Amanda Lamb: Heartsick

One of my favorite quotes about parenting comes from journalist Ellen Cantarow who said: “Making the decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart walking around outside your body.”

Last week, grandmother Marjory Regan was driving her teenage grandchildren and their friends home from dinner and a movie. She was sitting at a stoplight when a man police say was drunk and speeding smashed into the back of her minivan killing her instantly. Another child, 15-year-old Ethan Handly, died two days later at the hospital. Regan’s grandchildren, Hailey and Stephen Wagner Jr., survived but were seriously injured. Another teenager, 13-year-old Chloe Joyner, had been in the car, but was dropped off shortly before the crash.

For the parents of all these children, this week has been a roller coaster of emotions. For Cyndi Joyner, Chloe’s mother, it was a bittersweet moment of being thankful for her daughter’s safety, while mourning the loss of Handly and her concern about the Wagner children.

“It’s human nature, you can’t help but think about what ifs. I’m just so thankful that God saw a different path for my child," she said.

For Stephen Wagner, the father of Hailey and Stephen Jr., he was at once mourning the loss of his mother, his children’s grandmother, and keeping watch at Hailey and Stephen’s bedsides at the hospital.

“It’s bittersweet. I’ve got my kids, but I lost my mom," he said.

And for Marilee Patterson, the loss of her son Ethan is no doubt unimaginable. The community has rallied to support her as she also recently lost her husband to cancer and is now raising Ethan’s two younger siblings alone. Patterson made the courageous and noble decision to donate her son’s organs.

Both literally, and figuratively, our children’s hearts so richly embedded with our DNA and entwined with our deepest love, exist outside of our bodies after we give birth. We cannot always protect them from harm—sometimes that is physical harm, other times it is emotional.

So, all we can really do is love them while they’re here because there are no promises of a new day, only this fleeting moment that we are in. So, squeeze your children and their hearts each time you walk away, and remember that this is what we signed up for as parents…a lifetime of worry, sometimes heartbreak, and if your lucky, moments that make you whole.