"We are God's Hands", by Gary Kwong
Added 11/23/01
This is the text of a presentation given by Gary Kwong to the Union Congregational Church, United Church of Christ in Hackensack, MN October 14, 2001. Gary is a member and active participant in the congregation at United Church of Christ in New
Brighton, MN.
In this text, Gary discusses the questions and issues he and his wife, Chris faced with the accidental death of their son, Neal Kwong, in August, 2000 at age 16. He addresses how he has addressed his grief as an individual, a parent and a Christian.
I wanted a chance to participate in a service dealing with the death of a child because I wanted to be able to witness to how there seem to be differences in grieving a child's death or the death of a parent, in-law, a friend, or a sibling. This is not to say that one type of grieving situation is "harder" or anything like that. It's just that if we can talk about the differences we can also learn ways in which we might by able to serve God and others. This morning's choir anthem "Leaning On the Everlasting Arms" of Jesus and the Children's Time story about your touch makes a difference that Don Hoppe told fit with my them that "We are God's hands".
If you feel comfortable doing so, please raise your right hand if you have had a parent die. Raise your left hand if you've had a spouse die. Please put your hands down. Please raise your right hand if you've had a sibling die. Please raise your left hand if you've had a child die, a miscarriage or a still birth. You've helped me to understand where your feelings might be.
This message is intended to be both an illustration of a personal situation and a witness to what faith in God and what the help of others who believe in God has meant to me. I cannot speak for my wife Chris or my mother Mary or Neal's brother Alan and sister Laura.
I'm wearing Neal's shoes and a colorful Hawaiian shirt in celebration of Neal's life.
II. What happened?
Neal died of carbon monoxide poisoning while he slept at the Tomahawk Scout Reservation of the Indianhead Boy Scout Council, which serves Minnesota east of the Mississippi. He had completed his first full summer as a camp counselor and was happy to be able to work for a week at minimum wage after making $1500 for 10 weeks of 15-hour days.
I was at work when a manager asked if I'd be able to talk with two people from the Scout office in 10 minutes. They arrived in our building lobby. As I was walking down with the manager, I figured out that my only connection to Boy Scouts was Neal's being at camp. I assumed then that he'd died. For anything else they would simply phone me. I called Chris and told her over the phone because I couldn't see how I could ask her to meet me without telling her why --- for the first time in 15 years --- I'd meet her in the middle of the morning.
Chris and I told my mother (Neal had lived with her a mile from home during his 9th grade school year) and Alan that morning, and we called Laura in Seattle where she was vacationing with my cousin's family.
It took from Tuesday morning to Thursday morning to find out what killed Neal. Thursday morning at 8, a county deputy where the camp is located called to say that there was an abnormality in Neal's heart that might have caused his death. Then two hours later, the assistant Ramsey county medical examiner called to say that carbon monoxide had killed Neal.
Unlike many in New York City, we were able to see Neal's body about 15 hours after he died. He was unmarked. We could physically verify that he'd died and peacefully.
A state and federal OSHA inspection showed that Neal had been sleeping in a cabin where the furnace had been installed 25 years ago without a fresh air intake. The thermostat didn't work, so that while the furnace was set for 60 degrees, it hadn't shut off by the time the temperature was 100 degrees. Also, the in-furnace shut off which is supposed to work when the flame is not working properly didn't work.
III. Feelings
Depth of Feeling
I still recall a reporter asking one of the New York firefighters coming away from looking through the World Trade Center rubble, "How are you feeling?" three times. Each time she asked, he said, "I can't say." It was very easy for me to empathize with his inability to tell her how he felt and her awkwardness in asking and inability to understand his lack of being able to answer.
How do you tell someone the depth of your sorrow?
Over the 5 days before his memorial service, I typed many emails letting his school, classmates, and our friends know that Neal had died. I shed some tears every time I typed "Neal Kwong, 9/28/84-8/22/00" in the subject area, but I typed that because I wanted to be straightforward and to deal somehow with his death.
I only got about 2-4 hours of sleep a night. I had much greater sense of loss than with my father's death. You try to do what is necessary while trying to understand what happened.
