It was a pristine winter's day as the big jet cruised westward 7 miles above the frozen tundra of far Western Alaska. The Captain and First Officer were in good spirits as they headed for Tokyo and talking about a myriad of topics, as crews normally do when sealed in an aircraft for 8 hours at a time as they traverse the upper layers of the troposphere. The beautiful spectacle of a slowly setting sun as it morphed from yellow to orange and its bottom edge melded with the horizon, caused the crew to take a pause in the conversation and watch as the sun began to settle in its slumber.
At that moment, when the crew's thoughts were the farthest away, a radio call came over the #2 VHF radio and asked if anyone was listening (this radio is always tuned to the international distress frequency). The person on the other end wanted to report the crash of an aircraft. The Captain of our intrepid crew immediately responded that he was listening. The bush pilot, far below and unseen, said that he was flying over a red and white Super Cub, that it was completely destroyed, and burning, and asked the MD-11 Captain if he would relay the coordinates of the crash site to the Air Force in Anchorage, Alaska so they could send out a rescue helicopter. When asked if he saw any sign of survivors he said no, and with a resigned sigh the bush pilot said that the pilot of the crashed aircraft was his son.
After catching his breath, upon hearing this dreadful news, and after reporting the accident to Anchorage Center, the MD-11 Captain excused himself from the cockpit for a short break and headed into the galley area. There he shed some tears for this Dad and the loss of his son and prayed to God asking Him to save this man, somehow, from a lifetime of tears, emotional pain, and anguish that he knew was sure to come...the Captain knew all too well of this sense of loss...as he too, 9 years earlier, held his daughter in his arms after she was run over by a car and slowly passed away.
He knew!! He knew the incredibly overwhelming feeling of loss you suffer when your child dies and the immense pain and suffering it brings.
I was the Captain on the day of that flight and I will never forget hearing that father's calm voice as he announced the death of his son. There is no escape from the deeply personal, emotional pain and suffering that comes form the loss of one's child; the magnitude of the pain is impossible to control and time will not shield the emotional hurt.
My mother told me many times when I was a child that time heals all wounds, and for many years I believed she was correct...until my loss. The pain you get from the loss of a child is life long. The passage of time does begin to hide it, but, the hurt is always just below the emotional surface, welling up, like a geyser when a poignant reminder of the loss causes the pain to hit you full force, as if it had happened yesterday. Every person I know that has lost a child is but a heartbeat from tears when the topic of their loss is reminisced.
One area of contention I had with my daughter's loss was when people came to me and said they could understand how I felt. I was shocked by their naivety, though I was grateful for their compassion. Simply put it is impossible to understand the pain of another unless you too have walked in their shoes and that is why, I humbly think, Jesus was pretty blunt when he said before we can judge another we must remove the plank from our own eye. I do not condemn those who have said they felt my pain, but, I just must caution you that it is impossible to truly understand and feel and know the trauma of another...cancer, disease, etc...unless you too have endured it.
If I've learned anything from Autumn's death it's the magnanimity of what God did for us in choosing to have his son, the most perfect child the world has ever and will ever know, born unto us. God knew all too well the horrible fate that awaited his son, yet he still chose to have him born.
It is a double edged sword too, because there is also the pain of watching your child suffer on the way to his death. God knew He was sending His son to certain torture and horrible physical abuse, yet He still did so. On my pathetic human level had I known that Autumn- Paige was to suffer the way she did and die they way she died I can assure you I would never have wanted her to be born. As a parent I would have wanted to spare her the pain of dying and me the pain of watching her die. And then as bad as those emotions are, the ever present anguish of the loss after the death.
But God had the choice and full knowledge of what was going to happen to His son and He still chose to gift us sinners with the grace of His son...a gift we fully did not deserve, given our incredibly sinful nature. In order to save our wretched and imperfect souls, He gave us a pure and perfect lamb, Jesus, his own child, and sent Him down to us for slaughter.
Can you imagine the anguish our Father felt must have felt? He knew all to well what He was doing and the pain His child would experience, not too mention that He, God, would have to watch His own son suffer. Can you imagine watching your child be absolutely abused by others, severely beaten, spat upon, nailed to cross and hung to die? And yet God still chose, knowing full well the consequences to Him and to his son. He still chose the path that caused Him and His son anguish and brought us salvation. Stop and think as a parent if you could have done that to any of your children...the torture, pain, and suffering they would have to endure to help the lives of someone else. Can you imagine it and could you have done what God did? It is hard for me to even remotely imagine it, but I have to say, the loss of Autumn-Paige has brought me a notch closer to that empathy.
And so it is, now on every Christmas, as I get down on my knees and thank God for giving us His son, I also thank Him profusely for His sacrifice in choosing to accept the pain of watching as His child suffered, died and was buried....all for us sinners. It is a miracle and blessing to all of us humans, without equal, in all of time.
But, there is a happy ending, as we all know! On the third day after His passing, Jesus rose from the grave and he joined His Father in Heaven and now sits at His right hand.
And on a much more human and earthly level, on that fateful winter's day when the son crashed in his aircraft and his father watched from above, here too a miracle occurred: By the grace of God the Air Force rescue crew found the boy alive and after a few months of recuperation and rehabilitation he has fully recovered. Once again he has joined his father flying in the heavenly skies over Alaska.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
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