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.