J is for JON

I threatened to waken him this morning at 6:30am just so as he would be able to exactly celebrate twenty years of life but his initial reaction suggested that it might not be a wise action. He was born at that time on 23rd March 1988, almost eighteen months after his brother, in the maternity unit at Dungannon Hospital, a place where mothers no longer give birth but where both our sons started out life. Now, all these years later we no longer have any teenagers in our house and I wonder where the time has gone.

And how life has changed in that intervening period. So many members of our community have passed on and yet we have spent enough years in our present school to know that some of the pupils who were there when we started are now married and everyone who is there now hadn't even been born. it's a sobering thought how quickly time moves and for our own village this week, the reality of the brevity of life has been strongly brought home as the community has laid to rest three of its sons in four days.

It was a year when Ronald Reagan was still the President and the present incumbent's father was in the running to replace him, a year when Lester Piggot had his OBE taken away by the Queen, when Nelson Mandela was still in prison though the music world got together to remember his seventieth birthday, when Wimbledon won the FA Cup, Ayrton Senna was Grand Prix Champion and the Olympics were taking place in Seoul.

I don't remember much about the day itself, though I do recall being in hospital during the very early morning and, not being squeamish, being able to see things just as they happened. My main job was fairly simple. just to be there, but when the doctor handed me a utensil and told me to cut the cord, I suddenly felt that I had made some contribution to the morning. Still, the greatest moment was to hear that first cry and know that things were OK.

It seems to that years have just merged together and its hard to remember when the baby, became a toddler, the toddler became a primary school pupil and then moved on to secondary education. I suppose at the time, each day moved more slowly than we remember and very quickly you tend to forget, the childhood illnesses, the school exams, the nights of homework or music lessons, the bedtime stories, the decisions that needed to be made, the adolescent years and even the times when you have to be more firm than you want to. But you don't forget that every single day is precious and not just the days away , the holidays or the times when your child makes you so proud of them. And then suddenly you realise those days are all past and while they are so much older and hopefully wiser, you know that you are also older too. Anyway, in a sense I never want to him to grow up because it always means that time is passing more quickly than I imagine but as he prepares to go off to Ecuador for a year with a double mission to improve his Spanish and also serve God, I am thankful that as he leaves his teenage years for ever, his faith is secure and he is firmly established on the rock that is Christ Jesus. And while I'll miss his strange sense of humour, his warmth, his piano playing and his singing, now I understand a little of what God said when He spoke from heaven with these words, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' Happy Birthday Jon.