In 1972 my three-year-old son passed on to the worlds of existence beyond the physical one that we touch, hear and feel. He had bravely endured a malignant brain tumor. You do not forget the loss of a child but you can grow toward acquiescence and a peaceful level of understanding.
Excerpts from a recent email to me . . .
I have thought of your words and your David all day long. I have to admit that I had been on your site several times to look at some pictures of David that I had found.When I first saw the pictures of sadness I wept openly. I have tucked away David's images into my heart.
I responded: There are also pictures of David on the page that are innocent and joyous. Sometimes he appeared transcendent. A few of the pictures are black-and-white images that I accidentally double exposed. I didn't remember that I had already exposed the roll of film. The accidents seemed meaningful so I kept them.
The last picture I took of David before his final five-week hospital stay shows him swathed in light and waving goodbye (see below). It's not a special-effect or camera trick. That's the way he actually looked. I always point my camera toward the source of light. You will see that my bird and landscape images are also suffused by strong sunlight behind them.
During David's final hospital stay he was in and out of a coma but always grew conscious and aware when I was at his bedside. One of the images shows him grasping a picture with his hand leaning against a large stuffed lion. The picture was an image of 'Abdul-Bahá. For the entire five weeks he never let go of it. David died grasping it tightly. That picture is now in my wallet. I have carried it there for all these years.
Though one of the poems about him says "I never recovered from grief" I actually did recover rapidly but in a metaphysical way. To say that I never stopped missing my child is more accurate. The poem also recounts a vision that I saw at the moment of his passing. That is what literally occurred and what I saw. Perhaps it was merely my emotional state and imagination or perhaps it was a mystery that cannot be understood verbally. I wrote the two poems more than ten years ago to recount much older memories and not the way I had grown to feel.
The pictures "After the Vision" and "After the Passing" were taken a few hours before David's soul ascended (moved on). Note the quotations that go along with them. They are also a comfort.
The page backgrounds on this website are black not to represent grief but because they make the image colors appear richer by contrast.
God recompensed me with two beautiful healthy sons and one grandson (to date).
From the death of that beloved youth due to his separation from you the utmost sorrow and grief has been occasioned, for he flew away in the flower of his age and the bloom of his youth, to the heavenly nest.
But as he has been freed from this sorrow-stricken shelter and has turned his face toward the everlasting nest of the Kingdom and has been delivered from a dark and narrow world and has hastened to the sanctified realm of Light, therein lies the consolation of our hearts.
The inscrutable divine wisdom underlies such heart-rending occurrences. It is as if a kind gardener transfers a fresh and tender shrub from a narrow place to a vast region. This transference is not the cause of the withering, the waning or the destruction of that shrub, nay rather it makes it grow and thrive, acquire freshness and delicacy and attain verdure and fruition. This hidden secret is well-known to the gardener, while those souls who are unaware of this bounty suppose that the gardener in his anger and wrath has uprooted the shrub. But to those who are aware this concealed fact is manifest and this predestined decree considered a favor. Do not feel grieved and disconsolate therefore at the ascension of that bird of faithfulness, nay under all circumstances pray and beg for that youth forgiveness and elevation of station.
I hope that you will attain to the utmost patience, composure and resignation, and I supplicate and entreat at the Threshold of Oneness and beg pardon and forgiveness. My hope from the infinite bounties of God is that He may cause this dove of the garden of faith to abide on the branch of the Supreme Concourse that it may sing in the best of tunes the praises and the excellencies of the Lord of names and attributes.
('Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, p. 199)
A beautiful book about the passing of a child: A Child of Tender Years by Joyce M. Jackson is a story of a child's journey from birth until age 14. "But it is also a journey for his mother as she watches him grow, learns with him...and from him. It is a story about sacrifice and letting go, of being completely reliant on God and radiantly acquiescing to all that He asks of us. It is a story about faith." In this book you'll also find the story of the Divine Gardener and Consolation of Hearts.
