Planting

Outside our cozy house the earth is white. Mercifully, this long cold year is finally coming to an end. Perhaps in the new year something will grow from the hard lessons we have unhappily planted in the ground.



Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the
love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not
approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the
world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Searching

As we get closer to December 23, our trip to Guatemala for Cary’s brother Roy’s wedding is a warm respite from our swelling grief. The historic town of Antigua sits in a valley between three volcanoes, and one morning, Owen and I sit on the roof of our hotel and watch ash billow from a volcano. The day after Owen’s Uncle’s wedding, the family leaves the comforts of Antigua to climb the 8,373 foot volcano, Pacaya. As we hike above the tree line, steam rises out of vents in the earth, and during a rest break we have to stand because the ground is too hot to sit on. After our break, we continue up, sloshing through volcanic ash, over pumice and rock, making our way, higher and higher. When we stop at a deep steaming fissure, the stick Owen throws into the searing crevice bursts into flame before it reaches the bottom.

One night, back home, the rush of Christmas passed, Owen dreams about Errol. He wakes in a golden mood, and the story of his dream spills from his mouth.
I was in Guatemala. These monkeys were throwing coconuts down to us. My brother was giggling. He really liked the monkeys chittering. We all liked what the monkeys did because most of the time it was funny.

The next day, at art therapy, Owen builds a sand volcano that buries all his figurines. At the end of the session, as Owen squirms between us, his therapist reports, “Owen is really working with an intense volcano metaphor!”
“The metaphor is intense,” I agree, “but Owen really did climb a volcano last week.” His therapist looks impressed. “Well, the volcano keeps erupting and Owen keeps trying to save everybody. And Owen is also scared about what might happen to him. He wants to be invincible.” We both look at Owen, who seems to have grown a foot taller over Christmas. “Remember what invincible means, Owen?” she asks.

Owen looks past us, into the thinning winter light, searching and searching.

Christmas

I can barely remember Christmas day last year, just a day and a half after Errol died. The Christmas presents my mother had bought him were quickly wrapped and stowed in drawers where they remain.

This year, we receive our first white Christmas in memory. We drive through the fine snow to my parents’ house where Owen’s jolly cousins great us, and we march into the living room in chronological order singing, We Wish You A Merry Christmas. After the gifts are opened, my mother brings us Errol’s Christmas stocking, in which each family member has written down a gift Errol gave them: “his smile,” “his courage,” “his laughter.” The children gather around their grandmother, hoping to hear their own memories read aloud. The delicate flakes drift down from the luminous sky and cover the house like a blanket.

Silent Night

On Christmas Eve last year our abridged family awoke without Errol for the first time since his birth; the way we will awake every day for the rest of our reduced lives.

Rescue

I watch the Chilean miner rescue play out in real time. I’m thinking of all the people worldwide who are buoyed by the happy ending, living vicariously through the Chilean miners. My mind veers off into a fantasy and I think that if the rescuers save these miners we can go back and save our own beloved Errol. I think…

They will save the miners.

The doctors will save Errol.

We will be happy.

Everyone will be happy.

But as I watch the rescue capsule emerge from the Chilean mine with the first saved miner, the crowd erupting into cheers, his family shedding tears of joy, I am all alone, sorrowfully gazing into the screen, looking for Errol.

Our kitten goes missing and we look desperately for her, the loss of Errol amplifying our rescue efforts. Two days later I find our shell-shocked cat trapped behind a basement wall, pry her out, and bring her upstairs to the light and heat of the house. But I am distraught. It was so easy. Why does the cat get to survive and not Errol? Why couldn’t we save Errol too?

One morning, out at breakfast with Owen, a smiling woman ambles over to our table. “Errol got me through the ICU.” She quavers, looking up at Owen, her eyes glistening, “I kept thinking about that sweet little boy and he helped me make it.” All this time I thought we were the ones to save Errol, but it was Errol who was guiding us out of the darkness with his joyous smile and his ringing laughter.

