Jx
©2010

For Our Grandparents

There he is, my dusty soldier,
I can but see him in the gloam;
he's travelled far and witnessed plenty,
now he wants to make it home.

He was but sixteen when they signed him
(he wrote eighteen on the page)
they didn't ask- they needed numbers-
so didn't question 'bout his age.

They fit him out with guns and khakis,
they hacked away his lovely hair,
they sent him far across the water,
where he went, they didn't care.

He made mates and stole thru' jungles,
he saw bombs and bullets too.
Then the dying and the bloodshed
began to chill his soul right through.

He missed friendships and his family,
he wanted kids to call his own,
he wondered if he'd ever see them,
if again he'd make it home.

Spent his birthday in the trenches,
bully beef, and half a cig.
And with firing in the distance
he was told to fight, or dig.

As for we who sit here waiting,
not a letter, not a sign,
no telegram- for that we're thankful,
at least our boy's still got some time.

So while we wait, both sides of water,
for the end, or truce at least,
we prize the past and hope for futures,
him back home to live in peace.


Blasted bodies in the trenches,
Sunken ships upon the reef,
Just one thing will ease the suffering-
Stop the wars, and end the grief.


Lest we forget...


Jx
©1995