Oh, ye of little faith

I want to share something that I have not with anyone else, from the safety of my anonymity of course. I was reading something about religion and it made me want to put this out there. This is the day I lost what little faith I had in the Catholic religion.

It was a little over ten years ago. I was younger of course, less worldly. My sister-in-law had her first child. This is the first child I had ever been close to, just knowing well enough to care, seeing him often enough. He was the first baby I had ever held, I've always shied away from that. He was my Godchild.

Well, cut to about 7 months later. We get a call that night, we have to rush into Children's Hospital in Boston, he is not doing well. I don't remember any kind of panic or worry on my part, I figured it must just be a bad sickness or something. So we get there and are told he has Spinal Meningitis and there is nothing they can do for him. I felt the world ripped out from under me in less than a second, how does this happen to a 7 month old?

To this day I have a hard time talking or thinking about this.

We all go into the room in shifts, two at a time, to say our goodbyes. What do you say to a child that can't even talk yet, who has yet to live a life that is being taken away? It tears my heart out to this day, looking down on a helpless child who will not make it another hour. I don't recall what I felt then, I was just in a daze. Looking around the waiting room, not a dry eye there among family and friends.

I remember the wake and funeral vividly, it was too much grief in one place at one time. I had never experienced an unexpected death until this point, only it was much more poignant being a child. I had friends that could not even go near the room with the casket, they would not, they refused. I remember not wanting to be there, I couldn't even look at my sister and brother-in-law, could not look them in the eye. I couldn't deal with my emotions, how did they?

I became very angry at the church. The in-laws are very God fearing people so how could this happen to them? They were brought up devout Catholics, unlike myself who came from a mixed religion marriage. My mother was Catholic, my father didn't care and never attended mass. He left our religious education up to my mother who enrolled us in Sunday school and made us complete all the sacraments.

This was the event that changed my view of religion, the day I lost my faith. My inner anger has grown since then. I still attend mass with my wife occasionally but I feel the absolute fraud. I think about the little boy, laying there with all kinds of tubes in him, helpless, every time I enter a church. And my heart is stained a little more every time.

The in-laws turned back to the church, stronger, wiser, now with five children. I turned away with a still heavy yet fragile heart.