My father died on January 4, 1998. His death came after about 7-9 years of having Alzheimer's disease. I think I grieved over the years as he mentally and physically changed from what we had known. In his case, I had a long time adapting to the changes and knowing the end was coming.
When a child dies, each spouse's responses are different.
Chris and I have dealt with this differently. Our Christian experiences had been different before Neal's death. The strength you thought you had before your child died is tested when the death happens. It's easier to talk about what needs to be done than how you feel. It's very hard to talk about the feelings I had because I wasn't sure what words fit my feelings.
The strength of a couple's relationship is tested when a child dies. I think the length of couple's history and relationship provides continuity for outlasting the stress of the child's death. I think about half of the couples where a child dies, get divorced. We'd been married 26 years when Neal died.
After several months Chris began to see a grief counselor weekly for several months. Then she started seeing the counselor about once a month. I went to one meeting of the men's group at the UCC of New Brighton but feel too busy to keep going.
Chris knew it would happen but after about 3 weeks after Neal died, someone asked how many children do you have? She said 2 but had a hard time answering. I answer we have 2 and one who died last year of carbon monoxide poisoning while at Boy Scout camp, to simply treat Neal as our child and to say how he died because I would want to know if someone simply said they had a child that had died. Chris wonders why I feel it's necessary to say how Neal died.
A child's death may change your physical sexual relationship with a partner. The connection between intercourse and the birth of your child may make a difference to one of the partners. If you feel depressed, less attractive, less than a whole person, less close to your partner, your sexual relationship with your partner can be affected.
Should you have a child to "replace" your lost child? Because we were already 48 and 55 years old, respectively, having a child to "replace" Neal wasn't an option for us. But I brought it up anyhow so that we could agree on it. It would have been tough to reverse a vasectomy. If we'd been younger, it could have been a big issue.
There is a sense of loss of future hope and expectations for your child no matter how old they are hurt. As parents you don't feel that your children will die before you do.
Blame. "Someone should be held responsible for this". The sense of frustration that you couldn't do anything to change what happened We were fortunate in that neither of was involved remotely in what happened to Neal. We couldn't blame one another for something done or undone. Once the cause of death was determined on Thursday to be carbon monoxide, we decided right away not to sue the Boy Scouts. It would not bring Neal back to life and it would only hurt the Boy Scouts. The Council has spent $15,000 on inspections of its facilities and budgeted $150,000 for improving the safety at its camps. Neal liked being a camp counselor and a Boy Scout. Alan, Neal, and I are all Eagle Scouts.
Loss of companionship. You know what good times you had together and what you had expected. Neal, Grandma and I came up to the cabin on Pleasant Lake almost every summer weekend for the past 5 years. The first 2-3 years Chris, Alan and Laura also came up. Neal and I did almost all the tasks together and spent a lot of time fishing.
Change in Family Structure
Our family is like a tree branch. Genealogies are constructed like trees. I was splitting wood on Sept 29. Our leaning Norway finally fell in Pleasant Lake after 50 years of leaning. Splitting where the branch comes off the trunk is difficult because it strengthens the trunk and deflects the strength of the blow. We had branches (children) on our family tree in order to allow ourselves growth opportunities. They take a lot of work but they strengthen us. They grow outward but are an integral part of us. When the branch is broken off the stub remains within the trunk. Still providing strength. You can try pulling it out but it's tough.
It doesn't help to pretend the branch isn't gone; it is.
Neal's death changes our family structure. It certainly changes my perspective of how important rebuilding our family is. It won't ever be the same again. Neal will live in our memories and in our family but in a different way.
Loss of opportunity to teach skills and to share values and faith.
I have worked with junior high youth groups, taught Sunday School, led Cub Scout dens and Boy Scout troops since 1965. I think most parents enjoy "passing on" their skills in terms of home and work. By doing activities and living with our children we share our values and faith. I take satisfaction when the values Chris and I have tried to teach and model are reflected in what our children do even if the challenges sometimes end up being handled with "because I said so." Chris said that Neal understood me the best of the children.
Loss of grandchildren - posterity
Although for some parents passing on the family name is a big thing, for us it's not a relatively big factor. My Dad used to say that the grandchildren had to have the "Kwong" family name although it was becoming more common for wives to retain their last name and the children to have a variety of last names.
