It was his forehead.  Until I saw his forehead, I couldn’t believe it was really him, but that big forehead, so much like the one I have seen in the mirror all my life, it was the same forehead that Henry had, and it was that forehead that told me he was dead.  When Sarah called me and told me that Henry had died, I couldn’t believe it.  He was like a little bowling ball, in stature and in personality.  He never stopped.  I couldn’t imagine Henry being still.  But when I walked up the aisle in the viewing room at Peel’s Funeral Home, and saw the big forehead and the feathery blond hair, I knew my little boy was gone.

I remember looking down in the casket and seeing the beginning of a small freckle on his nose.  Without thinking I reminded Sarah that he had light skin and she needed to put sunscreen on him at his swim lessons.  The tragic silliness of my comment hit me like a punch in face.  Henry wasn’t going to get skin cancer.  He wasn’t going to get any more freckles.  Sunscreen was something from the past.

Standing there beside Henry’s body, I felt so helpless.  My little force of nature, my bouncing, giggly, careening, AC/DC dancing machine was gone.  I couldn’t bring him back.  I couldn’t protect him.  I couldn’t stop him from dying.  I couldn’t protect my other two children from tasting death for the first time through the loss of their baby brother.  I couldn’t take away my wife’s visions of finding him dead.  I couldn’t make it better.  I couldn’t make anything better.  I was trapped in a swirling sea of grief with no land in sight.  Just days earlier, I had been a lawyer handling seemingly important deals.  I had been the father of three children.  I had been so sure of what I was doing and who I was.  Now, without warning, I had been set adrift and I wasn’t sure if I would ever again find the shore.

The situation was a mess and there was nothing I could do to fix it.  Mr. fix it, who could make any problem go away, was at a loss.  What now?

Journeying through grief is like training for a marathon.  It is long and painful, and you are playing the long game.  Death presents the bereaved with two stark options – lie down and give up or move forward.  One way of moving forward is putting into place habits of success.  The habits create a structure to hold us up even when we can’t stand on our own power.  One of the habits that I started early on was to greet each day with a mantra of loss – “Henry is dead.  What are you going to do now?”

On many days the answer to that question is, “I’m going to cry.”  On other days it is, “I’m going to be angry.”  Still other days the answer is “I am going to feel sorry for myself.”  But no matter how I answer the second part of the question, the first part will never change.  Henry is dead.  That reality is here to stay and there is nothing I can do to change it.

Henry’s death is giving me many gifts.  It sounds strange to say it, but the death of my son has blessed me in so many ways.  One of the blessings is that I am learning to live intentionally in the moment.  Henry’s death has unleashed a power in my life, the power of now.

Now is a moment of immense power and possibility.  It is a gift that is easily squandered with worries about the future or concerns about past failures that we refuse to release.  Now is a place of action.  The past and the future are places we cannot visit.  We only have now.

When Henry first died, I would think about all the things I could have done to prevent his death.  “If only” I had done this, or “what if” I had done that.  I would get everything worked out just right in my head to the point that I could stop Henry’s death.  There was only one problem – I had no ability to enact my plan because Henry’s death was in the past and the past is a place where we have no power to act.  Because of that I was like a pony tied to a post, walking around and around in circles.  The mental games feel good for a time because they give us something to do with our emotional energy.  It almost feels like the “what ifs” are taking us somewhere because we appear to be moving.  But when we step back, we realize that we are on the pony, going around and around in circles, traveling the same well-worn path over and over again.  I can only make progress by choosing to unhitch the pony and travel forward over a new path.

I wish I could say that I have arrived.  I haven’t.  I wish I could say that I am an expert in living in the present.  I’m not.  I am learning, slowly but surely, what it means to live in the present and how much possibility there is in the power of now.  Living in the present is freeing.

It means I can let go of past hurts, past wrongs, past grudges, past failures, and past pains in order to fully embrace the gift of life right now.  It means that I can let go of my imagined perfections and the plans that I had that are no longer possible and instead, make something beautiful with what I have. It means that I don’t have to worry about how I have failed and who I have let down.  I can’t change that.  I can act right now to make my life meaningful, to serve others, and to make a positive impact in others’ lives.  It means that there will never be that mythical “someday” when I finally arrive.  It will not be easier to live with purpose in the future or to forgive in the future.  I will not be braver in the future or more willing to sacrifice for others.  I will only be able to do what I am practicing now.

Since Henry’s death I have been guided by two competing visions of myself.  In the first, I am bitter and self-centered.  The pain of Henry’s death was too much for me and I have wrapped myself in whatever I could to dull the pain.  I am guided by one overwhelming concern – me.  It is the day of my daughter’s wedding.  Sarah and I have been divorced for a long time and we don’t speak to each other.  I arrive early for the pictures and as I step into the church I see my daughter off in the distance.  Her mom is arranging her veil.  My daughter looks beautiful.  She is dressed in her wedding dress and is elegant and poised.  For just a moment, I see a flash of Rapunzel when she was three, and we got a specially made princess dress for her from the local tailor.

As I walk into the church, my daughter looks up and a strange expression flashes across her face.  It is a mix of happiness that I am there and an equal part disappointment that I have brought my current girlfriend.

“Dad, you’re here just in time” she says.  “We are just about start the pictures.”

“Let’s get a picture with mom and dad” says the photographer.

I walk up the aisle with my girlfriend and usher her towards the family picture.  After a bit of jockeying we finally decide that my girlfriend will not be in the picture.    My daughter keeps up a brave face but there is something bubbling there, just beneath the surface.  Finally, she blurts out what everyone in thinking.

“Dad, can you stop being a jerk for just one day!?  This is my wedding and it’s still all about you!!!”

In the second vision, I am at the wedding with a different woman.  I am there with Sarah, my wife, the same brown-eyed girl I met at twenty, with the khaki shorts, shy smile, and bouncy ponytail wrapped in a red-gingham ribbon.  She is the same girl who waited for me at the end of a different aisle in a different church.  She is the same girl who held my hand and strolled along the Lake Trail in Palm Beach, and who held my head as I sobbed into her lap that our beautiful boy with the big forehead had died.  We have weathered many more storms since that day.  We have doubled down on service and love, self-sacrifice, and purpose, putting others’ interest before our own.  We have done our best to live every day in the now.

Again, the photographer cajoles us into place at the front of the church.  “Let’s get a picture with mom and dad” he says.  Sarah and I are holding hands.  We look at each other.  She gives me a smile and I kiss her on the forehead.

Each of those men lives within me.  Either person is possible.  One of those men will emerge.  It will not be by accident or twist of fate, but rather by the millions of choices I make every day in the now.

I hope I never lose this gift from Henry’s death.  I don’t want to live my life on autopilot – buried in a phone, or stressed out about work – too busy to notice or appreciate the moment right in front of me.  I hope I can continue to let go of the past and not lose myself with cares and concerns about the future.  Please God, continue to teach me about the power of now.