I’ve performed thousands of surgeries in my neurosurgery career. But probably the most difficult one was to save the life of a little boy named Mason who’d hit his head in a playground accident, just a few weeks after my own son died. The surgery went well, but I was almost overwhelmed with the guilt of saving someone else’s child, when I had been powerless to save my own. As I often do, I retreated to the hospital chapel to sort myself out after the procedure.
Ever since I was a medical student, I have found myself in hospital chapels when I’m struggling with difficult situations. Something about the quiet and the stained glass seems to center me when the hospital is too much to bear. And at East Alabama Medical Center, Pastor Jon had an uncanny ability to show up when I needed someone to talk to.
But I hadn’t been in this chapel since before Mitch died.
Over the years, whenever I was stressed, hurting, or preparing my mind for a tough case, I’d come to the chapel. Once, I’d run into a crisis of faith when I struggled to understand how to doctor someone when I couldn’t save them from their brain tumor. Pastor Jon had helped reframe my thinking, particularly about prayer. He was my sounding board as I worked through the stitching together of faith and science that led me to begin writing I’ve Seen the End of You, back when I thought I had learned about pain by studying people going through it.
But that was before I lost my boy; now I was in the depths of it myself.
It was also in this room that Pastor Jon had told me he’d lost not just one child—a little girl born with congenital heart disease—but his son as well, who had died in a car accident as a young adult.
I’d learned so much from him, had my faith strengthened and so many questions worked out during our talks. But now I felt restless and angry.
“This is the first operation you’ve performed since Mitch died, right?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes. I wasn’t planning on coming back for a couple more weeks.”
“What a blessing you were here, though, for Mason and his family. You gave them back their son.”
I started to cry, and he put his hand on my shoulder. I said, “Yes. I’m glad about that. I just . . .”
I felt pressure rising in my chest, climbing its way up my throat, and I wanted with everything inside me to run away.
I stood and walked to the little table in the corner of the chapel where a box of Kleenex sat next to a foot-tall statue of Jesus on the cross. I wiped my eyes and my nose and noticed the ceramic nails in the ceramic Jesus’s hands and feet, the ceramic thorns in his crown. My right shoulder was on fire, my jaw ached, and my heart felt as though it was going to shatter into a million ceramic shards.
Pastor Jon shattered the silence. “You wish someone could give you your son back, too, right?”
I heard him but at the same time didn’t. I turned, walked back to the pew, and sat. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Pastor Jon put his hand on my shoulder. “You wish someone could give you your son back, too, right? That’s why you walked away a while ago,” he said.
I shook my head. “’Walked away’? What do you mean?”
He lowered his voice a little. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen you not stay to pray with a family.”
I looked away for a moment. “I didn’t even realize I did that. Prayer feels, I don’t know, just impossible. I’ve been involved in saving lives and rescuing people from pain and suffering so many times, but this feels like there’s no rescue, nothing that can ever make it better. Of all the things I’ve been through—war, divorce, tough cases—this is extraordinary.”