Loss of sense of completion or ongoing sense of our own lives
There was a Bizarro cartoon the other day about a father saying to his football playing son who's about 8 years old, "Do well to show the other parents that they should have been nicer to me when I was your age." Even as I tried to consciously avoid living through what Neal did, that might be what I'd always wanted to do or liked doing. I did like Neal's emphasis on physical fitness and hard work. I knew that Neal enjoyed the cabin the most of our children. I already knew that, if he lived around Minnesota, I'd want him to inherit the cabin and continue the family ownership and enjoyment of living there.
Loss of support in senior years
You lose any chance of your child caring for you, providing financial help, and sharing of tasks.
Your other children may not grieve in a way that you can tell.
Alan has scanned into a word processor most of the 1500 and more pages of Neal's journal writing for English class and his letters to classmates. He has an Eagle landing statuary in which he put most of Neal's ashes. Neither Alan nor Laura has asked or said anything about Neal except for recollections. Hopefully, someday, we'll be there when they want to talk about what his death means.
Other adults may not understand but those who've lost a child reach out because they know the depth of loss and share where they may not have let you know anything before.
I've found out that some co-workers, teachers I've worked with in the past and others who've had children who died that I didn't know about until Neal died. They've shared of their pain to help me deal with mine. Perhaps it's a measure of how threatening or dreaded the death of a child is to a parent that mentioning Neal's death leads to a more sympathetic response than mentioning the death of my father.
Accidental death, as in Neal's case, or suicide may leave a feeling that you didn't have closure - a chance to say "goodbye" or " I love you". Many in the World Trade Center Towers or on the airplane which crashed in Pennsylvania, called family members to say, "I love you." It's a part of our human nature to want something physical such as the body to focus on so that we can say "goodbye."
Grieving goes on much longer than for other kinds of relationships.
I'm a scientist and have read about the physiology of tears. But I can't predict when I'll cry and what emotions connected with my feelings about Neal.
Our friends Rev. Cher Chou and Tang Vang had their son Jonathan die July 9th of this past summer in a van accident while going to church camp. I felt obligated and understood that we could share a viewpoint that few of their other friends could. I did shed tears when talking about how we felt on Neal's death and what we had to do to have his memorial service. I didn't expect that the tears would come so easily.
I still talk with Neal. It's like praying - you don't get an audible response but you want to feel that God hears you. I believe that God's response is in what I sense and interpret in the actions of others. Neal's response comes from what I'm doing when I remember and think about him. His body is gone, but his spirit is not gone from me.
IV. Faith Journey
Is God involved in why children die?
Because I knew that Neal's classmates and Tomahawk Scout staff would be at the memorial service, I felt that I as his father had to try to put his death into a Christian perspective so that they might be realistic (from my point of view) about what his death might mean relative to them.
1) I don't believe that God punishes a particular person like Neal for a "sin" or misdeed. In other words, if I do something that separates me from what God wants me to do, then I deserve to be punished by something bad happening - like I get sick or if my misdeed was bad enough, I deserve to die. This is also called "pragmatic justice": Do something "bad" and something "bad" will happen to you. This is presented in the Biblical story of Job. Does that mean if a person is materially wealthy and has a lot of money that they are happy or a "good" person?
2) I don't believe that God "has another job for Neal."
3) That "Neal did something bad and had to die".
Or 4) that Neal died so that I would learn something in particular.
Sometimes there is no reason for bad things like death happening to a good person. The laws of nature treat everyone alike. They don't make exceptions for people you love, like Neal. There was carbon monoxide in the room. He breathed it and died. Would I really want a world where certain people like our family were immune to laws of nature and the rest of the world had to suffer? I know people whose ideas of good are very different than mine. Would their ideas or mine have more importance to God?
We were relieved that no one made these comments to us, even if they might believe in them.
Church Attendance and Relationship
We agreed that our children would go through confirmation and they could decide whether they would be confirmed. Neal went to Falcon Heights UCC and to a Catholic church (because the time of the service worked out to give him more of the morning for other activities).
