Grief has a way of showing up when you least expect it and wreaking havoc. It stalks you and catches you without warning, reopening wounds that you thought were long healed over. Sometimes it finds you in a children’s soccer game.
It was a sparking Saturday morning, and I’d just found a good spot in mid-field and settled down into my canvas chair, alongside a few dozen other faithful waiting to cheer on their favorite 10-year old soccer prodigy surely bound for Olympic glory one day. As my eyes bounced around the buzzing landscape in front of me, they fell upon one of my son’s teammates posing for a photo with his grandfather. The older gentlemen was beaming, his arm wrapped tightly around the boy, whose father stood behind his phone capturing the moment. In a flash it was over.
I smiled for a second and then I didn’t. My throat tightened, my eyes blurred with tears, and just like that Grief was sitting with me.
I thought about my father, who would be there were he still alive. I thought about all the things that should be. He should be that beaming grandfather and my son should be the proud young man getting to show his Papa how fast he is and how hard he plays. I should be the grateful link between the two of them, celebrating being my father’s son and my son’s father.
I looked at these three strangers and I began to get really angry at them.
I found myself wondering if they realized how lucky they were, if they knew what an absolute gift this moment was. I imagined that they (like I had so many times before) were taking this seemingly ordinary day for granted. I imagine they too were thinking that had a never-ending supply of Saturdays. I was sure they never considered that this photo might be the last one they would take together; that it could be the oldest one of them would ever get. And I had absolutely convinced myself that these strangers deserved this moment far less than I did because they didn’t appreciate it the way that I would.
I wanted to run over to them and to make sure that they knew how fragile it all is, how none of it is ordinary, how all of it is precious and fleeting. I wanted to stop them and look them in the eyes and make sure they really understood everything about life and death and how much they’ll ache for moments like this once they can’t have them. I wanted to scream at them and shake them until they saw how blessed they were and were moved to the very tears that I was.
But then I realized that they wouldn’t understand even if I told them. Fortunately for them, they’re on this side of the Grief Valley and there are things that you can’t ever really know when you’re there. I sure didn’t. There are lessons that no one can teach you until you walk through losing someone you love, and until then you can’t fathom them—which is both fortunate and tragic.
I was oblivious to it all too. As thankful as I was, and as gratefully as I lived with my father, I was still on that side of the Grief Valley. I still posed for pictures and passed Saturday mornings and enjoyed family visits, not getting at that time what an irreplaceable treasure they were. I imagine that at some point a grieving stranger looked at me, with my son and my father—and hated me for how happy I was, resented me for all that I probably took for granted then. I’m sure Grief interrupted him in the middle of what felt to me like uneventful, ordinary life, and he was wounded anew and moved to tears.
So I stopped being angry at these strangers for not knowing what I know about grief. I celebrated their photo and gave thanks for what they could appreciate about one another and about that moment, and realized what they simply couldn’t see from where they were.
Then I wiped the tears from my cheeks, took a deep breath, and watched my son in all his beautiful brilliance, running fast and playing hard—and knew my father would have been beaming.
