Four Years After Our Hardest Day

Yesterday marked four years since Nick went to heaven. I find myself calling him “Nicky” more often now—a name I hadn’t used for him since he was a child. I wonder if it reflects that in some ways he is becoming dearer to my heart and younger to my mind. After all, I keep aging while he remains locked in time. I will soon celebrate a birthday for the fourth time since that day, yet he has celebrated none. The gap between us widens by the day.

A lot has changed in four years. And a lot has remained the same. The pain is much easier to bear after almost 1,500 days of practice. I would be surprised to learn that a single day has gone by that I have not thought of Nick and not missed him. But the very hard days come less frequently now and the almost-too-much-to-bear days are few and far between. It still doesn’t take much to make me cry when I think about him, or when I see a father hugging his son, or when I think of his first nephew being born without ever meeting or knowing his Uncle Nick. But it also doesn’t take as much for me to dry my tears and press on with joy.

I visit Nick’s grave less frequently now. It still feels important that I do so, but the gap between visits has widened from days to weeks. I sometimes feel guilty when a fair bit of time has passed, as if I somehow need to prove my love through the frequency of my visits. I know better than that, but it can be hard to counter emotion with reason.

Aileen still visits more often than I do. She still carefully tends to the grass and flowers around the grave as a visible demonstration of her love and loyalty to her boy. Under her care, Nick’s little plot has become as green and lush as any in the cemetery. Like me, Aileen still has hard moments and hard days, but rarely hard weeks and never hard months. It’s no longer like those early days—those early days when we just didn’t know how we could carry on under that crushing weight of grief.

By God’s grace, the girls are also doing well. They continue to love the Lord and trust him with the deepest sorrow they have known. They miss him, of course, especially when there are great joys to celebrate, deep sorrows to lament, and big questions to ponder. They miss his love for them and miss the wisdom he shared with them. But they trust in a greater Love and submit to a higher Wisdom, so press on with joy. Plus, while the middle-aged and old may be prone to look back, the young naturally and rightly look forward.

Aileen and I sometimes realize that it has almost become harder to imagine our lives with Nick than without him. So much has changed in four years—so much change in the circumstances of our lives and so much in our inner selves. We are no longer the people we were the day before our loss. Our lives are so different. The life he lived with us and we lived with him is in the past. The life we live without him is in the present and future. It’s a strange feeling and hard to articulate.

The holiday season is now upon us. Canadian Thanksgiving has already come and gone and in its wake Christmas and New Years are approaching fast. This will be the first holiday season in a couple in which the whole family plans to be together—Michaela home from college and Abby, Nate, and their soon-to-be-born son living just minutes away. Ryn (Nick’s fiancée) plans to visit at some point as well. We are looking forward to sweet times together—sweet times to celebrate the season and simply enjoy the gift of family.

But, of course, we know that one person will be conspicuous by his absence. What father doesn’t long to have his children home and gathered around the sweetest place of all—the family table? And what father doesn’t grieve to see that one place is empty and to know that one person is missing? Yet we are convinced that though he is absent from us he is present with the Lord, that he is safe and well and in that place we all long to be. And we know that our best meals and sweetest celebrations here are just a glimpse and foretaste of those that are still to come. So we eat with faith and rejoice with hope, trusting in God and relying on his promises.

And just like that, we have finished out our fourth year since that hardest day and begun the fifth. And while so much has changed, this has remained the same: God has been present with us and God has been kind to us. We love him, we trust him, and we praise his name.