Holly sings a new hymn

Host Todd Boss converses with Holly about the tragic loss of her son Killian. Her changing relationship and communion with God and His will for her life inspire a graceful, grateful hymn.

Chapters in this episode:

1. Holly catalogs her losses
2. A bit of background
3. Killian's silence
4. Finding peace in a new place
5. A shifting sense of identity and God
6. Telling the truth about grief
7. The poem: Hymn

Transcript

Holly  0:03  
Hi, my name is Holly. I'm a military wife. I live in Washington State. When we moved here six years ago, it was our fourth state to live in in less than two years. I came here with eight children.

And in 2018, I had another son, nine children, and in 2020, my son died in his sleep. He was 20 months old. We decided this was the community we hoped to retire in in several years, and so we bought a house right at the beginning of COVID. Around that same time, I found out I was pregnant again. In August, I lost that baby. I was rushed to the hospital with an uncontrollable hemorrhage, and I almost died. It took six hours to stabilize me. But I made it, and I was able to come home and life went on. A month later, my husband's niece--she was in her thirties--was killed in a car accident. My oldest son became engaged, and a few months later, just before the wedding, his fiance broke that off. So our family was loss after loss after loss. I found out I was pregnant again. My husband's brother was in a motorcycle accident. He's paralyzed, probably for life. In the fall of last year, I had a stillborn baby.

It's been a year now since we've had any tragedies in our family. We feel better off for all that we've been through.

Todd  1:57  
In this podcast, I help strangers discover the poetry in their most intimate stories. I'm Todd Boss.

Todd  2:04  
Okay. Are you on?

Holly  2:05  
I'm here. 

Todd  2:06  
Great. We're recording. So much has happened to you. Last couple of years. (Yes.) It's just kind of boggling. And I must admit, I don't quite know where to start. So forgive me, but maybe you have an idea where a good place to begin would be.

Holly  2:23  
I honestly feel the same way. Like I never know where to start. But when I first called and left you that first message, I was trying not to sound like a crazy church lady. Because I was pretty sure you wouldn't pick me if you just thought I was a crazy church. Like, like I guarded that a little bit. So it didn't eliminate me. Yeah.

Todd  2:54  
You just divulged that some little part of you, back in the backroom, thinks you're crazy church lady.

Holly  3:01  
No, I, I definitely think like, Would I perceive myself as crazy? Yes, maybe? Yes. Am I okay with that? Yes, I think so. Is this still authentically me? 100%? Absolutely. I don't want to hide it from people. But I don't want to push people away. I want to convince them that I'm worth knowing before I reveal my crazy. 

Todd  3:29  
To be fair, Holly is not crazy. But since the crib death of her son Killian, she's had enough tragedy in her life to make anyone crazy. Under the circumstances, she sounds remarkably sane.

Holly  3:43  
But I, uh, I don't I don't know where to start

Speaker 3  3:46  
Somewhere you found the reserves of strength to, you know, even to make the call to me. (Yeah.) What? What appealed to you about it? And why did you make the call?

Holly  3:59  
I did a lot of journaling. After my son died, and then through, you know, all the next tragedies and but you know, it was, it was words that were for me. So over the last nine months, I've been kind of in a journaling style, but making it words that can be shared with other people. And I feel like once I had that--it's a 200 page book, and once I have it complete, then I'll like type it up or rearrange it and God will give me the next step. And I was just a few pages away from the end when I saw the opportunity to share with you. So I thought maybe that is part of my path. (Haha, I love it.) So it's kind of a way to share my story.

Speaker 3  4:46  
Wait, do I hear kids in the background? You have eight children, right?

Holly  4:50  
I do have eight living children. I have six of them at home. Yeah, you probably hear some running up and down the stairs a little bit. I'm trying to kind of hide out in the guest room.

Todd  5:02  
It's pretty hard to get away from this as children when you have that many.

Holly  5:05  
It is. And with a small echo we have, indeed, the I have six kids that live at home and they're all home right now. And then I have two that are grown and out of the house. This is so fascinating what you're doing. Like I love people and their stories. So this is really cool.

Todd  5:20  
Thanks. Yeah, I'm excited. How'd you hear about it?

Holly  5:24  
I my friend John Corcoran. (I thought so. I thought so.)  He posted it on Facebook. (Okay.) And and I just grabbed it off of there.

Todd  5:35  
John was my guest in episode two. Thanks, John, for spreading the word.


