Life and Loss Tumble Together

23 years ago, January 6, 2001 became the most joyful and soul wrenching day of my life.

My mom came to stay with us over the holidays in anticipation of our first child being born. In the photo you can see Gretchen, who looks ready to give birth at any moment, sitting with my mom. We were young and poor and happy. My mom was a trooper. She crashed on the couch in our first apartment which was furnished with a mixture of wedding and baby shower gifts and dorm room furniture.

This is life. This is family. This is joy.
The two most important women in my life—together.
I love this photo.

But this photo reveals one of the truest things about life:

that life and loss are ever present and unavoidable.

If you look more closely, my mom has a cane in her hand. She didn’t have one the year prior at our wedding. At 52, she was quite healthy, so I was surprised to learn that she had developed a mysterious blood clot issue that made it painful to walk. Like moms often do, she had been downplaying her symptoms, but after a few days of living with us, I grew alarmed. So much so, that I took her to the emergency room on January 3, 2001. It was then that we got the news: Cancer in the blood and bones with maybe months to live.

Life and death come at you fast, and neither wait for you to catch your breath.

January 6

If Gretchen were here to tell the story, she would tell you that she had never seen someone jump out of bed as fast as I did that morning. She said the words, “Lukas, my water broke,” and I went from being fast asleep to standing in less than a second with the ‘go bag’ in hand. Brigitta came fast and furious into the world that morning. Gretchen’s mom was there in the room. Others were just outside in the hall. But my mom was in her own hospital room, a few floors up, down a different hallway.

Cancer does this.

It takes us away from the rooms we want to be in, and puts us in rooms we shudder to think about.

But we adapted. Through the internal hospital phone system, my mom got to be with us as best as she could. This photo below means so much to me. It is the first photo of my, now, three most important women in my life.

Gretchen, Brigitta, and Grandma Chelsea (on phone) - January 6, 2001

Saying Good Bye

January 6th began with saying “hello” to my daughter, but it would end with saying “good bye” to my mom. She was going to have emergency surgery in the morning, and the doctors were not sure what they would find, or whether she would survive. We gathered that evening in her room to pray, read Scripture, and sing over her. Afterwards, I took the elevator down and entered the maternity ward. I made a bed on the couch in Gretchen’s room while Brigitta slept next to her in the bassinet.

Trying to sleep that night, as a 22 year old, I could only describe how I felt inside as something like a dryer tumbling over and over full of life and death.

My mom passed three weeks after Brigitta’s 1st birthday. She was able to spend precious time with Brigitta even as the cancer and its treatments methodically and mercilessly stripped away her health and dignity. It’s hard looking back at these photos and not wonder how much better life would have been without the loss of my mom.