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. 

The icky part

After 5 1/2 years of being without Paul, most of the horror regarding the circumstances of his death is gone. OK, not gone. Just different. Just like the pain. Different.

However, the horror rears its ugly head now and then. I wonder what people would think if they knew what sometimes happens in my mind....

Yesterday Analice and I were face to face and she asked why she has long eyelashes and I said, "your Daddy had long eyelashes" and then we talked about her brown eyes and his brown eyes and my brown eyes.....

The entire time we were talking about our eyes, I was having horrible flashes of a knife heading to Paul's eye. I was cringing inside, horrified, wondering if he saw it coming, if he felt pain, how long he suffered. I imagined him lying on the ground, bleeding....horrible images, horrible thoughts.

And all the while my mind was conjuring up horror and my heart was beating faster and my stomach was tied in knots and I had horrible pain in my chest and groans in my mind of "oh Paul" and "my poor baby", I was talking to my granddaughter about eyes.

I looked normal, spoke normally, but inside I was a mass of horror. It left me drained.

And no one knew.

Until now....

And so, today is Paul's 25th birthday. The birthday is an incredibly empty day for a mother. No gifts to buy & wrap. No cake to bake, balloons to buy. No meal to fix or restaurant to choose. No memory-sharing. No quarter-of-a-century jokes this year.

Today two friends took me to lunch at Olive Garden, pampered me something awful....I loved it and I needed it! I thought I wanted to be alone, but I didn't.

Happy Birthday, Son. I miss you.

A Poem

I got this poem from a grieving parents newletter. It's written by Crystal Armes Gibb of Illinois.

RHYME OF PAIN

Pain is not removed by TIME, though grief may seem less defined.
When someone we love dies, the very heart and soul will cry an endless stream
of aching tears with pain that follows us for years.
The foolish man is heard to say that TIME will take the pain away.
Though it lessens and subsides, the fact remains: our loved one died.
And missing the one so dear does not diminish,
for it's clear, no matter how much TIME goes by,
the empty longing makes us cry.

Unexpected

The flashes of memory come unexpectedly. Reading the newspaper article about Gabby Giffords this morning flashed me to a memory of a nurse putting something into Paul's I.V. bag and me asking what it was.

Another flash to the kind, kind, direct gaze of the doctor as he said "no" in response to my question, "So there's no hope?"

I cringe as I feel the pain and horror once again. I let myself dwell in the memories and feel the pain for a bit.

Then I go on reading the paper.

Five years ago those memories, and others, were constantly on my mind, no let up, as my mind processed the horrible reality.

Sometimes I'd beg God for relief.

Slowly, slowly, as time passed, my mind could think on other things for longer and longer periods of time.

No longer a constant torment, the memories are still there, waiting to pop up when prompted.

And it's OK. I've learned to welcome the jabs of pain, the remembering.

Memories processed.
Reality accepted.

Yet I will never forget and never fail to be horrified.

And so, five years has passed since my son died. I'm not waxing poetic this year. I have sobbed. I have spent time with friends. I have been touched by prayers, cards, flowers, candy, hugs, and others sharing memories of Paul.

But when all is said and done, he's still not here. I have no one like him in my life, no one who cares for me in the special way he did. I miss him and I always will.

I remember walking down the hospital hallway with the chaplain and seeing Paul wheeled down the hall intersecting the one we were traveling. Gil was horrified to see the gauze patch on Paul's eye, but I said, "We can deal with a missing eye; at least he's alive."

That's the hope I had. The hope that was dashed a while later when the doctors talked to us. So much worse than a missing eye.

There's another family grieving today. One of Paul's kidney recipients died on the operating table, so this is a grief anniversary for another family out there who had their hopes raised, only to see them dashed.

Life does go on. But it will never be the same. I wonder what Paul would have been like today? I can't know. But I will always miss that sweet, frustrating, kind, helpful, obstinate, laughing, anger-filled young man!

Rest in peace, my son. I love you.