This is a damned hard column to write.
My son, Jasper, was struck and killed by a Portland, Oregon bus, on March First. He was thirty. He had brittle bones–a gift from my genes–and was crossing a street when the accident happened.
I found out the next morning when the medical examiner called me. It was like having someone reach inside me and rip out everything. However, as a kid with lots of fractures, I was well-taught to “be a brave soldier,” so I held it together. For about ten minutes, until I called his mom (she and her partner live on the west side of the mountains, over by Eugene). I told her what had happened; she was absolutely silent and that was all I needed to come unglued.
Beth, my partner, took the phone and explained to her what we knew.
After about fifteen minutes of bawling, I got the defenses up, and started functioning.
Pack the bags, call and cancel appointments, get the neighbors to feed the cats. I had to explain it to them, too–I apparently looked and acted kind of weird.
I guess it was a form of denial–I just felt numb and stupid.
We met his mom in Portland and found a funeral “alternatives” place, made the arrangements. Five hundred dollars? OK, not too bad.
The next day we went to the funeral home to view his body. The price had become $1000 and they wanted it up front before we could see him. Still not too bad: five hundred apiece–I can’t imagine what would happen when families couldn’t afford it.
It took an hour to do all the paper work. Then the funeral director led us into see him. I had to hang onto Beth to stay upright. Oceans of tears, buckets of snot…
We somehow made it through all the stuff to be done: the next day we had a ceremony–washed his body and dressed it, covered him with boughs of fresh green cedar, put a star quilt over him, and sang songs for his journey to the other side.
We tried to follow the Old Ways–as best we could: he was getting kind of stiff, so we ended up using scissors to cut the back of his jeans; it reminded me of trying to dress him as a small child when he didn’t want to get dressed. I said, “He’s just like he used to be,” and his mother giggled in spite of herself.
At the end, he looked beautiful. It was almost like a smile had appeared, even though we all knew he wasn’t there any longer. It was just a cold, stiffening shell…but, nevertheless, it looked like a smile had appeared…
I have good defenses and can do much without too much effort. Easier to walk through the mechanical stuff rather than feel the pain–I think that’s a gift from The Creator. At times.
At other times, though, it doesn’t help all that much. You just can’t squash those kinds of feelings and not pay a destructive price.
The next day we began cleaning out his apartment. Twenty minutes after I got there I was kneeling at the toilet, heaving up everything I’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours. I went back to where we were staying in and sobbed for two or three hours. “It isn’t fair, it’s just not fair!” I was howling. Children aren’t supposed to pass on before their parents–this was all wrong!
Yeah–but, right or wrong, fair or unfair, it’s the way it is. Reality. Life and death aren’t there to meet my schedules and hopes and beliefs. None of us have this power.
It isn’t part of being human.
I knew this–fifteen years in 12-step programs had hammered into me the idea that I wasn’t in charge; my job was rowing the boat and letting The Navigator determine where I was going. The Navigator decided I was going to be a blubbering mess for the next couple of weeks, and a turnip-head after that. I’m still numb enough that my attention span is a joke.
It’s a little better, now. I’m not walking into things, at least, and I can go for ten or twelve hours without falling into a huge whirlpool of loss and hurt. Guilt, too–what if he hadn’t inherited my brittle bones and hadn’t been on crutches at the time? No, that’s not rational…
When it gets down to the feeling-level, all rationality, intellectual awareness, cosmic-consciousness, religiosity…that stuff is out the window when the pain, loss and grief is busting out from way down inside. All I can do is give in to them and fall into that whirlpool.
Hard column to write, hard experience to write about.
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