Always and Forever…
To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness. ~ Erich Fromm
You could shred my soul, slice me to ribbons, and banish me to an eternity of nothingness – and it would never hurt like this did.
~O~
I remember the day that my son died.
I remember that it was on a Sunday morning in December.
I remember that it was eight days before my twentieth birthday.
I remember that he was there with me that morning, then he was just… gone.
I remember how I could not stop holding him for the three days prior to his death.
I remember the extensive pictures that I took of him – ‘something inside of me knew?’
I remember holding him close to me, for hours on end, and kissing him all over his adorable little face and telling him repeatedly how very much I love him, and that I didn‘t know what I would do without him…
I remember knowing that, somehow, he understood everything that I did not, and that it was all… right there in his eyes, even though he was not yet six months old.
I remember how I could always feel his beautiful almond-shaped, burnt umber eyes shining straight into me… and I knew that was he, acknowledging his love for me with those bright eyes, and that sweet smile of his – the one he reserved for me alone.
I remember feeling that I was so very fortunate and blessed to have had him, at all, and that it was nothing short of miraculous that we had survived his traumatic and premature beginnings.
I remember that they had given him a mere ten percent chance of survival.
I remember when they informed me that his affliction strikes only 1 in a million babies… one in a million… and it just had to be my baby.
I remember when the pioneers in the field of preemie neonatology explained his delicate condition to me. They said it was a ‘congenital anomaly,’ that it wasn’t my fault, and it wasn‘t due to anything that I had done, but, somehow, I just couldn’t believe them.
I remember feeling that it was my fault, and that his suffering was my punishment.
I remember the mourning sun was blinding, and unbearably bright on that particular day.
I remember how my broken heart was so full of soul-crushing grief, that I truly felt abandonment in the sorrow.
I remember going completely numb as I watched his daddy performing CPR on his little body.
I remember crazily thinking, with mind-numbing anguish, that it was all some sick joke, and that it wasn’t really happening… that I was still asleep, somehow, and trapped inside of a nightmare that I just couldn‘t wake up.
I remember listening to the small puffs of breath entering his tiny body, and how stiff he looked… that’s when I knew that reality had pulled the trigger.
I remember his pallid color, his dry, lifeless eyes staring out at nothing, and his little blue lips, and I could feel myself slipping away – I believed that I was dying, or going insane.
I remember the second I realized – with the greatest sorrow that I have ever known – that rigor-mortis had already set in, and that his life was just… over – he was gone.
I remember feeling something unnatural drain from my body and leave me – I still don’t know what that was, although I suspect.
I remember a telephone ringing. It sounded so far away that I thought I was hallucinating again… until someone answered, and the clanging in my head stopped – then I went deaf, and everything began happening in slow motion.
I remember feeling horrified as I stood there, frozen; wondering why I couldn’t cry, and why I couldn’t hear, and how I couldn’t understand anything that anyone was saying.
I remember feeling disembodied when the ambulance arrived and they wouldn’t let me go with him, and how I couldn’t think or feel anything as we followed behind.
I remember realizing that I had his favorite blanket clutched to my chest, but I couldn’t recall… didn’t know where it had come from, or how, or when – then I closed my eyes, held it to my nose and breathed in his sweetness.
I remember when they pronounced him dead, and granted the last of our time together.
I remember knowing that I had to let him go and let them take him away, but when they asked for his body, they nearly had to pry him from my arms when I couldn’t let him go.
I remember sitting in the coroners office, later, dazed and numb, in shock, and having to answer numerous questions, and suddenly, I became very curious as to why some of those questions were being asked – then it dawned on me.
I remember the nurse’s last home visit, the previous Tuesday and, the last monthly trip to the Doctor’s office – both had been good – there were just no warning signs.
I remember my heart and soul waging a brutal war with my mind; with the agonizing need inside of me, to know why he had to die, and why ‘God’ had ripped him from my life.
I remember when there came a solemn moment, that I knew I’d been changed – forever.
I remember when they asked me if I wanted an autopsy performed to determine the cause of death… that was when the weight of the world crashed in, and I felt the possession of an eternal sorrow take up residence in my soul… I crumbled, and then I wept, endlessly.
I remember signing the papers with a hand that I felt was not my own.
I remember the process of autopsy, and how I had lain awake, night after night, hating myself for what I was allowing them to do to him.
