Goodbye, Joshua
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009Tomorrow will be a difficult day.
Last Labor Day weekend, while I was running the Labor Day Road Race, a coworker/friend was on a trip to Birmingham. Her son Joshua, one of Tristan’s friends, became ill and was taken to a local emergency room. To make a long story short, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It’s difficult for me because he is Tristan’s age.
I’ve wrote about Joshua before here and here. You can also read more about him here.
On Friday, he died at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Medical Center’s Children’s Hospital. I visited them Wednesday and he wasn’t doing very well. I have to say that the PICU is one of the most horrible places that I’ve ever been. Each room has huge glass windows into the hall, so everywhere you look, you see children suffering. I hope I never have a reason to go there again.
Joshua’s mother is the only person that I work with who has a child the same age as Tristan, so for the last four years we have chatted about the crazy things that our little boys have done.
Every night for the better part of a year, Tristan has asked God to “help Joshua feel better” as part of his nightly prayers. Friday night, I talked to him and told him he didn’t have to say that anymore because Joshua was in heaven. When my mother died last year, Tristan didn’t fully understand everything that was happening, but going through that experience helped him understand the end of life on earth. So when I told him about Joshua, he grieved for the first time. That was difficult for both me and Kimberlie.
Tomorrow, I will go somewhere that I’ve never been to before and somewhere that I hope I never have to go to again — to a child’s funeral.
