As a young man, David Reeves believed people of faith should never question God.
It is what he was taught. Even before he went to seminary, before he became a chaplain at the Medical Center of Aurora South, he believed without doubt.
He believed when his wife, Danielle, became pregnant a decade ago, when she gave birth to his first son, Aidan.
The doubts came later.
Reeves now greets his dead son every morning when he flicks on the light at his hospital office. A framed photo of Aidan, forever a newborn, sits atop the man’s desk.
The infant is cradled in his father’s arms, tucked into a white blanket, a white cap pulled over the baby’s forehead.
“I was walking through the world thinking I knew everything,” the 36-year-old chaplain said, recalling the time before a heart defect killed his 3-day-old son Sept. 1, 1996, in the midst of Reeves’ seminary training.
In the days leading up to Aidan’s death, as the sheen slowly peeled off the faith he so steadfastly held, Reeves prayed for a miracle that never came.
His son’s death would shake every belief, would make Reeves rethink his choice to serve God. He rarely spoke about it, instead pushing it deeper inside, letting it atrophy into anger that seethed for weeks, then months, then years.
“People were telling me that God wanted my son in heaven,” Reeves said. “God has plenty of souls.”
As a chief chaplain, Reeves sees about 50 deaths each year, more than some doctors at the sprawling hospital complex west of Interstate 225.
Some deaths are more peaceful, such as someone passing away in their sleep. Others are more traumatic, such as a Smoky Hill High School student who died after a vehicle crash in December.
Inside his closet-sized office, there are a few dozen books stuffed onto a shelf, a handful of family photos, binders containing dozens of pages about hospital protocol and letters from his children taped to the wall. “Daddy, I’m sorry you had a bad day.”
When he first decided to do this job, back when he was training at another hospital seven years ago, he comforted a family that had lost a child. While they cried upstairs, Reeves cried alone downstairs.
It took him years to realize that Aidan’s death still frightened him, that it was OK for a person of faith to be angry at God. At that time, Reeves only knew something didn’t feel right.
And he didn’t know if he could fix it.
Solitary heartbreak
In dimmed rooms where people lay half-conscious and bodies are tangled in tubes that lead to machines that hiss and pump and whir, Reeves offers his hand in prayer to anyone who will take it. It’s a lifeline – for both of them.
Few nurses have discussed the chaplain’s struggle, not knowing about those times when he felt so sad and alone that he no longer could pray with conviction.
As a child in Indiana, even after his own father died, he always wanted to serve God.
And even after his son’s death, he was so deeply entrenched in that life, had studied for so many years at the Denver Seminary, that he could not simply walk away from his life’s work.
“Intellectually, God is perfect, but David felt hurt,” said Pete Gall, Reeves’ childhood friend. “It’s hard to say thank you to a God who is beating you up.”
In the months that followed, Reeves reserved himself to a dual life. His chaplain work would no longer be a calling, it would be an occupation. He would live in his silent grief, questioning why God abandoned Reeves in his most desperate moment.
Over the years, the chaplain’s thoughts repeatedly flashed to the night after Aidan died, how he and his wife, Danielle, stood in the doorway of the boy’s bedroom, the once crackling excitement now buried under the pain of an empty crib, unused clothes and untouched stuffed bears.
He flashed to the moment after he learned his son died on the operating table, how the baby’s chest was sewn together so lightly that blood stained Reeves’ shirt as he held the child.
Memory had become a cruel companion.
Anger unleashed
Danielle was angry immediately, shook her fist at God and swore. By the next Easter, though, she was drawing parallels between Aidan and Jesus.
God’s only son died too. Jesus died and was resurrected three days later. Aidan died in three days.
“There were two levels to my grief,” Danielle said. “There was one that said, ‘This is crummy, and it doesn’t feel good.’ But there was another one where I realized that I was being taught to react and to be authentic in how I felt. Life from there on was going to be very different.”
Though his soul was bruised, David Reeves wrote about God’s love and grace. He knew the canned answers.
He pushed the anguish inside until it felt like a lightning bolt ready to burst through. He detached. He wanted to be alone.
“He processed everything internally and pulled back,” Danielle said. “Then he’d get angry. Maybe it was a tube of toothpaste that hadn’t been screwed on right. I’d have to stop him and ask if he was really grieving about Aidan.”
It was nearly two years after his son’s death, while Reeves was still training for his job, that the emotions poured onto paper. He was writing an essay about loss and grief.
Suddenly, his pen spit fire.
Where had God been when Aidan died? Did God hear Reeves’ prayers? Why was God absent? Why would a loving God do this?
“I had to step back and say, ‘Where is all this coming from? Why am I so mad?”‘ Reeves said.
At that moment, there was a realization, one that would strengthen as time passed.
“He found that he didn’t understand,” said Bill Pounds, a former chaplain and one of Reeves’ mentors. “He didn’t have all the answers.”
And, maybe, that was OK.
“A forgiving God”
Reeves pulls back the curtain in Veronica Hart’s room. The 24-year-old is sore – three broken ribs, scrapes and a collapsed lung suffered after her coat caught in her brother’s car door and she was dragged under the vehicle last week.
She was scared, she tells the chaplain, as the car rolled over her body. She thought she might die and leave behind her two children.
She is angry at her brother, but she knows she must forgive him.
“Would you like me to say a prayer with you?” the chaplain asks. “We can pray for your brother, too.”
“Yes, please,” Hart says.
Reeves holds out his hand.
They pray. She in her bed, needles sticking in her hand. He kneeling on the tile floor, next to her breakfast of grapes and cantaloupe.
“Heavenly Father … I ask for your protection over Veronica. We pray for her brother, and we know you are a forgiving God.”
There is a pause, a comfortable silence and a connection between two scarred people.
“Amen.”
An authentic faith
Nine years after Reeves thought his world had ended, he sees the photo of the 27-year-old father holding his baby. It’s not the same person he is today.
His wife and friends said Reeves is an older soul now, one bruised and tested, burned by grief and uncertainty.
It’s a soul, they said, that is even closer to God.
The chaplain has heard many times before that God destined him for this job, that Aidan’s death somehow opened a door to a deeper understanding of life and death.
The chaplain doesn’t see it that way. He sees the questions, the uncertainty of life, the pure randomness of it all.
Still, he knows the pain of grief and said he relates better with families because of Aidan.
“There’s an authenticity to his faith,” said Pounds, his mentor. “He works through his sadness every day of his life, just so he can help people through their difficult times.”
And yet, there are so many blessings. These days, Reeves’ Littleton home is filled with the laughter of four children, three boys and a girl whose parents are determined that their first child never be forgotten.
For class projects about their family, the children draw a mom and a dad, one girl and four boys. “Sometimes they’ll tell the teacher that their oldest brother is in heaven,” Danielle said.
The children’s photos are lined up in Reeves’ office. Aidan’s is in the corner, in a special place his father can see while sitting at his desk.
In that frozen image, a proud father is simply holding his new son. But there is more behind the glass, a story that only the chaplain can know.
“Do I have acceptance? For this hour, this day, yes, I have it. Tomorrow … all that may be out the window.”
Staff writer Robert Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-1282 or rsanchez@denverpost.com.
