By Daniel Granger January 4, 2013

Town bound in my aging Chevy pick up. Livestock feeds were getting low. With the tractor in the shop, and the lawn browned and flattened by December’s chilled fingers, this morning is as convenient as any to visit the feed store.

Scenery along the route changes little daily, particularly this time of year. As I drive, I search for any nuance of change. But I am distracted from within the cab. Two tiny gold crosses, hung from the rear view mirror on a dainty chain, draw my attention.

This is not uncommon. I can go months without noticing the jewelry. But sometimes, the jewelry seems animated. Today, the crosses are standing on the dash, somehow just at a correct angle that they support each other, crossbar to crossbar, as if arm in arm, walking down a wooded path.

At such moments I see my sons in these crosses. And I invariably smile.

In a previous marriage, approaching two decades ago, Christopher and Caleb were prematurely born. Within moments, they died. The distance between their endpoints of birth and death, that time on earth secularists call “life”, was almost nonexistent. The nightmarish scene of attending physicians and eager med students, all in white lab coats, huddled around the radiant warmer is still vivid. Their attention was on the dying boys lying before them. The students were learning the intimate dance of life and death. 

I was learning about grief. 

Until then, I had led a life sheltered from death’s reality. Like a ship harbored in the lee of an island, I had, for the most part, avoided death’s stormy waters. Death was there, but kept at a distance.

One acquaintance in high school wrapped himself around a sturdy oak on Newbury Neck Road in Surry, Maine. Heading to or leaving a party, I have forgotten which. I didn’t make the party. The State Police turned our car away some distance from the crash scene. 

In college two friends were returning to the University on Interstate 90 in the dead of winter. The driver fell asleep at the wheel and they perished. Their funerals were out of state, and so, out of mind.

I had no more occasion to contemplate death until my sons were born.

I learned then a truth which had haunted me before. Life does not begin with birth, nor does it end with death. My boys have always been with me.

The crosses were a gift to my then wife – meant to represent the twins as being with God. 

We were both devastated by the loss of Christopher and Caleb. The nurses claimed holding the tiny babies would bring closure. I don’t know that it did. And, I am not sure E ever really recovered. When she couldn’t find what she wanted in our marriage, she ran, taking most of our material possessions excepting a rickety futon. And the crosses. I suppose anything with an attached memory was left behind.

In a sense, I have believed in that the crosses hold the spirits of Christopher and Caleb. Put across my rear view mirror to remind me daily to pray for them, I admit I don’t always see them. Sometimes they delight in playing hide & seek behind the more whimsical manatees, dolphins and parrots they share their perch with. But when I see them, they are usually in some position more typical of a pair of boys. Tumbling over each other, wrestling, or, as today, arm in arm. I smile at them, supposing they are romping around heaven. And I am reminded of the fragility of life, and the reality of death.

My father died in 2003. In some ways, I have yet to fully digest his passing. I mourn more the slowness and loss of dignity he suffered before his passing. And I cry when I realize so much was unsaid between us.

Life and death happen on the farm with alarming regularity. Death, is, in fact, commonplace – and I, nearly nonchalant about it. 

We have lost scores of chickens. Some from natural causes. Some by predators. And some by jealous domestic pets. I raise pigs only to give them death. And we have lost pets.

A loblolly pine is the headstone for the lost pets, their graves in the shadow cast by it’s growing trunk. 

A fourth grave will soon be dug. Shiloh, my chocolate lab, known to some as storm dog, must be put down. I know the reality, yet hesitate with the decision. She has been my shadow for 13 years.

I turn the truck from the 4-lane into Cecil’s, and the driver’s side tire dives into a pot hole. The crosses, spin freely momentarily before bouncing off of the dash and spinning some more. I hear boyish shouts and giggling. 

No, death is not the end of life. It is simply a word for that which we can no longer see.