Todd  5:56  
if you're a sensitive listener, you might want to skip the next 90 seconds or so while I select a few vivid details about Killian's death from Holly's diary. Here's what Holly wrote about that terrible day. Killian had been laid down to bed as usual after dinner. Everything was perfectly normal. It must have been around 9:15 when I snuck into the room tiptoeing in my boots to keep quiet. Killian was lying on his belly near his pillow in a corner of his crib. Something seemed off. I placed my fingertips on his back and couldn't feel a breath. I quickly laid my full hand down on his back, and he seemed small and still.

Todd  6:50  
I screamed, "He's not breathing." I turned him towards me and pulled him onto my shoulder, his head slumping. His still face was pale and tinged dark bluish gray around his eyes and lips, almost as if the darkness was dripping from the corners of his mouth. I met Andy at the end of the hall he was also yelling; Morgan was screaming; Aurora was screaming Laney; was screaming. And he handed me his phone to call 911 and took Killian and laid him on the floor at the top of the stairs and began CPR. I knew by the color of his face that only a miracle would bring him back. I dialed 911 moaning over and over this is not happening. This is not happening. The paramedics arrived. I think the medics took Killian to the dining room table for CPR and maybe to shock him, but I never saw any of it. I never saw them carry him out to the ambulance.

Holly  7:49  
You know, one of the first things I think of when I think of the night he died and the people that came to our house and there was police and investigators and paramedics, and it was crazy. And I remember it was cold, because they left my front door open because people were coming in and out. And there was a police officer standing at the front door. And so one of the first things I think of is it was cold. And at one point I was like, "Can someone just close the door?" And that feels silly. But it, like, that makes it real.

Todd  8:25  
I've never lost a child. So, I have in, in some ways; my daughter and I have been estranged for about eight years. (Oh, I'm sorry.) Yeah, and my son has had some real rebellion situations where we've been estranged to, for, off and on for periods of long periods of time. And so I can relate to some extent, but certainly, yeah. Certainly not all the way. Yeah. And you hear it talked of the death of a child as sort of the worst thing, you know, anyone can go through.

Holly  8:59  
Right. Yeah. And I think it's, it's just unimaginable. Your child isn't supposed to die before you, you know, that's just not supposed to happen, which doesn't make anyone feel any better when people say that. But as we have had tragedies, like, more people share their stories with us.

Todd  9:20  
The community that gathered to support this nomadic military family inspired them to think about putting down roots here. They started looking at real estate apps, a house caught Holly's eye. 

Holly  9:31  
I know. It's like, well, there's like an acre of land and there's a ton of square footage. There's something about this house.

Todd  9:36  
They bought the house just a month after Killian died. 

Holly  9:40  
And I don't know, it just felt so completely right that we just did it. It has been, it's been, I mean, I tell people that like that God wrapped this house up in a package and gave it to us because it was just what we needed. We have a little farm. It had a barn on it and a chicken coop already and a little bit of fencing. So we were able to run with that. And so we have a little farm now, too.

Todd  10:05  
the books Holly's been reading lately include Raised Bed Gardening, The Backyard Beekeeper, and A Guide to Raising Rabbits.

Holly  10:13  
We have a couple of little goats, minister goats and we have a livestock guard dog who watches them. And we've got, I don't know, a dozen chickens and about that many ducks running around there, and my daughter has some rabbits now. When everything was shut down for COVID, we had this property to do projects on and the land for the kids to play on, or build a campfire or something. So that was a huge blessing.

Todd  10:40  
I'm imagine that for that farm is all part of your homeschooling experience. It is a lot to learn from, you know, managing all that.

Holly  10:48  
Yeah, yeah. And we totally involve involve the kids love it. 

Todd  10:53  
Wow, I love it. What an amazing life you have. I mean, it sounds kind of ideal.

Holly  10:56  
It's amazing. And we wouldn't have this life we have now if my son hadn't died. So that's kind of wild. My life is, is beautiful. And it wouldn't be what it is if I hadn't had the tragedies.

Speaker 3  11:10  
What does it take to say, man, it's a weird thing to say, because...

