It Never Gets Easier

Today should be my son's 9th birthday.

Instead of a party with cake, candles and joyous children, I have a trip to the cemetery to plan.

I should be used to it by now, after all, I know the drill, but it really never gets any easier. I am stuck living my life counting the days all through the year as each year passes; still, there is this hole inside me which has not healed, which almost seems to refuse to heal. I worry that if I let go of his memory, then it will be as if he was never important, that he did not matter. As it is, he is merely a shadow of a thought to most people who have heard of him, and as each year passes, that shadow fades.

To me, he was more than a nebulous idea. He was my son, and he did matter. This family mattered to me; in fact, I still cling to that idealized image of that family, which now drifts about me in shreds and tatters.

I can not let go of any of it, the pain of his death, the anger over my husband leaving me, the unjustness of it all. Because I can not let go, I have not been able to move on.

Today, I don't give a shit whether I am moving on or not. Today, I simply replay the events of Monday, June 18, 2001 in my head again and again. I have as much chance of stopping that as I would have of halting an aneurysm mid-burst.

Today I remember, and regret.

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Nathan's story

Harder Than I Thought it Would Be

June 18th, 2001 fell on a Monday, one day after Father's Day, just like this year.

June 18th, 2001 was the day that changed the lives of everyone in our small family.

June 18th, 2001 I went into labor with my son Nathan.

June 18th, 2001 was the day that my son died.



As I do every June 18th, I woke up at 4:30, and began reliving the events of that day which are still as fresh in my mind, heart and soul as they were 6 years ago.

For the first time since it happened, we are going off to the cemetery separately, not as a family. A sure sign that this family is irrevocably broken.

Natalie was talking about him all weekend, and now Lucy is asking me these questions that are impossible to answer to a 4 year-old. I start crying and she says, "Mommy, don't be sad." She's holding his picture and looking at him, trying to understand why we are having no birthday party for him and why he is flying in the clouds with Jesus.
It feels every bit as bad as it did 6 years ago.
By my reckoning, right now, at 7:48 it was about the time that the nurses realized that there was something wrong. I can't stop reliving it in my mind. I'm watching the clock tick by and remembering the sequence of events. I can even almost detect the sterile alcohol smell of the pristine hospital corridors.

How many more years until it gets bearable on this day?


This is the poem on the back of Nathan's mass card:

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 awaken in the morning's hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush,

Of quiet birds' circled 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.