The Boy We Loved, Once Upon a Time

On February 11, 2021, it will be 25 years since my only nephew, Jeff, died of cancer. He was 13 years old and had been diagnosed with a brain tumor a little more than one year before that. It’s hard to know what he would be like at 38. He was bright, clever, loving and funny, and it still hurts my heart to realize how much my sister’s family — and all of us — lost in 1996.

In 1996, I didn’t have a cell phone. I don’t think I used email; I’m not sure our household even had a computer yet. It was before CaringBridge (or at least I hadn’t heard of it). During that year, I journaled, I prayed, I wrote letters to family members, and I journaled some more. I wrote and sent out four Praying for Jeff letters — with postage stamps — to about 75 friends and families who wanted to be apprised of his condition. To mark the 25 years since Jeff left this earth, I’ve looked back at what I wrote at that time, and over the next few days, will share excerpts.

Jeff was the first boy born in our Eastlund family. My dad came from a family of seven sisters and two brothers, one who died as a toddler before my dad was born. My dad and my mom had four daughters. My two oldest sisters had four daughters at the time (soon to be six). We didn’t do boys at our house. Until Jeff. From infancy on, Jeff made a big impression on people. Before he even spoke a word, there was his hair — bright copper-toned, wavy hair. Then his smile and laughter — his mouth seemed forever open with a grin and a chuckle. He spoke incredibly early, and was able to carry on a conversation well before he was two years old. He was the ringbearer in my wedding, at 22 months old, in gray wool shorts and knee-hi socks, accompanied by four giggling flower girls wearing ballet slippers and pink handsewn dresses with lace collars.

As a preschooler Jeff could harmonize while singing along with his mom, Kris, and recite stories (or at least sections) from memory, with a charming lisp (A woze fo’ Pinkewton, by Thteven Kellogg was one, I recall). One of my favorite memories with Jeff when he was young was reading to him at bedtime. It was my first time reading Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and I remember loving the fact that we were both laughing out loud throughout the story. Jeff was fun.

He was the much-looked-up-to hero to my firstborn, Erik, and I recall one Christmas when they spent hours at my house rigging up booby traps, trying to recreate scenes from Christmas movies that featured another red-haired boy.

We first learned there may be something wrong with Jeff, then 12, shortly after Christmas, when my sister’s family had moved from Plano, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama, due to Tom’s job change. Five minutes after Jeff and Lisa started their new school, it seemed, it was clear that something was wrong. Upon learning of the severity of the situation, they decided to move back to Plano, and Jeff’s treatment began with surgery to remove what they could of the tumor they had found in his brainstem. I flew from Minnesota to be with their family at the time of the surgery. Because they were in transition, we stayed in a hotel. One of my memories of that week is of repeatedly making my way from Jeff’s room or the hospital waiting area to the pay phone that was seemingly miles away, through a labyrinthine corridor of hallways. Oodles of quarters were required to keep family and friends up to date as we learned more each day. As I processed what was happening over the days that I was in Texas, I wrote a letter to Tom and Kris that I left with them when I went home. This is part of that letter:

Once upon a time, so the story goes, a princess proved her royal status to a crowd of skeptics with her uncommon response to a tiny pea hidden under her mattress.

In another time, in a hospital bed, a frightened young man is proving himself to be a true child of the King through his noble response to a raisin-sized tumor found in his brain.

In one version of the fairy tale, the pea was covered by numerous mattresses — creating more layers through which the object had to be felt.

To me, Tom & Kris, Jeff’s tumor is like the pea under the mattresses. Who’d have thought that such a tiny irritant could create such an enormous impact? The perspectives of so many people on their individual lives have been undeniably altered by this one boy’s illness.

As I’ve frequently marveled at in reading the Bible and working out my faith, God’s plan often unfolds through what seem to be paradoxes to the human mind: the king of glory arrived as a helpless baby, in the lowliest place conceivable, to the most humble of people. The hope of being greatest in God’s kingdom lies in being a servant to others on earth. Christ’s death on the cross gave Him victory over death and sin. To gain eternal life one must die to self. “It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

As I see it, based on these models from scripture, a weakened young man and his family may be used mightily in God’s plan — through suffering, endurance, and withstanding untold pain and hardship.

My prayer for you both is that you remain faithful to your belief that God is sovereign. I pray we are all able to relinquish control over circumstances and accept that whatever happens, God is still God, Jesus is still Lord, he still loves you and Jeff, and that Paul’s assurance in Romans 8:28 that in all things God works for the good of those who love him is eternally true — regardless how painful, unfair, incomprehensible or tragic.

As difficult as it is to accept, I believe and am in awe that Jeff is being given a tremendous honor, just as Paul saw his suffering as an honor — to be used in service to the king. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”….that is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

I believe that’s one of the paradoxes your family is being asked to bring to life.

And a young man’s focus, his passions, and his faith could be forever shaped by this chapter in his life. He is, after all, the central figure perched at the top of the tower of mattresses. His experience over the next 12 months or so will leave an indelible mark on his soul as surely as the surgery on his brain will leave a permanent scar on his head… leaving an impression that will be felt by others, more numerous than the mattresses through which the fairy tale princess felt the presence of that infinitesimal pea, once upon a time.

As I heard it, Jeff did not appreciate being compared to a princess.