Holly  11:14  
It's a weird thing. Sometimes it feels weird to say it out loud. People who don't know me well, it's not what people expect. I think people just expect sadness, people expect more like, what could it have been? Or what would it have been like if this hadn't happened? Where I can really, I really only see it as look at all these amazing things that happened because because this happened, and it just it's always felt really natural, to me, like from the very beginning to feel that way. And that's a little shocking to myself sometimes. Because I know it's just grace. I didn't try to be strong and you know, look at the bright side, or make an intention to be like, the glass is half full. It really comes natural to me. And so I'm just grateful for that grace.

Todd  12:09  
Grateful for that grace. Remember, we're talking about someone who lost a son, suffered two miscarriages and a stillbirth, and then she lost a nice to a car accident, and then she had a brother in law who became paralyzed.

Holly  12:25  
He was in a motorcycle accident the day before Easter. He had a truck pull out in front of him, a pickup truck, and he just drove right into it. He's in a wheelchair now. And he, you know, he has sporadic feeling, but nothing consistent. It's kind of a weird thing. Like it feels like, it feels like a little thing. But it's a huge thing. Because we have such big things.

Todd  12:49  
I mean, it's almost like you've developed a thicker skin. 

Holly  12:53  
You know, I've always been like resilient in an emergency kind of situation, I can stay calm. Especially after Killian died, I realized that I actually wasn't strong at all. Over that first year after Killian died, people would compliment our family, like, you know that we have this great faith, or we're doing so good. And, and it was kind of weird for me, especially at first because I used to want to, like, influence people more or to be a good role model for people or something. But that's not what I was trying to do in this case. I was just living my life. And then suddenly, people were like, you're such a good example. And I'm like, I'm just living my life. Like living with intention is super important to me. And in those days and weeks, I was like, kind of just floating through life. I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't trying to be strong. I wasn't trying to do anything. I was just being. In a way that I've never experienced since then. That only happened after Killian died. But then people kept telling me that I was really strong. Like people were seeing a strength in me that I didn't have any control over whatsoever. Like I didn't even know it existed. Until people pointed it out. I want to say then no, like, I'm not strong, it's like, you're wrong. I'm not strong. Because how could I be strong if I wasn't trying to be strong?

Todd  14:16  
Holly's idea of herself shifted even more during this period.

Holly  14:19  
Right after Killian died, and I was like kind of going back around people again, like, I kind of felt like an elephant in the room. Like everybody knew I was keeping a secret or something. And I kind of wanted everybody to know what happened to me, but I didn't want it to define me. It was just like, I wanted people to know that this hard thing happens to me, but that's not who I am. I don't want to just be the lady who lost a child. But I do want you to know that about me.

Todd  14:51  
Holly's kids know that about her. They suffered those losses too, don't forget. Here's Aurora, Simon, Gawain, and Gabe

Aurora  14:59  
My favorite memory was when he'd call me in the morning. And he'd be screaming my name. And I'd go in there, and I'd set him out of bed, and he'd go and grab a book and grab his little blanket. And you'd go sit on the couch, and read his book with me.

Simon  15:16  
It's, for me, I let Killian play with all my toys. And he rode my toy fire truck a lot.

Holly  15:24  
What do you think he would have been like when he got bigger?

Simon  15:28  
Like, not really nice, and not really mean, but like, medium.

Gawain  15:37  
I remember him holding himself up on chairs and swinging. And that would make him super happy.

Gabe  15:44  
He would hit you in the head with a book. And then he'd be, act all nice, and go and grab you an ice pack. But then come, bam, you're hit with the ice pack next.

Gawain  15:55  
My favorite memory of Killian him when he was little, is he would like push himself up between two chairs and the swing up and down. Then he would like laugh and laugh about it. And if he was still alive today, I would just say I love him.

Todd  16:15  
I wonder what your relationship is with Killian, what would you tell him if you could talk to him.

Holly  16:21  
I would thank him for his intercession. I have kind of an image of him, like, standing next to Jesus, like just pulling on his robe like, hey, my mom needs something, hook her up, like, but I just have this image that he's like right there. And he can kind of obtain things for us that are in alignment with God's wealth. I'm struck

Todd  16:41  
I'm struck by your frequent use of this phrase, God's will that whatever God's will is for you that that's the path forward. Right. I guess I just have to ask you and I, I don't mean this crassly. Yeah. But is it God's will that Killian died? What do you do with that?

