On a 4th of July over 40 years ago, my uncle Jerry got hit with a firework. We were at a fireworks show and one of the big rockets tipped over after they lit it. It shot parallel to the ground, skipped once, and hit Jerry in the chest.
Only a minute before he got hit he had been holding his daughter, Jennifer, a fact we would all be grateful for, afterward. She was tiny at the time, not even toddling yet, and it could have killed her. It caught Jerry’s shirt on fire. It burned his chest and throat and he coughed for an hour, trying to get rid of the acrid fumes.
Something else I was grateful for—and I’ve never told anyone this, ever—was that when Jerry and Jennifer died barely a year apart, he died first. That made it manageable for me, somehow. I know it pained her to see the cancer killing him, but it would have destroyed his soft soul if she had gone first.
I’m saying this because I’m a father. I’d take a rocket to the chest for my daughters any day. I’d take all the cancer in the world if it would keep them clear of it.
I just wish the world worked that way, and he would have too.
So very true Paul. To lose a child is indescribable.