I didn't say whether he had to go to the services at camp. But he Neal wrote on Sunday, 8/13/00, "Chapel was normal. Mark K. gave a lame sermon." I feel reassured that he normally went to chapel and that he listened. I met Mark K. at Tomahawk this past June when I went to give a presentation on diversity. He's in his second year at a seminary. We got to talk about Neal and his chapel attendance.
I've been comforted by the thought that Troop 710 came to Neal's memorial service. They were witness to a wide variety of his activities: school, wrestling and cross-country teams, Boy Scouts, our family friends from church in Hackensack, Brainerd, and New Brighton. It's been a year and almost two months since he died. We have had no contact with his former classmates except for a sister of one of Neal's friends who is a close friend of Laura's. There is a former wrestling teammate at Harding High school who has been coming to our church with his aunt. He talks with me each time he comes.
Chris and I've talked about the significance of our church attendance. To her, it seems at times that God is far away or doesn't care. Yet at church we have known people who if we died and our family couldn't care for our children, we'd be happy to have those people care for them. We can't think of anyone at work where that would be true. We have felt shared values with at least some, and sometimes quite a few, of the church members in the six churches we've belonged to in the 27 years we've been married. Almost all of the people we socialize with outside of our immediate family have been from our churches.
It's hard to know anything with certainty, but faith - believing in things unseen or unproved - is what makes everyday live liveable. Unless I can acknowledge that there questions of "why" are not just for random moments but could be so overwhelming that getting depressed would be much easier.
Faith in God makes our search for meaning in a child's death more bearable. Not because there are answers for us that are definitive, but because we can have faith that the death has meaning for us in a way that others without faith and haven't lost a child probably cannot understand. Even then those who have faith in God but haven't lost a child may not understand the pain, sense of loss, questioning, and the very long time of grieving. Grieving not for the physical pain of the child who died but - in the case of a suicide - the mental pain that led to the suicide. The sense of loss may be increased by a sense of responsibility, even though the child is an adult who, hopefully, had a sense of the meaning of suicide and still chose to do it. In Neal's case, God had no involvement; no one else was directly involved in a knowing act of negligence. Safety issues were not taken care of but not in a callous manner.
It's an abstraction but comforting to know that, because I believe in an afterlife and that our time is fleeting, in God's time I'll be able to be with Neal's spirit when I die. I feel him with me in terms of being able to see him in my mind, to sense his voice, and to know what he'd be doing with me.
The grieving of many because of the senseless deaths of about 7,000 in Washington DC and New York City has been felt by those of us who've lost children and others close to us. I've been listening to NPR, and it seems that many want a "logical" explanation for why terrorists do what they do. Several feel that the US needs to solve the underlying causes - authoritarian governments, lack of jobs, poverty, etc. which as one country we cannot do, although we can work to alleviate conditions without "imposing" policies on other countries. It's easier to "accept" a grievance as being the reason for senseless terrorism than that others may simply feel that causing death and terror is an ultimate aggression. It may be a way of protesting, but the idea is to affect even those who do not directly cause whatever you are protesting.
It's hard to accept events such as our child's death as being sensible. Yes, the physical causes of death may lead to death, but why we suffer a loss doesn't make sense.
V. What can we do when another person's child dies?
We are God's Hands.
(From the book, Process Theology. A Basic Introduction, by C. Robert Mesle. The page numbers refer to this book.)
What we think we can do and what we do depends on what we believe in.
Carrie Sauter (Mom's youth pastor at the time, at St. Anthony Park UCC, St. Paul) came to the Memorial service for Neal. Because she heard my meditation, she gave me a book on Process Theology. It's given me a name for the set of beliefs I've found for myself.
I'm going to put what we can do in relationship to someone whose child has died in the framework of what is called Process Theology (is a particular set of beliefs about God). A belief within Process Theology and then how it may apply to a relationship in the context of a child's death.
Process theology operates on an (entirely different) model of power, reality, and value. Relatedness is primary. There are 3 stages.
First, relational power is the ability, the power, to be open, to be sensitive, to be
in relationship with the world about us.
Second, relational power is the ability to be self-creative.
Finally, relational power is the ability to influence others by having first been
influenced by them.
I think that the intercessory prayer time here and that we do on our own time is a good example of getting us to participate in and to use relational power. We are in relationship with God, others and ourselves.