Holly  16:58  
I would say like, in my feeling of it, is that he allowed Killian to die. He enjoys having Killian in heaven, I guess. Like, God doesn't want things to die, but things die, people die. So I do think that God allowed for that to happen. And I think that a lot of people's lives were were changed. Things were shaken up. People looked at things differently. So many things happened after he died. I think God allowed it; it he didn't will it, if that makes if that nuance makes sense.

Todd  17:32  
Our conversation reminds me of a poem by Nick Flynn, called God's Will. Isn't there a bird, what's its name that collects blue things? Bottle cap, rubber band, bits of broken cups to make an elaborate, sparkling blue nest on the ground. At a meeting, a woman spoke of her brother who just OD'd. Teary, she said she knew it was God's will. We all want to be held a little higher. Bowerbird, that's the name, it gathers all that blue and arranges it into a nest to make the beloved, of course, want to stay.

Holly  18:31  
It wasn't that I was angry that Killian had died. I was angry at the relentlessness of everything being taken away. And you know, a lot of that was due to COVID. Like piling COVID on top of what was happening. It was just so much. And then it continued to be so much.

Todd  18:52  
And when did you realize it was God that you were angry?

Holly  18:55  
I have like a prayer book that has Psalms and, and passages that I read. And I've been praying from this book every morning and every night. And the night before that I couldn't. Like, I just didn't know why. I just like couldn't pray. But I slept with that book under my pillow. Because I still wanted to be close to it. But I didn't understand what was happening. And at the time, I was, you know, taking a lot of fun walks, just processing things or just turn on podcasts and listen to things to keep my brain from trying to process things.

Todd  19:38  
Holly walks the park one early summer morning listening to a podcast about Graham Greene's The End of an Affair in which one of the central characters is an atheist.

Holly  19:49  
And he didn't believe in God. But by the end of the book, he expressed that he was angry with God. And if he was angry with God, then he believed in him and, and that was really powerful to me. That anger validates existence, can prove an existence and, and that anger was okay. And I, I suddenly realized that I was angry at God and that was okay. as well. You know, it was just kind of lightning bolt revelation like that that's what I was feeling. And then I could pray again. But when I couldn't pray, I didn't know it was anger that I was feeling. 

Todd  20:37
So it was the book, the fictional character in the book that made your sort of recognize your own feelings, and then your relationship with God changed at that moment.

Holly  20:42  
I think so because I suddenly like, could acknowledge how, like, anger and love could coexist and be really okay with that. It was really a big epiphany moment for me, even though it's just like a just a nuanced change.

Todd  21:02  
Holly offered to read me a very personal entry from her diary.

Speaker 9  21:05  
November 1, 2020. All Saints Day. So much sadness. We went to the cemetery, and I laid on his stone and sobbed. One of my harder crisis periods since he died. I laid my cheek against his stone, like I couldn't get close enough. It was cold and smooth, and it felt good against my cheek. My tears washed through the grooves of the crosses on his stone. I felt peace and sadness at the same time. I may have been there an hour, while Andy and a few kids hovered awkwardly nearby, waiting for me to get up. I truly could have slept there. I could have stayed there. The marble was the same. The sacredness and the holy was the same. My cheek pressed so cold, my tears flowing, becoming like a shine, a glow on the stone. My lips touching the cold stone. There was something so electric and sad and hard and cold and connected. I don't even want the sad to go away. Because the rest of the closeness to the sacred would go with it. I want to embrace the sadness, to no longer be arrested by it. The sadness is true. Real, but my eyes literally hurt from all the crying today.

Todd  22:34  
I want to embrace the sadness to no longer be arrested by it. Can you tell me a little bit about where that comes from? I'm not sure I completely understand it

Holly  22:42  
In the first weeks, particularly after Killian died, I was just kind of like floating along, you know, being carried by God in a sense, and it's so hard to explain. I wasn't troubled by anything else in the world. But I had felt so much love and just peace in the sadness that I hadn't ever felt without the sadness. So they felt kind of intertwined. I think they were indeed intertwined. And so I didn't want to wish away the sadness, that love and that joy wouldn't have existed without that sadness.

Todd  23:25  
Around the first anniversary of Killian's death, Holly called friends and community members together around a pizza party at home with Killian's godparents. But when the Day rolled around, a huge February snowstorm descended on the farm. Everyone was snowed in. So it was just Holly, her husband, Andy, and the kids.

