The Measure of a Man

 They never measured his height. Only his weight. We’d have to get him out of his chair at the doctors and he would lie on the scale. He knew how much he weighed. He wanted to know how tall he was-or how tall he would be if he could stand.  We’d occasionally have him lay on the floor with a measuring tape in hand.  One of us would try to stretch his mangled legs straight while the other would approximate a measure.  5’3” or 5’4”.  He loved it that he was taller than Katie.  His wingspan was huge, more like the wingspan of somebody 6’3” or so. 

What was it like, not having the measure of oneself?  To know one’s weight but not one’s height?  To know how much one’s mass presses on the earth, but not how high one could potentially reach toward the heavens? I think sometimes that was Griffin’s struggle with depression, weighed down to the earth with no ability to escape its gravity, if only even temporarily?

Research in neuro-science has shown us that the body stores emotions.  Stress, anxiety and depression from yesterday or years ago can manifest itself in our bodies.  Unexplained back pain, illnesses and depressed immune systems can be metastasized emotions we’ve been suppressing, ignoring or even dwelling on.  For Griffin it was in many ways the opposite: his body created emotional reactions. Imagine being a 6’3” spirit in a 5’3” body confined to a 4’3” chair.  There were so many nights we spent in wordless grief together.  He couldn’t, or maybe wouldn’t, give words to the gravity he felt pulling him inward.  And the more he couldn’t slip the surly bonds of earth the deeper inward he grew.

Perhaps most painfully there were no words for me, either.  How does one explain the inexplicable to your only boy, or soothe a pain that is unsolvable?  All I could do was hold him for both of us.  For him to feel the arms of his father around him.  For me to keep him from slipping further away into himself.

Even as I write this I ache.  Even as I write this I hold the hope that there is a Heavenly Father who is holding me, feeling my pain as I felt Griffin’s.  I hold the hope that God will grasp my hand and keep me from slipping deeper into my distractions, hold me in His arms as I turn inward from the body, through the soul and finally home into the spirit where he dwells with me.