Grief

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The waters of Little Pipe Creek are quiet again. The mourners at Mikey’s funeral will drive over those waters today on their way to cookies and stuffed egg rolls at the New Midway fire hall, those clouded waters that took young Mikey and Tom from us last Thursday. Then they’ll travel on to Tom’s funeral to repeat the tears, memories and pain. So many questions left unanswered. Why four long days of torrential rain? Why would two bright young men see fun in that swollen creek where so many would danger? Why little Mikey, always smiling, always making me laugh? Why Tom, Mikey’s best friend and fellow Pink Floyd fan? Where were you God? Like the tip of an eternally large iceberg, the answers lie deep below the surface of the Mystery that is our God. We see only the cold, hard, bright tip and wonder. Like one of Mikey’s sweet pranks, God seems to want us off-balance, teetering over His hidden truths, daring us to let go and play in His own black waters, where to see, to realize the Mystery, is to die ourselves. The day before the boy’s bodies were found, I stood on the bridge above that muddied, impenetrable creek and knew the horrors that lay beneath. They offered only pain, loss and the question of the ages: Why? God offered no answers, only Himself. He tempts us to leap to our own deaths in that baptismal fount that is His Son, where to die is to live, to plunge into the murky Mystery is to finally see, to know the Answer to all questions. I learned long ago in a crucible of doubt that God is to be trusted with the lives and deaths of the young. Mikey and Tom are His. They were His as they formed in their mother’s wombs, when they played as children and grew to vibrant teenagers. He was there by the creek last Thursday when the fateful decisions were made and they climbed in to swim the rain-sated waters, and He was there when those waters took their young lives. They are His now, even as we grieve our loss. There is no raging creek, no agony, and no tragedy that can sweep away His magnificent love for us all. Like the promise of a cool swim on a summer day, He calls us all to take the plunge.

I drive over the now placid Little Pipe Creek each day on my drive to and from work. Most days I’ll have more mundane thoughts on my mind, but some days I will think of Mikey and Tom and God will whisper from the Divine Deep and call me to Himself.

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