Peace Offering

BYU Studies

This essay by Elena Jarvis Jube tied for first place in the 2020 Richard H. Cracroft Personal Essay Contest, sponsored by BYU Studies.

The author was confronted with the possibility of the death of her fourteen-year-old son. The teenager suffered for days or weeks before being treated for a cyst in his skull. As she watched her son’s suffering, she cried for the suffering of all children, all mothers, and all humanity. Although her son lived, she still felt immense grief. She draws meaning from the words of Dostoevsky and finds in Jesus’ beatitude “Blessed are they that mourn” a reminder of the connection between grief and love, that all our sorrow for another person matters.