Happy Memories from 2008

Traces

As the weather turns colder, reminding us of this time last year, Owen's suffering grows with ours. His grandmother bought him a little notebook with the Eiffel Tour on its cover, and when Cary found it lying on the floor of Owen’s room she opened it to see what it was. On the inside of his book, Owen had written in his sweet seven year old hand, “I Leov Errol pucuz Errol Is SOW FunE.”
I love Errol because Errol is so funny.

When she turned the page over she found scrawled on the back, “I rley wis errol was sdil uliv”
I really wish Errol was still alive.

I don’t know what prompted Owen to write these longings. I don’t know why he took the time to commit his yearnings to paper. Maybe he thought it would make Errol more permanent, or even bring Errol back (at least into his mind while he wrote), or maybe just to let the pain run out through his pencil. I don’t know why Owen writes these reminders, but I continue to find little traces of Errol everywhere Owen goes.

Tonight as we put Owen to bed we found a little exhibit of Errol’s pictures that Owen had curated on the floor of his room. Pictures of Owen holding Errol and pictures of Errol smiling up at us all lined up in a row.

We are building the boat as we sail it through this vast sea of grief.

Cousins' Ceremony

When Errol first died I was more accepting of his death than I am now because I didn’t actually believe he was really, truly dead. It was easy to accept his death if it wasn’t real.

When Cary was in elementary school, each member of her class wrote down their home address and a note and put it in a helium balloon and launched them into the sky. About a month later she got a letter from a woman from the coast, 300 miles away, who had gotten her balloon.

The strings of fifteen colorful helium balloons dangle from the ceiling. We sit in a circle, each holding a picture of Errol we have chosen. We each tell a story about him. Owen beams as he tells everyone about how he and Errol had crowed into Errol’s crib together and then Errol signed to Owen, “I love you!” Errol’s uncles, aunts, grandfather, and cousins all tell stories, but when it is his eloquent grandmother’s turn, she cannot find words. She turns the picture of Errol to face us, pats her heart, and cries and cries.

Then we all sing songs Errol loved - The Wheels On The Bus – the kids leading us in the hand motions – and then The Itsy Bitsy Spider complete with hand gestures just like we did for Errol all those times. It would be so normal to look over and see Errol in his aunt’s lap, and it feels like he is here, but as I look around the room, I can’t see him anywhere..

Then the kids tell us they have a surprise for the parents. They bring out letters they have written in secret, decorated in bright colors, replete with hearts and the word "Errol." They are going to tie their words to the balloons we will launch for Errol.

We walk to the side of the lake and at Owen’s behest, launch our balloons and notes for Errol. At first it looks as if notes are going to keep the balloons from rising very high above the lake, but then suddenly, a draft comes and the shining balloons rise and up, up, up and fly over the mountains and off to the west out towards the sun.

I’ve never seen a balloon come down, never chanced upon the husk of an old helium balloon, but I know they must eventually come down somewhere. They must run out of air and come crashing back to earth. They don’t, as some of the cousins have worried, fly into the stratosphere, up over the edge of the horizon and out through the asteroid belts into outer space until finally they burn up into the sun. I’d like to know where those balloons go and what happens to them on their magnificent journey. I look back up into the sun for one last glance at the balloons, but they are gone.

Sweet

I remember one of Errol’s very favorite games.
Cary gently slides a large napkin down over Errol’s head until it just covers his eyes. Then she sings to him "Where is Errol?" There is no response. She sings again, a little louder, “Where is Errol?” There is a little vibration under the napkin. She sings once more, asking more emphatically, “Where is Errol?” There is a mild eruption and Errol’s little hand pulls the napkin away to reveal a white-haired boy with a huge grin on his face, chortling with laughter.

