Roberta Grimes

Childhood Transitions

Posted by Roberta Grimes • January 11, 2025 • 15 Comments
Afterlife Research, Death

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and staunch he stands;
The little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.

“Now, don’t you go till I come,” he said,
“And don’t you make any noise!”
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamed of the pretty toys;
And as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue —
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true!
Eugene Field (1850-1895), from “Little Boy Blue” (1888)

My mother knew many old poems by heart. She especially liked “Little Boy Blue,” and she would recite it cheerily as she went about her day. Somehow, it didn’t tug at her heartstrings the way without fail it still does to mine. Even today, I cannot get through all three verses of it without tears in my eyes. Back in the nineteenth century, before the invention of antibiotics and the wonder of protective vaccines, it was not at all unusual for a family’s two or even three young children to all catch diphtheria or typhoid fever or some other now readily preventable illness, and for all of them to be called by an angel on a single night. Indeed, the wisdom was that you should not become too fond of a young child until after it had hit the age of five.

Even as late as Little Boy Blue’s day, memorial photography was a common thing. Most personal photography in the late eighteen-hundreds still happened formally in a studio, so when children and young people died unexpectedly, they often then would be photographed for the first time and in a lifelike pose. Or a whole family would then be photographed, but with one child looking stiffly propped-up. I have a book of nineteenth-century memorial photographs, and it includes some examples of two or even three small children in the same family who had died together of a single illness. They would generally be laid out to be photographed in plain-crafted oblong boxes leaning against a wall, from youngest to oldest. The youngest might be a nine-month-old in a long white christening dress which spills out of the casket onto the floor. Next might be a little boy perhaps two years old, nattily dressed in knickers and with his hands folded, our Little Boy Blue. And the third, larger box might contain a girl of barely four whose hair has been fussily teased into banana curls. Again, she is posed to greet eternity with her hands folded, as if she were an adult. I look at such pictures with sympathetic horror. There was a long-ago night on which this young family had three children, and they were fighting mightily to keep at least one of them alive! But by the next morning, their children all had succumbed to a terrible childhood illness that is just some preventable nothing today.

My comfort is knowing that for most of a century now, sudden childhood deaths have ceased to be the parental nightmare that they once were. In fact, for a  long time it has been a rare thing for a child that survives its birth to then die in childhood of anything except for cancer or an accident. Yet we who study death and the afterlife still can study deaths that happen out of order for the fact that they nevertheless very often turn out to be deaths that were planned before birth, and they clearly were designed to serve useful purposes in their families’ lives. Not every gift is fun to receive!

This phenomenon of childhood deaths as planned family gifts is a tough one for many people to accept. Nevertheless, we are told now that deaths which happen in childhood are a crucial fact of some lives that were well planned before birth; and when sub-adults die, their early deaths were always planned, without exception. My Thomas feels so strongly about this that he now insists to me that every death by any cause that happens before the early twenties is a planned exit by someone who didn’t need to live that additional lifetime, but who chose to be born one extra time and then die very young for the family’s spiritual benefit. Please recall the fact that we come to earth to learn how to better raise our spiritual vibrations away from fear and toward love so we can better grow spiritually. And then consider some of the many kinds of spiritual growth and depth and overall progress that can be gained by those who love and then lose a child.

Consider, too, these important additional factors:

• Entering Adulthood. Even as late as the mid-twentieth-century, the near-universal acts of marrying and then bringing infants into the world were closely and irrevocably tied. That combined act of marrying and having a first child was seen as the true and essential marker of attaining adulthood, and it was seen to include tremendous emotional stretching and risk. To marry was to accept and to live that risk, with all its attendant complexities and responsibilities. This is a main reason why sex outside of marriage always has been strictly forbidden. It is hard for those younger than perhaps seventy years old now even to imagine this, but the ancient and long-continuing rigid set of family-related customs, further sanctioned and blessed by the Christian religion, is why those few late-Sixties years wrought such utter havoc on Western culture. In only three or four perfectly disastrous years, we went from a comfortable and consistent family-based culture that was at least two millennia old to one which sanctioned free sex outside marriage and the easy use of recreational drugs, and this new culture actually disfavored and even disdained our ever getting married in the time-honored way. Wow, talk about sowing chaos! Many of those in the first Vietnam-War-damaged, drug-addled, free-love Sixties generation never really got over their sudden loss of all constraints. And Western culture as a whole is still struggling to recover from the aftereffects of that awful youthquake today.
• Turning to God. The unexpected loss of a child is among the worst tragedies that ever can befall us. Many of those who have suffered the sudden and unexpected death of a baby or a young child will tell you that there is no pain as deep as what they have endured, and in the wake of that death they will often look for spiritual solace wherever they can find it. Often, it is when they are in this bereft situation that many people will seek a deeper relationship with God. Whether they return to church attendance, or they seek a spiritual advisor, or their spiritual awakening comes in a more subtle way, for many people, the loss of a baby or a young child will be the cause of a spiritual awakening for them, and the start of a deeper spiritual awareness. The loss of a child can also damage human relationships, true, and it can break up marriages; but sometimes, the deepening of spiritual awareness can lead to greater and more rapid spiritual growth.
• Enlightening Miracles. These extra births and early deaths can sometimes be amazingly revealing of what planning must be going on behind the curtain! Twenty years ago, I counseled a couple who were learning after many years of trying to have children that the wife was medically confirmed to be infertile. It was now proven to be medically impossible for her ever to naturally conceive a child, so they decided to try the then-new solution of in vitro fertilization; and, wonder of wonders, she was able to carry and deliver fraternal twin boys. But then, to everyone’s horror, when those dearly loved children were toddlers, one of them managed to get through a fence, and after just a moment he was found floating face-down in a pool. The bereaved couple tried IVF again, and they were blessed with two baby girls. So their beautiful family of one boy and two girls was considered to be complete. But then two years later, this young woman who had been medically proven to be incapable of ever conceiving a child now conceived on her own, and she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. The husband and father was, with me, fascinated by this series of happenings. You and I also can think about the pre-birth planning that must have occurred! And we always have been sure that the naturally-conceived boy is of course his own lost brother, Alex, now safely returned to the family.

Each newborn child is, of course, an eternal being. Having by now met three newborns and watched them grow to middle age, I can testify that this is true without question. I can recall looking into the face of each of my newborn children and being amazed to see not a blank stare back, flat and brand-new today. But instead, each was clearly a different eternal being from the moment of birth, surprised to find itself in a whole new place. Each was registering all the emotions upon greeting this new world and its mother that would be appropriate for the unique human being in my arms that I would later come to know so well. My older daughter was looking around, curious, quite interested in the world but not particularly in me (she has Asperger’s syndrome). My middle child, also a girl, does not have Asperger’s, and she was glancing around, but mostly locking eyes with me, seeming to be glad to see me, and cuddling. My son, another Asperger’s child, at first was regarding everything that he saw in this astonishing new world, including me, with a sensible wariness. And that, my dear friends, pretty well sums up the three bright and beautiful offspring who remain at the center of my life today.

Every child who is born into our lives and then dies  early as a sub-adult is, just as we are, a powerful, eternal being. Each child who transitions early from our lives never leaves us randomly; but instead, each such departure is lovingly and carefully planned before that child’s birth to be a constructive gift for all who will know and love that child. And, knowing this to be true, we can especially honor our children who have gone on ahead of us by not blaming God, and not blaming any human agent for the temporary loss of our child. Instead, it is important that we forgive universally and for everything, and that we forgive ourselves and our child most of all! That we will be joyously together again in the afterlife is a certainty, promised to us by God and by Jesus. And, oh my dear ones, how very great will be that day!

Aye, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place —
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
And the smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting these long years through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue
Since he kissed them and put them there.
Eugene Field (1850-1895), from “Little Boy Blue” (1888)

 

 

(Many photos are from Vecteezy.com)