Finding Meaning And Purpose After A Loss

Ian and Nancy Jorgenson and the beginning of a life mission

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Nancy found her father asleep at his worktable as she had done a dozen times before since her mother had died and around him were strewn the drawings of his latest project. She reached over to him and hugged him while he slept. Then gently whispered to him, “I love you, Daddy. Please don’t work so hard.”

She was just a week shy of her sixteenth birthday and she felt both old for her years and very young for her years simultaneously.

She looked at the drawings and recognized several buildings from downtown Saint Paul and wondered what this project could have been and then her father began to rouse. As he lifted his head in the nexus between sleep and consciousness, between the dream and the first recognition of waking, his face seemed genuinely surprised.

“What time is it?” he asked her.

“It’s nearly midnight.”

“I’ve been exhausted.”

He pushed himself up from the table and balanced his upper torso on his forearms.

“So, what is this project you’re doing?” she asked him.

“It is part of a very elaborate electric train set.”

“It’s not a table then.”

“It is a table in one way and a wood sculpture in another,” he answered.

She picked up one of the drawings and looked at it.

“This looks complicated,” she proposed.

“It is. But it is not beyond my abilities.”

“Who would want such a thing? How did you get this assignment?” she asked.

“It came by federal express yesterday,” he answered.

“Is there a note, Dad?”

“Yeah, from someone named Michael Bouvier. I don’t know who he is.”

“Can you read it to me?”

“Of course, if I can find it.”

He began to look through the papers on the table until finally, he found the folded letter beneath the stack of eleven nine by twelve-inch drawings. He took his reading glasses out of his pocket and began to read aloud:

My name is Michael Bouvier and I am seventy-one years old and I lived most of my life thinking only of myself and pursuing only these things which interested me,” (Ian still thought this an odd way to begin a letter requesting a project, but then the whole note surprised him.)“In these waning years of my life, I have been given the special blessing of a chance to amend my life, to engage in work which gives salvific meaning to my final days. It has been assigned to me the talk of completing a memorial to a journey which I am told has great significance for so many people, especially among those who will be made aware of the beautiful outcome. I have enclosed drawings of the section of it, that we request you construct. After studying them carefully you will notice how personal this is to you, because the designer of this piece whose name I do not know, nor whom I have ever met, has inexplicable insight into the hearts of men, including my own. I have been assured that when you learn of the significance of your contribution to this cause, you will be abundantly blessed by the revelation. I know this must sound strange to you, but I have been in the last few months involved in a journey across continents and across lives which I am assured is painting a tapestry of unimaginable beauty. I find it more fitting to think of myself as a spider, weaving thread upon thread into a pattern that once finished becomes quite beautiful in its complexity and its symmetry. We all have the utmost confidence that you can complete this task and we hope one day to bring you to see what your work has accomplished.

With sincere gratitude, Michael Bouvier.

PS. We know your grief and our hearts and prayers go with you.”

He took off his glasses and set the note aside.

“This is the strangest letter I think I’ve ever received in my life,” he told her.

“You’re going to build this, then?”

“Of course,” he responded.

She took a closer look at the drawing and noticed immediately two small figures on bicycles on a bicycle path resembling the one they took in their journey from the airport.

“Look at this, Dad,” she told him and held the drawing up to him.

He put his glasses back on to look at it.

“It looks like you and me on bicycles,” she acknowledged.

“It could be anyone,” he answered.

“This is crazy,” she observed. “Which reminds me, are we still on for that bicycle ride on Saturday?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he told her.

“If you need any help with this, I’d be glad to do what I can,” Nancy told him.

“I’m sure I’ll need a lot of help. This will be one of the hardest projects I’ve ever made.”

She hugged him and told him, “I love you, Daddy. I’m sure it will all work out.”

Like many of those whose lives I, Jonathan, had the privilege to watch, Ian’s and Nancy’s lives had a special poignancy for me. I could see their daily struggles over the death of Lisa, and I hoped to bring into her life people who would encourage goodness and openness in them to all the most beautiful impulses that made the best lives possible. I could see them coming into OMEGA and enriching the world through their goodness!