Andrew de Vera

Lost Fatherhood

Today I met a young man named Louis and I am forever changed. It’s one of those stories that are very difficult to write for the tears that must be written through, but with a little resolve I will hopefully get through it without short circuiting my keyboard.

And I’m not a man prone to tears.

When I first laid eyes on Louis he was walking along a city street punching the walls of a brick building when a woman walked up to me and said, “That man is crying”, as if I might be of some assistance. As he punched the wall my first thought was, “I don’t know if I can approach that man.”

He crossed the street and collapsed on the sidewalk covering his face as tears streamed onto the pavement. I recognized the sounds the minute I heard them. It was like reliving a forgotten nightmare, the last time I had heard such soulful mourning was the sound of my mother when she first learned my brother had passed away.

I’d hoped to never hear it again.

I walked across the street and placed my hand on his shoulder. It felt like touching a hot oven as the sorrow he was feeling seemed to radiate through my arm and into my heart. And it wasn’t just me… soon other men arrived and were wrapping their arms around him in tears themselves.

An elderly gentleman sat beside him and placed his arm around Louis and said the words I’d written so many times, “You’re not alone.”

None of us knew this weeping young man, and he hadn’t said a word, but somehow we understood what was wrong.

After what seemed a lifetime he finally spoke. He told us he had just lost his child, although he had done everything in his power to save it. He stood up and showed us the fresh wounds on his back where he had jumped from a car going 40 miles an hour.

But even that didn’t save his child.

He told us how he begged and pleaded with the doctor and the family to save the child. And finally when he realized the child would not be spared he asked if he could kiss it and tell it goodbye and that he would see it in heaven.

But they wouldn’t allow it.

It’s difficult to find words in these moments. What do you tell a man who has just lost the child he loved so dearly? Do you tell him the child is with God and knows their father fought for them with everything in him?

Or do you just cry with him?

I told him I believed that God loves us and that the love of a father is emblematic of God’s love for us all. And if that’s true then his child was now with the one who loved it most.

But that didn’t make sense of it.

He had lost his fatherhood and there was nothing he could do about it. But the tragedy of this story is that his suffering could have been avoided if our love was greater than our selfishness.

On September 25th, 2009 at Planned Parenthood a mother with the assistance of a licensed physician took the life of a baby. But not just any baby, because I met the father and held him in my arms.

And not just any father. He was a father who loved a child his eyes had not yet seen. A father who after attempting to talk his girlfriend and her mother out of killing his baby jumped out of a moving car when they refused.

He told us he would gladly give his own life to be with the child.

And that injured father walked into the clinic and asked to speak to his unborn baby one last time and kiss the belly of the mother where his child was being protected and say the words, “I’ll see you in heaven.” And I believe if there is a just God he surely will.

The girlfriend and her mother thought they left him there alone, in tears. But like the old man said he wasn’t alone.

There were heroes ready to help Louis and his child that day, but by the time they were standing outside of the gates where his child’s life would be taken the decisions had already been made and the angels were waiting.

But the child did not die in vain.

Later that day we returned to Planned Parenthood and spoke to every staff member leaving the building. We told them we were there for Louis and his child. That today was a special day because they had taken something they could never give back. They killed the child of a father named Louis who was suffering, but not broken, and that one day he would return to honor the memory of his child to end abortion and the torment of lost fatherhood.

And he will not be alone.

- Mystery Cookie

From the Mystery Cookie Blog