I remember that I also knew, that without the autopsy, I would never find any semblance of peace or rest without knowing what had taken my baby‘s life.
I remember when they informed me of the results: final determination – renal failure.
I remember, with an extremely clouded memory, making his funeral arrangements.
I remember when I took the little outfit that I’d chosen for his memorial and burial, and can still recall the funeral directors’ request – that I not look at the Y-incision – which, after all, had been stitched back together (with my tears), after they sliced him open and sawed his head apart – but I did.
I remember that it was the ugliest, angriest, most pain-filled thing I have ever seen.
I remember he was buried on a Tuesday afternoon, accompanied by a chilling rain.
I remember someone pulling me… backing me away from his graveside, because I think I tried to stop them from lowering his casket into the cold ground. It’s vague.
I remember the sprays, tears falling with the cold rain, and the metallic, cerulean-blue balloon that bore silver letters that said, ‘Lift Your Spirits,’ and I remember thinking it a cruelty, and kept it.
I remember my mother and a favorite aunt flew in for the funeral, and flew away just as quickly, leaving me there, alone, on the same evening of the day he was buried.
I remember that I walked to the cemetery that night, just to celebrate their leaving.
I remember when I began hearing his cries in the dark, and how I would reach into the cradle for him, but it was empty…
I remember it was during those nights that I learned not to close my eyes to sleep… instead, I became a devoted night owl.
I remember walking five miles to the cemetery almost every night, just to be near him.
I remember his plot address: second row – first tier.
I remember lying on top of his grave for hours, just sobbing my heart out.
I remember thinking that he was cold and hungry, and that I needed to take him home.
I remember thinking that I was losing my mind, even as I said those things to myself.
I remember feeling dead inside, and admitting that I could not, possibly, go on that way.
I remember something eerily calm and indescribable washed over me and, then I knew; I had no other way out, except to know… or be lost, forever.
I remember ‘praying’ for those answers with such a deadly seriousness that, in that moment, those utterings felt as though they could have stopped creation itself.
I remember having been laying face down, rolling onto my back, placing myself onto my knees, in the cold, wet grass and mud, and asking in earnest for ‘God’ to show me a sign that my son was with Him.
I remember pleading, begging, demanding, and then I prayed… and asked, repeatedly, for the answer to that single question… is he with you? Show me a sign, please…
I remember because, although I was consumed with pain, rage, and grief… I still wanted to believe. I didn’t want to think or know that he was just dead and gone.
I remember that I had been laying there, under the sheltering branches of the old oak tree that we had chosen for him to be buried beneath, when it happened…
I remember looking up past the shifting branches and, seeing more than just tree and sky, twigs, leaves, and… misery – the moon was glowing… hanging up there, amongst it all, like a beacon.
I remember the intensity of the moons’ light that night; how it had shone down over me on that blackest of nights, and beyond the darkness as the wind whispered through the trees.
I remember how the limbs swayed and shifted under the strength of the breeze, and the silvery light created illusory pictures that my eyes could see but in my mind, I could not believe what I was seeing…
I remember ‘God’ materializing up there; showing Himself and my baby to me, through limb and leaves and light, as it twinkled and beamed down through those branches and how…
I remember how He was holding my first-born son, with his little head cradled in one hand, and his body held close to Him by the other… that‘s when I reached up to touch them.
I remember thinking I had finally, truly, lost my mind, and that I would be the next to go.
I remember, at exactly that moment, that what I thought I had seen might be all that I may need to continue to face the task of living…. And then I watched, until the wind blew them away.
I remember how I suddenly knew, for certain, that it was just my fragile, shell-shocked mind playing evil tricks on me – it was giving me what I needed to survive the tragedy.
I remember how I continued to reason it away; telling myself that it was just my ‘religious’ up-bringing that had produced such a ‘miracle.’
I remembered that science had proven the occurrence of dissociation to survive trauma.
Then I remembered why I stopped believing in the first place.
I remember the demons screaming inside my head.
And then I remembered that none of it was real.
I remember everything….
~O~
And that is dying.
Henry Van Dyke
Do not stand
at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds
that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight
on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awake in the
morning’s hush
I am the soft uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star that
shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there.
I did not die.
I still miss those I loved who are no longer with me but I find I am grateful for having loved them. The gratitude has finally conquered the loss.
~ Rita Mae Brown
