FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

After 41 years of starting a new school year I didn’t anticipate anything new or different but I was wrong.  As usual, a lunch was provided for the teachers and staff by the PTSA.  I sat at a table with the aide who works with me in the library, a man who suffered the traumatic loss of an infant child this past summer, and one other teacher.  I can never recall this particular group ever sitting together in such a setting.  The conversation was light for a while but somehow it turned to the loss of the man’s only child.  He and I had become friends and I was aware of what happened during the premature birth of his child, the yearning hope he and his wife had for the child to live and the bitter grief that rent their lives when the child died. The cause of death was not from being born premature, but from causes still not entirely understood.  The loss was devastating.  As this topic arose, I was shocked to hear my aide say that she had lost an infant early in her marriage.  She spoke of how she’d felt then and how things were now.  I was shocked even more when the other man sitting at our table indicated that he, too, had lost an infant child to death.  He also spoke about his feelings then and now.  I might add that he also had an adult child survive a terrible auto accident which left him incapacitated mentally.  I just sat and listened, having nothing to offer any of them.  But I marvelled at the odds of these three people, unrelated by normal conventions, happening to sit at the same table while one of them was still in the midst of his bitter grief.  The sharing of feelings was attended by great peace and I knew it was a blessing for the one in greatest need.  As the only one in the group who had not experienced such trauma, I felt  privileged to be allowed to witness this striking tender mercy.  I never cease to marvel at the subtle ways the Lord shores up our feeble knees in times of distress and ultimately heals our broken hearts.