Making Divine Images Visable

I woke up with a powerful dream image in my mind. It was Lew in the arms of an angel. They were in water. She was supporting him and helping him to breathe. The dream was just that image but I made up a story about what happened before the picture and after it. Lew died ten days after the dream and a couple of weeks later I wrote this story.

A poem about my sons. They were loved before they were born but not special ordered. They came as gifts from a gracious God.

Directions to an on-line article with drawings that I did in 1999. While you are there, check out the rest of the Wayne E. Oates On-line Journal. It is dedicated to the memory of Wayne Oates and deals with health, healing and spirituality.

At a crisis time in my life I attended a Women’s Retreat at Trinity Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. My mother had recently died and my son, Lew, was declining. The retreat leader (whose name I am sorry I don’t recall), gave us each a paper with a simple drawing of a flower, a circle in the middle and petals radiating out. We were asked to write a life crisis we had experienced in the middle and then write on the petals things we had learned from that time of crisis and growth. These were my comments.

I’ve told so much of Lew’s story. It seems right to tell this part, too. I will totally understand if nobody reads it but I share it nonetheless. It was a bleak, dark, snowy night but God was present in many people helping us and in Lew, helping him.

I wrote a poem about Lew called “His Gifts” that included the line “all of these gifts I would gladly exchange for a whole son.” Then I had to think about what in the world THAT meant. He filled my life in so many ways. He had challenges and maybe even “deficits” but so often he was a joy to me.

This poem is my answer to that question. He was whole in his unique way.

The decision for our son to have a feeding tube placed was not an easy one. We put it off as long as possible until Lew let us know the right time had come.
For a nonverbal child, Lew managed to communicate this very clearly.

I recently met a parent struggling with this same decision so I decided to write this part of Lew’s story. This is for you, Diana…and any other parent facing this decision.

Many staff members at the Home of the Innocents in Louisville, Kentucky were special friends to us and to Lew. Debbie, Patty, Dawn. So many others. Physical Therapists. Volunteers. Administrators. But Sheila stood out. It was love at first sight. How could I ever thank Sheila enough?

When Lew died, Sheila told me she was never going to allow herself to get so attached to a patient again. It was too painful. But, Sheila, I hope that is not what happened. You were such a blessing to Lew and to his family. Thank you, dear one.

A friend made me promise I would publish this letter someday. I was too cowardly to publish it sooner. I was afraid I would hurt someone’s feelings. Maybe this can be helpful to some other parent of a child who has disabilities – or to the friend of a parent.

Maude, here it is at last.

I read a Reader’s Digest article by Henri Nouwen about his relationship with Adam, a man for whom he was a caregiver. Henri said Adam gave “peace” to his life. I threw the magazine across the room! I would not say Lew brought me “peace.” So then I started thinking how I would answer the question: What did Lew bring to my life? Maybe Henri and I were trying to say the same thing and were using different words. Here’s my answer.