Clinton Wade Giesbrecht was just a toddler when he was found by his mom, face down floating in the dugout. He was a happy and high energy child. His mom had only taken her eyes off of him for a brief moment. One moment...she saw her boy playing contented in the sandbox, and the next he was in the water.
I was around twelve at the time of Clinton’s death. I sat in the back of the church during the funeral and cried. I felt grief at the loss of this little boy. He had just been over to our farm with his mom a week before and two of us were playing together. His death was an event I couldn’t wrap my head around.
(The writeup taken from the photo stories for my book "Still Broken")
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When I was choosing pictures for my "Still Broken" book, the chapter" Still Grief" could have had a plethora of options for an gravestone but this little boy had one major significance in my life that made it the choice for the chapter photo. Clinton's death was the first tragic death that happened that mattered to me.
Up until my twelfth birthday, I hadn't known insensible pain like this. My grandmother died when I was seven from cancer, but grandmothers are old and they die. (My grandmother died at the age of 64... now I would say that's not old)
I remember Clinton's funeral. I was sitting in the back watching the family enter down the aisle of Flatrock Mennonite Church. Clinton's two brother's bounced down the aisle. For some reason I remember the bouncing. It seemed to not fit with the next scene that caught my eye. Clinton's parents were carried in on shoulders of friends and family. They couldn't walk down the aisle they were so torn with grief and sorrow. Clinton's dad was a big man, a farmer, and I remember watching him and his tears, his pain soaked into my soul. I had never seen a man cry like that before.
Decades later, I found myself at that Flatrock Mennonite church cemetery where Clinton was buried. I took the picture of his head stone and spent a moment there reliving the story. I still have the vivid memory of our last visit together. There was a little yellow toddler's bike that my sister and I had since we were little. Clinton was playing with it. He liked it so much, Mom said I could give it to him to take home. That visit happened the week before his death. I remember the first visit we had to Clinton's farm after the funeral. I saw that yellow bike. Another moment of grief washed over me.
I wrote no poems for Clinton. I wasn't a poet when that loss happened. But his place in the grief story of my life mattered, so the picture of his gravestone opened up the grief chapter of my book. It was a coming around to a healing for me. I still couldn't make any sense of it, but maybe it's not a story that needs any sense. It just needed telling.
"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love." — Washington Irving
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