My Song

Tammy McLeod, Harvard Chaplain for Cru, Director of College Ministry Park Street Church, coauthor of Hit Hard: One Family’s Journey of Letting Go of What Was – and Learning to Live Well with What Is.

“Knowledge from both art and science are critical, but in my experience, artistic truths cut deeper into one’s psyche than the more cognitive information.” (Boss, Loss, Trauma, and Resilience, p. 80).

“This will result in death to full recovery or anything in between.”

After giving permission to the doctor for emergency surgery, we prayed over Zach, kissed him goodbye, and they wheeled him into the operating room. Our son had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a football scrimmage a day before his 17th birthday .

Zach survived the surgery, but part of his brain did not. The intensity of the ICU drained me. The neurosurgeon put Zach in a medically induced coma and intubated him. He was hooked to dozens of tubes and monitors with a bolt sticking out of his head to measure intracranial pressure. In the recovery room, we glanced at the strained faces of parents whose children weren’t going to make it.

The intensity of the trauma hospital drained life from me. For a daily escape, I would rely on the beauty of nature–I jogged by the Charles River snaking its way through Cambridge (we live in Cambridge, MA near Harvard University). As I ran and cried and prayed for Zach, I listened to the worship music on his playlists which flooded me with memories: receiving his tender hug each morning as he left for school along with a “Goodbye, Peach, I love you,” kneeling together in prayer each night, sharing what we were learning about God, singing with the children in the townships of South Africa, and ministering together to orphans with disabilities.

Depending on the play of the wind, the surface of the water changed each day— glass, minute ripples, or sloshing waves, but there was a steady current underneath that flowed unchanged. A song chorus unfolded as I ran each day— Beauty in suffering calls out to me. Though everything changes nothing really changes. You are there. Verses followed.

Zach’s worship music touched me more deeply than anything could in those early days of loss; and writing a song for Zach helped me process the pain.

Wailing and moaning on my face before God day and night I cried more in those first few months after Zach’s injury than I had in my entire life; but like the steady current under the surface of the Charles River that I ran by every day, I felt God’s presence with me.

Here is my song for Zach set to a slide show made by my husband Pat and used in our ceremony of ambiguous loss.

Beauty in Suffering

Hugs and loves and kisses goodbye, see you later tonight
Smiles and nicknames, a look in the eye, moments that bring such delight
Hello, then silence, a fast, quiet drive, a prayer and peace is flowing
Lost and rushing we finally arrive, we say goodbye without knowing
Waiting, waiting, holding, holding

Chorus:

Beauty in suffering calls out to me
Beauty in suffering calls out to me
Though everything changes, nothing really changes,
Though everything changes, nothing really changes,
You are there

Seasons pass and some things are gone, but our love can’t be broken
Held and carried, kept safe from the storm, by One who our love has spoken
We will wait and pray for you, our hearts are joined in a chorus
Holding fast to One who is true, holding to One who is for us
Praying, praying, hoping, hoping

Chorus

Bridge

Running and crying and praying for him, music that pierces my soul,
Sunlight that dances off waters I see, even the trees speak to me

Chorus

Copyright 2010, Tammy McLeod