“He’s Going to Be a Little Boy”

WHAT do parents do when faced with the tragedy of a newborn child that they know will soon die? Can anything ease the pain of facing the inevitable?

This is the reaction of one family to such a situation, as told by the mother:

“When our son died, an acquaintance said: ‘It was the will of God.’ How very glad we were to be able to reply that the God of the Bible never wanted such things to happen. Death and suffering were never part of his original purpose for mankind, but came about only because the first parents of the human family chose to ignore their Creator’s wise directions.

“Like physical laws, moral laws cannot be broken without penalty, and so, as the Bible says at Romans 5:12, ‘through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned.’ Adam and Eve could not pass on to their children the perfection that they had lost by their disobedience. So all of us have inherited imperfection, which has resulted in much pain, sorrow, suffering and death. Knowledge of the reason for all of this did much to keep my husband and me sane during a difficult four years.

“Let me tell you something about our little boy. Sasha was born in October 1975, and although his birth was five weeks premature, he seemed fairly strong. We immediately fell in love with him. The doctors seemed a little concerned about Sasha, but it wasn’t until he was three months old that the pediatrician advised us that he was spastic, which meant that he had a form of cerebral palsy that made his muscles very stiff.

“By the time Sasha was six months old, we knew his problems were serious. He had virtually no control over any part of his body except his mouth, and was unable to hold his head up, or sit, or grasp anything with his hands. He found it very difficult to smile or produce the little babbling sounds babies usually make as they experiment with language. Also, he had difficulty controlling the muscles used for swallowing, so that he very easily gagged or brought up all his food. But with great care and patience we usually managed to keep something down. Worst of all, though, we learned he was probably blind as well.

“Needless to say, life was quite difficult for us, but especially for our little son. I’m sure he felt as frustrated at his limitations as we did. For the first few months he cried almost constantly, or so it seemed. But we felt he would be better off at home with us than he would be in an institution, and now we’re convinced this was so. The Bible says, ‘Love never fails.’ (1 Corinthians 13:8) We certainly found this to be true. The love of Jehovah and of our Christian brothers and sisters sustained us through many trying situations, and the love we had for our little son gave him a reason for living and helped him to keep going when he seemed to have nothing else to live for.

“By the end of his first year he smiled for us. How delighted we were! It meant so much to us, as he had virtually no way of communicating with us except by crying.

“We never could find out how much he understood, but we tried to explain things to him in a simple way in the hope that some of the information might make sense to him​—things like thunder, flowers, the songs of birds, what we were doing, and why. We tried to answer the questions we thought he might ask if only he could.

“But we particularly tried to help Sasha appreciate spiritual things. ‘Jehovah is the father of us all,’ I would say, ‘and he loves us all, just as Daddy and I love you. He doesn’t want anyone to get sick or be hurt, and someday soon he will make everything much, much better than it is right now. Then you won’t get sick anymore, and you’ll be able to sit up all by yourself, and play with your toys; you’ll be able to see, and walk, and talk, and do all the things other children do. You’ll be able to play with them and learn all sorts of wonderful things.’

“We could tell him these things because we knew for a certainty they would come true under the rule of the kingdom that Jesus Christ taught us to pray for. (Matthew 6:10) We knew that at Revelation 21:4 the Bible contains this wonderful promise: ‘And [God] will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.’ We knew, too, that even if death were to come between us, ‘there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.’​—Acts 24:15.

“In spite of all our efforts to protect him from infections, Sasha came down with pneumonia and this was followed by other problems. He gradually grew thinner and weaker, until at three years of age he weighed less than fifteen pounds. Brave little fellow​—he fought so very hard to stay alive and always appreciated what we did for him. Even a few hours before he died he managed to muster enough strength for a big smile and a little sigh that told us ‘I love you’ more eloquently than any poet could have expressed it.

“When Sasha was in the hospital a few weeks before he died, one of the nurses who had been particularly kind to him on previous occasions, and meaning well, said to me: ‘He’s going to be an angel.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s going to be a little boy. He’s going to be able to climb trees and chase butterflies and pick flowers, and do all the things little boys usually do. That is what we are asking for when we pray: “Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth.”’ (Matthew 6:10).”​—Contributed.