Mother's Day miracle

Ruth Thiessen

It was my first Mother's Day after our son Brad died, eight months earlier, of cancer. My heart was heavy. Tears frequently welled up in my eyes and threatened to overwhelm me. While I still have one precious son, I wondered again why Brad had to leave us. He was only 23 years old, he had a life full of promise ahead of him, yet he left us.

It was the week of the World Evangelical Fellowship Assembly in Abbotsford, and our friend Derek Mutungu from Zambia had come to attend. When I picked him up, the first thing he said was, "Happy Mother's Day."

I looked at him for a moment and then said, "I'm having a rough day."

"Oh yes," he responded. "Of course."

After supper, I wanted to go to the cemetery. My husband was busy at a rehearsal, and our son James seemed reluctant to go, so I invited Derek to go with me. As we stood at Brad's graveside, I shared some of our journey with him, this journey of grief. I told Derek how we'd been so hopeful the cancer would be defeated, and how it had recurred several times and finally defeated Brad's body but not his soul.

My tears flowed as the story unfolded. Finally, as I turned to go, Derek asked if he could pray with me before we left. As he gently placed his arm around my shoulders, he eloquently praised God for the fine young man Brad had come to be. He then focussed his words on the three of us remaining, asking that we would find healing for our grief. Finally, he thanked God for the mother I was and asked God to lift the heaviness he sensed in me.

As we left the cemetery on that beautiful warm evening, I once again began to feel the peace of God. As we drove home, Derek challenged me to celebrate the gift of being a mother. He reminded me of the support I'd given Brad, all the time I'd spent at his bedside in hospitals trying to help him cope with his devastating diagnosis.

Do I still grieve the loss of my son? Of course--that pain will never completely disappear--but the depth of my pain is not so severe. The grief experienced at the loss of a child you've borne and nurtured is perhaps the deepest grief we can feel. I did experience, though, on Mother's Day, a lifting of the heaviness in my heart, and a renewed sense of peace that Brad is out of his pain. Since then, I have felt renewed physical and mental energy as well, a lifting of the heavy, bone-deep fatigue I've been struggling with these past two years since Brad's diagnosis.

This renewed energy is most welcome as our family anticipates a trip to Africa, where Brad was born and where we lived for 12 years. We plan to revisit favourite people and places and to tell our friends there the story of Brad's and our journey through cancer to healing. True, Brad was not physically healed, but we experienced a miracle in the way he came to peace with his diagnosis, let go of his desperate fight to live and finally, with eyes wide open, left us to go "home".

H. Ruth Thiessen is a member of Bakerview MB Church in Abbotsford, B.C. Her son Brad died Aug. 30, 1996.

The love of the Son

Some people you know
Will come and go,
Like the passing of the noonday sun.

But a true friend won't leave
Because the love you weave
Is the love from God's risen Son.

Brad Thiessen

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