COMMENTARY: New Beginnings, New Questions

c. 2003 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) (UNDATED) A reader asks, “Why was our grandson born prematurely to endure 27 days of suffering before his death?” I return to North Carolina today, to my wife and sons. […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) A reader asks, “Why was our grandson born prematurely to endure 27 days of suffering before his death?”


I return to North Carolina today, to my wife and sons. That means leaving the city of my childhood and saying goodbye to the mother who gave me life. My next visit to my hometown of Indianapolis probably will be for her funeral.

I try to imagine what it means to bear life. I imagine my mother’s excitement _ first child, new stage in a young marriage, a belief in a tomorrow beyond the long war.

I imagine her fears _ so young, so far from home, living on an Army base, her mother elsewhere, plus the doubts inherent in pregnancy. What if something goes wrong? There are no guarantees in pregnancy, childbirth or parenthood.

So we wish for luck, prayers, healing, courage, peace, faith, hope _ for that which we cannot give to ourselves.

We make that same wish throughout life, at every stage of this challenging journey, and again as death nears. So little has ever been in our control. So much depends on a God who loves all things, who bears all things, who isn’t deterred by our weakness, who sees us coming home from exile and rejoices.

I accept it that Mary the mother of Jesus was the unique source of Luke’s Gospel. Toward the end of her life, she apparently told him about the early years. She told him about becoming pregnant and rushing to her cousin Elizabeth, also pregnant, for mutual support. Luke cast her story in epic terms, for he knew its outcome and was searching for large meanings. I suspect Mary remembered being young and afraid.

I remember when my wife announced her first pregnancy. The women of our church immediately began to tell her about every difficult pregnancy, labor and childbirth they had experienced. They weren’t being cruel, although it did frighten her. They were naming the risks and pain inherent in motherhood. They were welcoming her to the tribe.


My mother was fortunate. So was my wife. So was Mary. They saw their offspring into adulthood, although not without pain or vexation. Not every mother is so fortunate. Today’s reader asks a wrenching question about extreme misfortune. I am sure every mother and grandmother cringes just reading it.

For her “Why,” there is no answer. There is only the instinctive hug, the grimace, the shared sadness _ especially from that tribe who know such things happen, live in dread of them, and yet forge bravely on.

I imagine that is why Mary ran to Elizabeth. Not to set up Luke’s theological point about the primacy of Jesus over John, or to link Mary to Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel, but one woman seeking another as new life began.

I think we find ourselves in other such tribes: the divorced, abused, widows and widowers, parents who lost children, families who lost someone to warfare, beaten-up clergy, the laid-off and others. I am now part of that tribe which sits with parents as they die. Many of you are in that tribe, too.

Maybe an answer to the reader’s question lies in tribal identity. She knows something that few other grandparents know. One would never seek such a lesson, but she is different for it, wounded and yet gifted with a truer word than another might speak. God can use that word, if only to cut through the glibness and pastel phrases that we sometimes use to hide from death.

As we gathered to kiss our mother goodbye, my sister, brother and I took on a new word, a truer word than we knew before. What we do with that word remains to be seen. But we now have a deeper bond to each other, and to a world where parents die and families change.


KRE END EHRICH

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