Holly  23:45  
It was so the opposite of sad, but like we sat around, and we talked about things we remembered of Killian. But all of the memories that kept coming up. We're definitely not like remember how scary it was when when he was dead. Like, those weren't the memories. The memories were remember how the homeschool group made all those brownies for us for Valentine's Day. Or remember how everybody gave us oranges. Every time someone brought me a meal, they brought me oranges. We had so many oranges, like it's kind of our family joke about like, about making orange juice. But that was what I felt like there was so, so much good. Like, we weren't sad at all.

Todd  24:33  
Holly's relationship with God was evolving.

Holly  24:36  
My faith changed. Like sometimes I feel like things happen, and I'm like, this was like just for me. And I have these feelings like, like God did that just for me. But also, like, he's doing things just for you right now. And just for Lucy down the street or George or whatever like, like he's doing things just for you, like on such a personal level, like we can't fathom, like how God is, is actually like endeavoring to have a relationship with each person in the whole world, all at the same time, but in a personal way that is, like more personal and more perfect than any human in our life could do.

Holly  25:33
Hi, Todd, it's Holly. And I've been checking my email over and over again. So, when I got your email this morning, saying that you had something written, I kind of surprised myself with, with a feeling of sadness, that our conversations will be coming to an end. Gosh, crying all the crying. I didn't realize how much I enjoyed our conversations, and I always look forward to hearing what your next questions are.

Todd  26:06  
I write Holly's poem early one morning after allowing myself to drop into my own grief for a while. I remember what Holly said about the weirdness of tears, how they'll come at strange intervals and respond to random triggers. I think about how grief and grace stand in the same place. How a hole in one's life can also be a doorway. I'm not a religious person, I'm more likely atheist in the Graham Greene story, but Holly's faith pushed me to recognize her God in the poem I wrote for her.  I've been thinking a lot about what kind of poem it is that you want, what kind of poem it is that you need, maybe, right? And maybe I'm wrong about this, correct me if I am, but it doesn't seem like you need a poem of grief. (Right.) As much as you need a new poem of praise because you know, Holly, you've made a believer out of me in this process. It's been impossible for me to do that without empathizing with you in your faith. You know, I've had to adopt your faith in order to see things the way you see them, and that's been a really great exercise for me. So I want to thank you for that. You know, your faith is shining a little bit in me. (That's beautiful.) I didn't expect that. So I'm calling this Hymn.

Todd  27:34  
The poem's title is Hymn, spelled like a church hymn. H-y-m-n.

Todd  27:39  
Killian isn't in it, but I think that pronoun him refers to him. All right, well, I'm gonna send you the poem. (Okay.) Are you ready? (I'm ready.) It's weird where tears track versus where they go on this bill is Creek if rivers flowed some arbitrarily....

Todd  28:05  
It’s weird where/ tears/ track versus where/ they go/ unspilled./ If creeks, if/ rivers flowed so/ arbitrarily,/ there’d be no/ safe/ place to tent,/ let alone/ build and settle/ down./ Give us instead/ a headwater./ A valley/ for the lily. A/ regularly/ filled bed./ Praise Him/ who bids us swim/ where/ we might drown.

Holly  28:42
It's beautiful. Beautiful. 

Todd  28:49
You can read and hear this poem again, and read Holly's further reflections on it, on our website poeminthat.com.

Holly  28:57  
It's very sudden it feels like even though this was the point of the whole exercise. It felt very sudden and shocking that it was happening, when when you said that you had something to share.  

Todd  29:11  
If you feel there's a poem in your story, I'd like to hear from you. Leave me a message at 808-300-0449 or visit our online poets directory, professional poets at your service, at poeminthat.com. There's a Poem in That is written and produced by me, Todd Boss, with support from associate producer Hila Plitmann and Story Editor Claire Wiley, audio support from Ben O'Brien, theme music by Esh Whitacre, and for this episode, composer Pedro Osuna, wrote and recorded a new song. It's yours to download at poeminthat.com.

Holly  29:50  
Things must come to an end. Because otherwise how would we handle that abundance? We have to do other things. And that's beautiful and hard.

Todd  30:02
The poem in the middle of this episode, God's Will by Nick Flynn, was used by permission of the poet. It comes from his collection, I Will Destroy You, published by Graywolf Press. Thanks for listening. I'm Todd Boss.

Holly 30:16
I've been just praying for someone to ask me my story, for someone to ask me questions, and I've learned tons about myself in this experience of sharing my story with you, and it's just what I've been praying for. So I think you're an answer to a prayer.