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    Loving Samuel: Suffering, Dependence, and the Calling of Love
    Loving Samuel: Suffering, Dependence, and the Calling of Love
    Loving Samuel: Suffering, Dependence, and the Calling of Love
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    Loving Samuel: Suffering, Dependence, and the Calling of Love

    By Aaron D. Cobb

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    About this ebook

    Loving Samuel is a retelling of the experience of welcoming and loving my son Samuel, who was diagnosed in utero with a chromosomal abnormality known as Trisomy 18. Samuel died January 2, 2012, just five hours after his birth. The experience of loving him and grieving his loss has profoundly shaped the character of my family. Loving Samuel weaves together both the narrative of our experience and broad thematic reflections on the human condition, the difficulties of loss and grief, the importance of friendship, and the necessity of virtues like faith and love for suffering well--for wresting something good from circumstances that seem meaningless.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCascade Books
    Release dateJun 9, 2014
    ISBN9781630872014
    Loving Samuel: Suffering, Dependence, and the Calling of Love
    Author

    Aaron D. Cobb

    Aaron D. Cobb is assistant professor of philosophy at Auburn University at Montgomery. His primary area of teaching is Medical Ethics and his research focuses primarily on the History of the Philosophy of Science.

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    • 5/5
      A beautiful, truthful portrayal of grief and love for a son who lived and died in love.

    Book preview

    Loving Samuel - Aaron D. Cobb

    9781625641267.kindle.jpg

    Loving Samuel

    Suffering, Dependence,

    and the Calling of Love

    Aaron D. Cobb

    35317.png

    Loving Samuel

    Suffering, Dependence, and the Calling of Love

    Copyright © 2014 Aaron D. Cobb. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

    Cascade Books

    An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

    199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

    Eugene, OR 97401

    www.wipfandstock.com

    isbn 13: 978-1-62564-126-7

    eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-201-4

    Cataloging-in-Publication data:

    Cobb, Aaron D.

    Loving Samuel : suffering, dependence, and the calling of love / Aaron D. Cobb.

    xiv + 118 p. ; 23 cm.

    isbn 13: 978-1-62564-126-7

    1. Children—Death—Psychological aspects. 2. Grief. 3. Bereavement. I. Title.

    BF575 G7 C62 2014

    Manufactured in the U.S.A.

    In loving memory of Samuel

    Preface

    This book is a retelling of the experience of welcoming and loving our son, Samuel, who died January 2 , 2012 , just five hours after his birth. We learned very early in the pregnancy that Samuel had a rare abdominal wall defect known as an omphalocele. Later, we would learn that he had Trisomy 18 —a defect involving an extra copy of the eighteenth chromosome. The experience of caring for Sam and mourning his death has profoundly shaped the character of my family.

    Interspersed within this narrative of our experience are broad reflections on the human condition, the difficulties of loss and grief, the importance of friendship, and the necessity of virtues like faith and love for suffering well—that is, for wresting something good from circumstances that seem meaningless. My hope is that these words may provide a witness to our understanding of the nature and value of human life, to its vulnerability, and to the call of love for those who most need our care. Although Sam had an extra copy of his eighteenth chromosome, like every other human being, his development was the unfolding of all sorts of inherent capacities. Some of these would be damaged because of the extra copy of the eighteenth chromosome, but for all his limitations, he possessed the remarkable capacity to summon our love.

    Fulfilling this vocation was difficult and required a choice to embrace the suffering it would engender. But we are convinced that this choice is part of what it means to love; to choose to love is to open oneself simultaneously to both joy and suffering. Thankfully, a community of fellow sufferers provided the gifts and grace of friendship, seconding and sustaining our choice. Fostering courage and hope, they made it possible to live well in the midst of our suffering.

    The thoughts I recount here reflect the influence of my training and study in the discipline of philosophy. And, in particular, reflections about the decisions and choices we made, about the kinds of medical care we would provide, about the practice of medicine in cases like these, and more generally about the ethical and social questions situations like these pose, bear the mark of my work with Father John Kavanaugh, a Jesuit priest. In the course of my doctoral studies in philosophy at Saint Louis University, I had the privilege of assisting Father Kavanaugh in teaching medical ethics. His wisdom, keen sense of humor, and disarming gentleness had a profound influence on me.

    In the midst of one of many conversations, he told of a time in his ministry when he was struggling to make sense of the life and death of a child who had been born prematurely. Tamika was no bigger than the size of a person’s hand and had been born, in Father Kavanaugh’s words, sick and shriveled. Reflecting on Tamika’s life, in a moment of despair, Father Kavanaugh asked his friend who had nursed and cared for Tamika throughout her short life, What on earth did Tamika ever have? Father Kavanaugh’s friend responded, She had the power to call out love from me. Reflecting on Father Kavanaugh’s influence in my life, especially now in light of his own death on November 5, 2012, I am thankful for the ways in which my time with him would prepare me for the circumstances my family would face when we learned of Samuel’s condition.

    What follows is an account of our experience; it is confessional, but it is not didactic. Although I am an academic, this work is not intended to be an exercise of systematic argumentation. Instead, it is a picture of our halting attempts to understand our experience and to live out the beliefs to which we have committed our lives. In a sense, the writing of this book has been an instance of what C. S. Lewis refers to in Mere Christianity as training the habit of Faith. Lewis writes,

    Faith . . . is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes . . . This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods where they get off, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.¹

    When I began writing, I did not have any intent to publish these thoughts together as a book. As we awaited Samuel’s birth, and now as we continue to mourn his death, writing has been a spiritual discipline of recording fragmentary and often inchoate thoughts until I feel my way through the perplexing fog of grief. It has been a sounding out of interior thoughts and a way of rehearing truths to which I can commit my life. As I wrote, I shared some of these thoughts with family and friends so that they could enter more fully into our experience and share more deeply in our suffering. My first philosophy professor, Dr. Craig A. Boyd, whom I now count as a good friend, said to me, I don’t know if it makes sense—but somehow I think that grief (even when you feel so very alone) is like compassion—I think it needs to be shared. It is in this spirit that I offer this work.

    1. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,

    2002

    )

    117

    .

    Acknowledgments

    I cannot express sufficient gratitude to the many friends and family who carried (and continue to carry) us through our most difficult days as a family. And I certainly cannot name everyone to whom I owe a large debt of gratitude. Many of these individuals who have loved us so well are mentioned in the book as participants in our story. I wish to thank our Christchurch family in particular for their care for my family; they were for us what the church ought to be. And I want to acknowledge the love and support of our families. Finally, and most importantly, I must thank my beautiful wife, Alisha, whose love and strength amaze me; my son, Micah, who has taught me so much about love and trust; and my son, Samuel, who was and is a gift.

    1

    Samuel

    How does one remember a life that ends before it begins? How can one offer a good word about a life whose every moment was coded for death? Is it all a waste? And when I consider Samuel—his life—is it a waste for him? Would Samuel have been better off having not experienced his mom’s love? Is his brother’s love and laughter wasted? Are my words insignificant to his little life?

    November 13, 2011

    Samuel was born New Year’s day. He had lived just four hours and fifty-eight minutes when his nurse quietly whispered, I don’t hear a heartbeat. I kissed his head gently. Those brief hours with him were some of the most important of my life; they were at once peaceful, sad, and significant. Holding Samuel was an unexpected gift, a tender touch of mercy at the

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