Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 1 Thessalonians 4:13
Early Saturday morning I saw the headline: George H W Bush dead at 94. Just months previous to that his wife Barbra died. George H Bush had a distinguished military career enlisting in the United States Navy at the age of 18 and becoming the youngest Aviator in Navy history. His list of accomplishments is too numerous to mention in this blog.
What many may not know about the Bush family is that they became members of the club no one wants to belong to when their young daughter Robin died from childhood leukemia.
In the Washington Post article published shortly after Barbara's passing was this headline: ‘One last time’: Barbara Bush had already faced a death more painful than her own
When their 3-year-old daughter was complaining of being tired she took her to their family physician. A few days later the Bushes received the news no family wanted to hear- that little Robin had childhood leukemia. The complaint had been fatigue; the prescription was to take their child home to die.“Her advice was to tell no one, go home, forget that Robin was sick, make her as comfortable as we could, love her — and let her gently slip away,” Bush wrote in her 1994 memoir. “She said this would happen very quickly.”
The day after receiving the bad news, the Bushes flew to Manhatten to stay with the grandparents. George H's father was a medical doctor who worked at the Sloan-Kettering cancer research hospital, a leading cancer center even when cancer was barely understood and nearly taboo to mention.
Robin stayed in the hospital, having regular bone marrow tests and blood transfusions. Barbara Bush stood at her daughter's side throughout the treatment process.
On one quick outing to Maine, Robin got to see her two brothers whose pictures were taped to her hospital headboard. They had no idea that their sister's life was ebbing away. In October their daughter died with her parents being in that room. Barbara had this to say about that moment: "“For one last time I combed her hair and held our precious little girl,”
George W. said that Robin's death forged a bond that he leaned on through his father's Presidency and then his own. Barbara Bush remembered the time that she was too much of a burden for her young son when she overheard George W tell a friend on the phone, "One day … she heard her son tell a friend that he couldn’t come out because he had to play with his mother, who was lonely. “I was thinking, ‘Well, I’m being there for him,’ ” she recalled. “But the truth was he was being there for me.”
When Robin died there weren't a lot of grief support groups like we have today to help people like Barbara. When a person suffers a loss they are expected to suffer silently away from others. Today, we know far more about the psycho-social ramifications of loss and with that, there are a vast amount of resources help people survive this journey.
Whereas it may hurt when a loss occurs, the good news is that God is no stranger to loss when he willingly gave up his son Jesus Christ to die so that we can all have life everlasting. In the life of Barbara Bush the moment she stepped into heaven she was filled with joy when Robin ran to her mom. The scene repeated when Robin's dad, George H W Bush entered into heaven.
Our Faith is what keeps us going in this grief-stricken world.
If your suffering from the loss of someone close to you, I encourage you to find a griefshare group by clicking on this link. Griefshare is a 13-week group that teaches you to how to go through the pain, not around it.https://www.griefshare.org If you want to read the original Washing Post article you can do so through this link. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/17/one-last-time-barbara-bush-has-already-faced-a-death-more-painful-than-her-own/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.503891802abc
No comments:
Post a Comment