My baby nephew AJ died two weeks ago. His parents, my brother and his wife, asked me to give the eulogy at the funeral. One would think that distilling a life that only lasted gestation + 5 weeks could perhaps be a tricky thing, but in fact it was easy. After sifting through hundreds of comments and messages, the enduring legacy of his life that kept bubbling up was the most basic and important message of all. Here it is.

I’d like to invite you to close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Land in your body. Land in your spirit. Let go of whatever commotion or chaos was part of getting
you here to this moment today.

With your eyes still closed, I want you to remember a moment where you felt completely at peace, connected, loved, secure.

If nothing springs to mind, think about a moment that you’ve witnessed – in person, on TV or a movie, in a video – perhaps this one – https://www.facebook.com/reel/573159094799056/?s=single_unit – the second and last time David and Jenny were together with all four of their boys.

Breathe into that moment. Let it fill your whole being like wind rushing rushing though an opened door.

This feeling of love and security is our birthright – it was passed down through our spiritual DNA from the moment God looked at Adam and Eve with delight after
waking them up from the clay, cupping their faces in the tenderest of hands and saying “You are SO GOOD!” It’s our Original Blessing, this proclamation of our goodness, and it speaks to the most central and core truth of who we are.

But. Somewhere along the way we absorbed and then passed on the message that we need to DO in order to be worthy of love. That production is tied to worth. 

This. Is. A. Lie.

Look at AJ. That sweet child did nothing but snooze away, medically paralyzed for much of the time, on a bed in the hospital and need round-the-clock are by a highly skilled team of specialists.

He could do absolutely nothing for himself, and yet his life and his family have touched thousands of people.

How can that be?

It’s because our spirits are STARVING for the truth that his life shouted to us, every single day. 

A truth that we rarely hear.

The truth is this: Each one of us is DEEPLY cherished and adored and it has NOTHING to do with if we have a thigh gap or our house is clean or we eat enough dark leafy greens or we have a good credit score or are raising our kids screen-free or we can still fit into the clothes we wore in high school.

The truth is that the God who made us, who knit us together in our mother’s womb, is constantly bathing us with the wider, deeper, unsleeping version of the love that David and Jenny have for AJ. And how could they have that love to give in the first place if it weren’t already part of their basic programming? 

How would our lives be different if we could exhale into that truth? 

Into the truth of our own belovedness? 

What would if feel like if we believed that nothing we did or didn’t do changed our status as Adored & Beloved Child?

What if we could believe that there is always warmth for us? Always love? Always acceptance and compassion and mercy? And songs! And adoring siblings? That we’re always given the benefit of the doubt? That we are ALWAYS welcome home, that our bed is made up (God didn’t turn our room into an office while we were away) flowers are on the night stand and our favorite meal is perfuming the air?

What would it feel like to carry that security into the world? 

How would our lives change?

Let’s pray.

Great Creator,

Thank you for not mass producing us with indifference, but for individually crafting each one of us with love and the greatest of tenderness.

Please help us to connect to that truth. Let it wash over us and transform us.

Thank you for the gift of AJ’s life and the ways that he has been our teacher,

Please help us to absorb and to integrate every single one of the lessons that Aaron Jacob came to teach us – particularly since they came at the highest possible cost.

Thank you for loving us so deeply. 

Amen


(Aaron Jacob Blair Bianco was born on March 20, 2023 and passed about on May 3, 2023. To learn more about his story, you can visit his CaringBridge page here: https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/babybiancofamily)