Page 37: "Process theologians believe in freedom. God knows everything there is to know. But the future does not exist yet, except as a range of possibilities that have not yet been chosen." Time becomes.. .
Neal's life and death was free of God's altering what would have happened. God didn't decide the good or the bad things that happened to him. When you care about how someone feels as they grieve, it's because you decided to care; not that God made you care. Don't try to offer the explanation that God decided what happened. Take the self-revealing step of telling the grieving friend that even though you're not sure of what to do or say that you do care. Be there. Simply care enough to visit or call on the telephone.
Page 57: "What is true of our relationships with other people is true of our relationships with all creatures and God. We create ourselves out of our relationships with them. We had better have a care about the world in which we live."
When we are God's hands, doing what he wishes - it's as in the Lord's Prayer: "Thy will be done on earth by me as it is in heaven." - and we open ourselves to changing ourselves.
Page 77: "God is able to compare each creature's actual experience with what it might have been had we been wiser, kinder, more generous, more compassionate. God not only feels our pain, but adds to it the pain of experiencing the gulf between what is and what might have been."
Perhaps this is a part of the difficulty of sharing concern when another person is hurt - we know that we could just as easily been the person who is hurting.
Page 90: "Process theologians see revelation as an ongoing process of divine call and human response. We must never think of revelation as final and complete, but always as continuing."
Have you told someone, "If you need anything, just call me." Some time later I've thought of what I offered and think about the other person not calling me. I know,too, that I need to do the calling myself, to say, "What have you been doing and how do you feel?" We need to leave ourselves open to sharing of ourselves, too, so that the other person doesn't feel "obligated". We all need to share in order to be revealed.
Page 93: "Committed relativism" is my name for the conviction that it is possible to make legitimate value judgements with and between different lifestyles, cultures, and religions without claiming that there is only one absolute right and wrong, only one absolutely best action, lifestyle, culture or religion." "Committed relativism is challenging in that it requires us to be open-minded without being empty-minded."
Another person may grieve differently than you or not even seem to "show" grief. We are all different in what we feel and how we show our feelings to ourselves as well as others.
Page 108: "Why, then, did Jesus suffer and die on the cross? Because God could not prevent it. "
"It was not necessary for Jesus to die as part of some eternal plan predestined by God from all eternity. Jesus probably - and God surely - foresaw cruel death as a possibility if he unshakeably pursued his course. Still, Jesus became the kind of person who could not really choose to turn away from the path of love even if that path meant death."
If God couldn't prevent Jesus' dying, Neal didn't die as a part of God's plan. It happened. This provides comfort, in that I can believe in a God of love without the anger due to believing that God may have been "responsible" in a way for Neal's death or didn't prevent it. In relationship to a person who has lost a child, I do not say, "It was a part of God's plan."
Page 111: " We pray to change ourselves, not God. Prayer, even in traditional theologies, is an act of worship."
Page 113: "Process theism is panentheism the view that the world is in God, and also that God is in all things in the world."
Page 114: "Prayer can change what God can do. Process theists believe this. Prayer may be seen then as a whole range of activities in which we work co-operatively with God to create a better world within which we work co-operatively with God to create better world within which God can offer better possibilities and do better things, within which God can be better perceived and better responded to. Finally, however, remember that true prayer changes us."
So continued prayer and self-critical repentance, continual openness to the insights of others and to new insights of our own are all essential components of a life of prayer. We must continually seek our own liberation if we are to liberate the world."
Pray for someone else and you to see what their needs are what to do, and to think in order to change.
Prayer opens us to what we can do. We are God's hands. When something seems like a good idea to help another who is hurting, we can talk with them, send a card to let them know that we are thinking of them. We change with those acts.
" Process theology operates on an entirely different model of power, reality, and value. Relatedness is primary. There are 3 stages. First, relational power is the ability, the power, to be open, to be sensitive, to be in relationship with the world about us." Second, relational power is the ability to be self-creative. Finally, relational power is the ability to influence others by having first been influenced by them."
I believe that God acts through me and that He acts through others. Just as we have received love and caring from others during this very emotionally intense 6 days, I interpret this to mean that God is showing his caring for me. I can't claim that I deserve other people's caring because of how good I am.
