Seven Years

Seven years ago today, at 5:05 A.M., we said our final goodbye to Paul, 19.

Gil woke up in the wee hours of the morning today, thinking he heard me calling Paul's name.  I wasn't...at least, not out loud.

My day is different than I'd planned, since Analice is home from school, recovering from a virus.  Tomorrow I'll visit the grave and go eat lunch at a place Paul liked, and watch a movie he enjoyed; probably "The Fugitive" or "Independence Day", which is what I'd planned for today.

In the meantime, I pondered some things in my quiet time. I of course thought about the last moments.  The last time I touched Paul's warm face. The last time I put my arms around him. The last time I heard his heart beating; heard it's last beat.

Now he is behind the veil where I can't yet go, where beauty is indescribable. Where pain doesn't exist. No darkness. True life. Yes, that gives me some comfort.

But I'm a Mom.  I want to touch him, hear his voice & laughter, see his smile AND his tears. Listen to his woes and joys. Watch him with his daughter. Watch him grow into a young man, as I 've watched Laura grow into a young woman.  Depend on him for certain things. Ask advice....or give advice.

Instead I have to always look to the past. There are no new memories, no new pictures, no new stories. I hold onto them tightly, as well as hold onto his cell phone, his wallet, his clothes that have been lovingly made into a quilt by someone else who loved him. They're my last link with him, until I join him behind the veil.

God's mercies are evident.  Paul didn't suffer.  I got to touch him and say goodbye before he died; although he couldn't hear me.  I have a grave to visit. We have a church family, and friends, who surrounded us with prayer, presence, food, listening, tears, hugs. We had angelic nurses, and one compassionate doctor. We had an organ donation coordinator who had walked this road with his sister, a tender man, kind.

I've not shared God's largest mercy with very many people.  The mercy of knowing.  I prayed one time, at Paul's hospital bed, for the miracle of healing.  God plainly told me "no, he will die". I never asked again.  It gave me peace and strength to know that.  I didn't tell anyone else, I didn't talk anyone else out of praying for a miracle.  This mercy was mine alone, given to me because I needed it.  I had to be the strong one, for Gil and Laura, so I needed that knowledge.  I needed to know that truth, for all the hours ahead, the decisions that had to be made, for the strength to say "OK it's time" when we needed to take Paul off of life support. 

As I walked around Paul's body that last hour, touching him everywhere I could, to remember the feel of his body, first felt inside me, kicking, some were watching.  A friend later told me that when the nurse came in to say "it's time", and I touched him like that, that it looked like I'd dealt with that kind of a decision every day.  Calmness, strength, acceptance.  I was able to do that only because of the MERCY God gave to me, in telling me from the beginning what would happen.

I fell apart later, and my falling lasted a long time.  And though I didn't FEEL the mercy quite as strongly, I look back and see the mercy in big and little ways.

The next mercy will come when I step behind the veil and again feel my son's warm body, see his smile, and hear his new stories.

Grief is a weird thing. After six years, ten months of being without my son, of course, the acute pain has lessened.  His death is part of the fabric of my life.  I don't get quite the same jolts when something triggers a memory.

Lately I've thought about Paul more often, probably because fall is here and the death anniversary is approaching.

But I think, honestly, it's because his daughter is facing some behavior problems in school, and growing up...and he's not here.  Not here to see, of course, but also not here to be her Dad, to make the decisions I'm forced to make.  I do wonder what his view would be, as he would understand her way of thinking much better than I do.

As I drove yesterday, I was overcome by a deep, overwhelming longing to see his face, to hear his voice.  How empty I felt, how lost.

One more time?  No....I want a lifetime of seeing his face & hearing his voice.

Denied.

Robbed.

letter

I was asked to write a letter to the hospital in which my son died. This letter was to thank the hospital for their work in organ transplantation.

I was glad to write the letter, to share our experience.  It's the only positive thing I can point to in Paul's death; that his donation gave some people longer, healthier lives.  

But it's always hard to re-write the hospital experience and why he was in there.  Fall is coming, anyway, looking to the 7th anniversary of his death.

My feelings are jumbled.  The emptiness is gaping, the hole will never be filled.  There is a huge place in my heart and my life that can be filled only by Paul. And he is gone.

But as he did in life, he helped others in his death, and so I can be proud that he was that type of person.

So I told our story, thanked the hospital, and said a prayer for those whose lives he helped.

Dreams

Four months after Paul died, we faced his birthday.  It was one of the worst days of my life.  Early that morning I dreamed about Paul.  I rarely remember my dreams, but this was vivid.  I was in the living room and Paul walked down the hall.  I was shocked, elated, overcome, slammed with relief.  I grabbed him & hugged him, crying...and then I woke up.  It took me a long time to get over the feelings of that dream.

If I've dreamed about him since then, I've woken up with no memory of it.

Until this morning.

I dreamed Paul had been gone a long time and was coming home.  I saw him, grabbed him and hugged him. He felt odd, bony, not warm...and he didn't hug me back.

Switch to a different scene...

Someone is advancing toward Paul with the intent to hurt him, to throw acid in his face.  I held his head close to my chest, shielding him, feeling the person coming up behind me.  I was determined to protect my son.

And I woke up.

One of the most horrifying things for me to overcome after Paul's death was the awful feeling that, as his mother, I couldn't protect him.  I was horrified to not have been there, to not have intervened.  Horrified that I wasn't there to hold and comfort him after he was hurt. 

I guess that, 6 years 7 months later, I still have those feelings deep inside.