Compassion and parenthood

Back home recently I visited with a friend whose son comitted suicide after return from Iraq, not long before deployment to Afghanistan. We talked about many things—about writing, moving away from Colorado Springs, getting older, parents, siblings—but of course our conversation was dominated by her love for her son, her regret, her sorrow, her ever-blossoming understanding of what it would be like for the rest of her life to be the mother of a child who was no longer there.

I asked her what she told people when they asked her about how many kids she had: “I say ‘I am the mother of four children, but one of them died.’”

A true, and beautiful, and sad statement.

What else did she know now I asked her. What else had changed?

“I’m so much more patient now. Even of strangers.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know now that everyone you’re encountering is going through some of their own shit. I mean, I knew that before, of course we all do, but now when I get on an airplane I look around me and think ‘How many of these people are on the plane because they are going to the sickbed of a loved one? How many are going to a funeral of their brother their mother their child?’ You are so much more willing to understand that the world isn’t about you.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that. To nod, to sip my wine, to bless her for her honesty, to hope that tragedy won’t knock on her door again.  To wonder at the miracle of motherhood.