My Seasons of Grief
a story of healing
by
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It has taken me time to process that final day of Ross’s life. It was a totally unscripted affair at least as something like this could ever be written by the hands of man. God, however, had a direct hand in how these final pages of Ross’s life were played out. He was truly present in that room and among all the assembled.
As I will detail later one of my lingering regrets was that I did not take the time to speak to Ross during that entire final day. I can excuse it a thousand ways but the fact remains that everyone from an 89 year old grandmother to twenty something cousins poured their heart out to Ross and said righteous good-byes. Everyone that is, except me.
The nurses would comment to us that whenever Tessa (Ross’s fiancé) was lying beside Ross and talking to him his vital signs showed improvement. I do not think that anyone would doubt that Ross was listening as one after another came to fellowship with him one final time. I am sure that Ross was listening for me. Yet somehow I failed to engage with him. Never at a loss for words, his father was strangely silent.As with many failures in my life my benevolent God provided the seeds for redemption. As I read from Isaiah and said the word “faint” Ross exhaled his final breath from his right lung lobe, the same lung lobe that was inside of me 11 years previously. To pray your son into his eternal home was an unspeakable privilege. To have the final word that your beloved son hears give him permission to run into his eternal home was a blessing beyond my feeble ability to comprehend.
One of the things I talk about later in this book is that the greater the life/death drama of the loved one lost, the greater the risk of being hollowed out and conversely the greater the potential to be filled up. Ross McMahon lived a life that defied the odds. Drama stalked every step that he took up to that final exhalation. The challenge for me and all who knew him is to major on “filling up”. More specifically the goal of every griever should be to live life with a true renewal/rededication and to go “farther up and farther in” with all that is placed before us.This book is dedicated to everyone and anyone who loved my son Ross McMahon.
I must begin with his mother and my wife Holly. Her love and dedication to keeping Ross alive and thriving in his uniquely constructed earth bubble is a testament to her indomitable spirit. His story would have been significantly shorter had it not been for her perseverance and constant attending to his many and every need. Her life testimony speaks volumes about capacity to love and endure.Susan, my daughter and Ross’s sister. Ross nicknamed her his, “Little Baby Sister Sues”. She not only survived the crucible of living in a house with a chronically ill sibling but turned the entire experience into a self revelatory journey of growth and opportunity. She was always there for all of us and her many fine qualities made each day that much more tolerable. She was best friends with Ross and indulged his typical McMahon quirky ways. She brought lightness and life to our home and his world.
Tessa, Ross’s fiancé. Tessa was a bright and shining light in Ross’s too often darkened world. Where others saw limitation and weakness she saw possibilities and super human strength. She gave Ross the inestimable gift of knowing what true love looks and feels like. She would argue with me when I said that she was the best thing that ever happened to Ross (She said it was God). In this strictly earthly realm I win the argument.Brian, Ross’s uncle and my brother. Brian’s “yes” to the request for him to donate his lung remained his “yes” even as doctors sawed to get his left lower lung lobe separated from his other lobes. He never wavered in his commitment to give his nephew a chance for a second life. It was a gift that opened earthly horizons to a young man who was having his very world collapse around him. Brian was, and is, a brother truly borne for adversity.
Family and friends too numerous to mention. Ross touched many lives throughout his 29 years on earth. That point was driven home as we all saw at his calling hours and memorial service. My period of grief was greatly assuaged by reflecting on the lives that Ross touched as well as the many that touched his. We are so grateful for everyone from grandparents and family to medical professionals to teachers to strangers to friends who all looked below the superficial, took time to enter Ross’s world, and in so doing, enriched his far too short days.
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NEW THING
I am a rarity in this modern world, in this ‘Quantum Age’, now, in the sea of life, we all have yachts with a spare engine and a jet ski. We like to keep moving, to duck and weave, to crawl if we can’t walk, or to run in every other instance, we move, our culture, society, economy, media, ecology, our whole way of life, here in the West at least, has been centered around the notion that we always ought to be moving, full of motion sickness, this feeling, the feeling of moving (simulated to perfection by our greatest creation; the automobile), this allows us to know that we are in fact alive, and not dead, but I believe there is a further ‘benefit’, that this constant motion allows for us to ignore another of the more serious, life defining questions, what are we rushing towards? Where does this treadmill ultimately lead? The answer is the same for all of us, sick, healthy, fat, bald, ugly, short, accomplished, home-wreckers, murderers, free men; ultimately we will all die.
Kevin Ross McMahon 11/19/1984 – 6/29/2013
Encourage each other in my death with calls to go ‘farther up, and farther in’ in this life, so that you are prepared for the next as best you can.
Alright, that’s hardly all I have, but still it must suffice I fear. Peace, joy and delightful things to you all.
Love, always; RossAbout the Author
Kevin McMahon has but one thing that qualifies him to write this book on grief. That one credential is twenty eight years of familiarity with the process of grieving. His beginning studies in the field of grief and grieving revolved around the life changing chronic illness that beset his son Ross when he was two years old.
Those experiences in grieving the loss of health, youthful vigor and promise would be abated with Ross’s miracle lung transplant when he was 17 years old – a lung transplant that included a donated lung lobe from the author himself.
Kevin’s advanced studies in the field of grief began on June 29, 2013 on the occasion of Ross’s death. That death would spawn a whole new set of challenges and insights into the experience of grief and grieving.