KORONER’s KORNER: MOVING OUT

I remember when my sons were growing up.  I was gone so much of the time I missed a great part of their lives.  I do remember when they reached eighteen and either went to college or enlisted in the military.  When my first son moved out to college, it was a chance for the youngest to have his own room so the redecoration to suit him did not bother me that much.  I still had a boy in a room and there was still activity in the house.

Fast forward several years and now the daughter is already moved out and going to school when the youngest is deciding to enlist in the Navy.  I don’t remember exactly when I said anything or to whom (I could have just unloaded the task to his mother), but at some point, I said that he was grown up now and needed to get all his stuff out of the bedroom so we could use it for something else. 

I will never forget when I walked into that room and noticed the now-bare walls with no posters, no toys on the shelves, no clothing lying around to be picked up.  I was so sad.  It was so sad that tears now come to my eyes while I write this.  The room was empty and I felt empty.  I no longer had a child living in the house with us.  I wanted them to grow up but I had not realized that growing up meant growing and moving out.  There was a hint of wanting to put posters back up and model airplanes back in their place, but I knew that part of our lives was over and I needed to ‘grow up’ as well.

Most parents will go through the same struggles as their children grow up, but there will be many who do not get the opportunity to say ‘Goodbye’.  Their child may be taken by disease or accident, and a big part of their lives will be ripped from them with wounds that will never heal.

For some parents, their family lives never match the television shows about families I used to watch back in the 1960’s; shows such as: “Father Knows Best”, “Leave It To Beaver”, “The Donnal Reed Show”, “My Three Sons”, etc.  I always thought I had the perfect family, then my father and mother divorced.  That hit me especially hard.  Then my oldest son died and issues came up that stopped communication with members of my immediate and extended family.  At some point, I began to think there is no ‘perfect’ family, there are always black sheep and issues that those on the outside just do not know about. 

I had to deal with some of those issues last week.  The last several weeks have been rough weeks for me but it was much, much rougher for several mothers, all of whom had lost their sons.  For one it was her third child lost, for another her second child lost, and for yet another her son was taken at only 22 years old.  Brent Bland told me at my son’s funeral that, in his experience, about six out of a hundred families lose a child.  Most statistics only track deaths of children under 20 years old, and those numbers are about a tenth of what Brent has seen.

Whether 22 years old or 62 years old, the loss of a child is the loss of a child.  It’s a part of a parent that the parent always thought would be a lasting mark the parent had left in the world.  Just like Brent says that meeting a Christian might be the closest some folks ever get to reading a Bible; meeting me will be the closest some people ever get to meeting my dad.  I always worry if my life will honor him.

People sometimes carelessly comment that at least some families have other children.  I do not think they realize how sharp that knife cuts into someone who has lost their child.  It is like commenting after the death of a parent that someone still has one parent left.  Each child is different and each child has a special place in a parent’s heart.  No matter how many children you have, the loss of one is almost inconsolable.  I think it is similar to the Bible saying how a shepherd will leave the one hundred sheep to go look for one lost sheep.  It is the lost sheep that has a unique value to the shepherd.

Each of these mothers had incredibly difficult problems with their respective sons.  But each loved their son respectively with no reserve.  Acts were committed during their lives so many would wonder how the family could go on.  While arranging things, an ex-wife apologized to me for their unfunctional or dysfunctional family.  I told her that there was no need to apologize, there weren’t really any normal, functional families, there were just families who were able to hide their problems better than others, but that all families had issues.

Unfortunately, death brings a lot of the scars to the surface, and those scars divide families like never before.  It would be nice if everyone could resolve their differences before death meant that some would go to their grave without forgiveness, but that doesn’t happen.  Words are said, feelings hurt, and people go to the end without resolving issues.  When that happens, the scars on folks’ hearts are left there for the rest of their lives.

Growing up and moving out is difficult for everyone.  But growing up does not stop when someone moves out of the house, it just means life has entered a new phase where now both parties have to grow up.

If you are not spending time with your family now, how much more time do you have?

God rest Dolly Parton.

Danny Leo Green,

Coroner, Cedar County