A friend I know from 3M whose 5-year-old son died two years ago in an accident visited Chris and me Saturday. She had heard about Neal's death from another friend. She's the only person I know who's had a younger child die. She was able to share her own story. She views herself as an agnostic. She did as in John 3:21. She acted out of caring for us. What more can any of us do? Now because I've experienced the pain of Neal's death (although I don't understand why it happened or very fully accept it yet), I will be much more able to do what I can to help others in this situation. That isn't why Neal died but it's what I can do because he died.
VI. Neal Kwong, 9/28/84-8/22/00
Written by Neal, approximately August, 1998
What makes me most happy? Good question. Difficult answer. I think there is just so incredibly much that makes me happy. I can just step back and look at my life and say, "WOW!" I love the freedom my parents let me have. I can do whatever I want with me. I love just living as Neal and getting complimented for it. I can be only myself and people think it's great. That's what I like. I like it when I get genuine and true compliments. I like my body and what I can do with it. I love seeing your hand right in front of my face with a letter in it. I like writing. I like being at school. Isn't that great? I can go to school and like it. I love living my life. It's just so many things that it's all one. Just living.
I will have a wonderful life. But it won't be because I'm smart. I mean, it won't be because I know lots of facts. It'll be because I know what life is about. It'll be because I understand the world, me at age 14, better than lots of 40 year olds do. It'll be because I have the best attitude of anybody I know. It'll be because I never get mad and I have the queer ability to calm other people down. It'll be because my attitude guidelines tell me that if I'm not enjoying life, I have to change. If that means dumping everything, that's okay. If in the future it comes to me that I have to drop everything, my job, my house, my blah, blah, blah, I will. I'l1 just forget about everything except my family and friends. I'll pack a bag and hop on my bike. I'll bike and bike and bike and bike until I figure out what's wrong with my life. If I come back and I'm fired, it'll be okay. If I come back and I've somehow accumulated this huge debt, it'll be okay. Because I'll still be alive. I'll be living and I'll be enjoying life. Living and hating life is no better than not living at all.
That is why I will have a wonderful life. I will have a wonderful life because I base my life on having a wonderful life. My attitude is the #1 thing in life. Never will I compromise my attitude; never will I put something ahead of attitude. I will love life because if I don't love life, I'll change.
That's why I'm a genius.
Don't expect me to be the one with the facts. Don't expect me to be the one with the best grades in the school. Don't come to me with your really hard English questions or something like that. That's not going to be me. That was me in the past, not now. Now I'm a genius because I'm going to love life more than anybody I will ever know.
God so loved the world that he gave his only child. The parent God knows that this loss shows ultimate love. Since Neal's death, I appreciate the caring that this church has shown for my mother and I and, through us, for the rest of our family. You have been a part of God's hands.
Bibliography
Books read by Christine Kwong
1) Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, On Life After Death, Celestial Arts, Berkeley, CA, 1991, $7.95.
2) Therese A. Rando, Ph.D., How to Go on Living When Someone You Love Dies, Bantam, 1988, $14.95
3) Robert Romanyshyn, The Soul in Grief, Love, Death and Transformation, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, 1999, $14.95.
4) Barbara D. Rosof, The Worst Loss. How Families Heal from the Death of a Child, Owl Book, Henry Holt, New York, 1994, $14.95.
5) Nessa Rapoport, A Woman's Book of Grieving, William Morrow, 1994, $15.00.
6) Granger E. Westberg, Good Grief, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1962, 1971.
7) Rabbi David Wolpe, Making Loss Matter, Creating Meaning in Difficult Times, Riverhead Books, Berkley Publishing Group, div. of Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, 1999, $13.95
Books Dealing with the After Life
8) Ian Currie, You Cannot Die, The Incredible Findings of a Century of Research on Death, Somerville House, 1978; Element Books, 1995. $14.95.
9) Joel Martin and Patricia Romanowski, Love Beyond Life, The Healing Power of After-Death Communications. Dell, New York, 1997, $5.99.
10) James Van Praagh, Talking to Heaven, A Medium's Message of Life after Death, Penguin Putnam, 1997, 1999, $6.99.
