In Lament for a Son[1] Nicholas Wolterstorff writes not as a scholar but as a loving father grieving the loss of his son. The book is in one sense a narrative account of events--from the numbing telephone call on a sunny Sunday afternoon that tells of 25-year-old Eric's death in a mountain-climbing accident, to a graveside visit a year later. Lament for a Son gives expression to a grief that is at once unique and universal--a grief for an individual, irreplaceable person.
Quotable
Quotes
“Often, I am asked whether the grief remains as intense as
when I wrote. The answer is, No. The wound is no longer raw. But it has not
disappeared. That is as it should be. If he was worth loving, he is worth
grieving over. Grief is existential testimony to the worth of the one loved.
That worth abides.”
“It’s the neverness that is so painful. Never again to be
here with us—never to sit with us at table, never to travel with us, never to
laugh with us, never to cry with us, never to embrace us.”
“IT’S SO WRONG, SO profoundly wrong, for a child to die
before its parents. It’s hard enough to bury our parents. But that we expect.
Our parents belong to our past, our children belong to our future. We do not
visualize our future without them. How can I bury my son, my future, one of the
next in line? He was meant to bury me!”
“His death is things to do not done—never to be done.”
“THERE’S A HOLE in the world now. In the place where he was,
there’s now just nothing. A center, like no other, of memory and hope and
knowledge and affection which once inhabited this earth is gone. Only a gap
remains. A perspective on this world unique in this world which once moved
about within this world has been rubbed out. Only a void is left . . . A person, an irreplaceable person, is gone.
Never again will anyone apprehend the world quite the way he did. Never again
will anyone inhabit the world the way he did. Questions I have can never now
get answers. The world is emptier. My son is gone. Only a hole remains, a void,
a gap, never to be filled.”
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and
earth and resurrecter of Jesus Christ. I also believe that my son’s life was
cut off in its prime. I cannot fit these pieces together. I am at a loss. I
have read the theodicies produced to justify the ways of God to man. I find
them unconvincing. To the most agonized question I have ever asked I do not
know the answer. I do not know why God would watch him fall. I do not know why
God would watch me wounded. I cannot even guess.”
“WITH THESE HANDS I lifted him from his cradle—tiny then,
soft, warm, and squirming with life. Now at the end with these same hands I
touched him in his coffin.”
“And at the end, that we now must learn to live as
faithfully and authentically with Eric gone as we had tried to do with Eric
present.”
“I will indeed remind myself that there’s more to life than
pain. I will accept joy. But I will not look away from Eric dead. Its demonic
awfulness I will not ignore. I owe that—to him and to God.”
“I cannot fit it together at all. I can only, with Job,
endure. I do not know why God did not prevent Eric’s death. To live without the
answer is precarious. It’s hard to keep one’s footing.”
“Will the family all be home for Christmas?” . . . “What are
your children doing now?” . . . “How
many children do you have?”
“HIS YOUNGER brothers had begun to ask him for advice. To
Claire and me he had become an equal, no longer a child to be cared for. Now
he’s gone, and the family has to restructure itself. We don’t just each have a
gap inside us but together a gap among us. We have to live differently with
each other. We have to live around the gap. Pull one out, and everything
changes.”
“The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God’s
new day, who ache with all their being for that day’s coming, and who break out
into tears when confronted with its absence.”
“Lament is part of life.”
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