February

In February, a friend from Errol’s school whose seven-year-old disabled daughter died a year ago, brings her youngest daughter to our house for dinner. We tell Owen that this little girl might understand how he feels. As soon as they arrive, Owen’s mood changes completely. His tired and sunken eyes grow bright, his cheeks flush, he looks like his old self. And while they never speak a word about their siblings, as they alternate between playing happily and listening to their parents cry, these two young mourners are bonded in grief.

Our friend asks us, “Is the party over?” The mania of Errol’s memorial service is fading, and our shock is slowly wearing off. The reality of life without Errol is settling on us like snow.

Our guests step into the bathroom for a moment and as soon as they close the door, Owen asks if we can look at Errol’s ashes. I gingerly lift the beautiful pottery urn down from the mantle and remove the plastic bag that holds Errol’s ashes. I rub the nameplate, “Errol Clifford” and dissolve into tears as Owen stares into the ashes as if they hold the secret to the universe. When our friends leave, the little girl reaches to give Owen a big hug on the way out the door, but she squeezes a little too tightly and Owen cries and cries as we try to comfort him.

After our guests have left, Owen goes right to sleep. Suddenly at midnight he wakes up, vomits, and then falls right back to sleep.

The next morning he doesn’t remember any of it. I understand. I am forgetful too, and often feel nauseated, but mostly I’m just cold - cold and tired.

The next day, Cary and I dive out to Hospice to meet the art therapist who will be working with Owen, trying to heal the hole in his heart. I remember driving Errol to his doctor one afternoon. Errol’s doctor’s office is right across the street from a retirement community, which is conveniently located right down the street from a funeral home. A huge banner at the convalescent home read “Hospice Days!” and even with Errol sick in the back seat, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Hospice Days” sounded like a geriatric harvest, and I imagined workers from Hospice, dressed in Hazmat suits, driving rental trucks to haul away all these old folks, clearing out space at the retirement home for the next batch. And even with a sick kid (was it pneumonia? Croup? Bronchitis?) who wasn’t expected to live to see 20, laughing at Hospice didn’t seem morbid because, at the time I knew that Errol would live forever – he always had.

We meet Owen’s art therapist who describes the sand tray that will be the set for Owen to act out his emotions and memories of his brother. It is a safe and confined place where Owen can unbind his fear and grief and know that they won’t take him over. She explains that we can expect to see Owen in the midst of grief one moment, and then laughing the next. “Grieving kids,” she says, “are like stones being skipped across water.”

Just last week, I walked into Owen’s room and found him dissolved into tears. He cried and cried and then suddenly got up and started playing happily with his Star Wars Legos. “Owen,” I rasp, in my best Darth Vader imitation, holding my cupped hand to my mouth, “I am your father!”

Then we meet the therapist who will be working with Cary and me. She asks us to tell her the story of Errol’s life and Cary begins. “When I was a few months pregnant I went to get an ultrasound of Errol. The doctor told me that everything looked good, but I was convinced something wasn’t right, and I asked if the doctor was sure. ‘Yes,’ the doctor replied, ‘everything appears totally normal.’”

We take turns telling the therapist how joyful and delightful Errol was, then, very slowly, we are in the midst of Errol’s last days at Duke Hospital. “In mid December, right before his final surgery. Errol and I were footloose and fancy free for an hour.” I say. “We hooked him to a mobile oxygen tank and monitors and headed straight outside!”

“I hadn't been outside in two and a half days and Errol hadn't been outdoors for a single breath of air since he arrived a week and a half earlier. We sat on a bench at the front of the hospital for a long time, watching people scurry out of the hospital smiling, surprised by the balmy breeze.” I look away for the ending.

“Our trip outside the hospital turns out to have been Errol’s last time outside. As lovely as the evening was, we had to head back into the hospital to give Errol his medicine, but the medicine didn’t work.”

One afternoon, searching for solace in the library, I glimpse Errol in the words of William Blake,

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night.

Now that Errol is gone, so too is our delight, as if an eclipse has blocked the sun.

As much as I think about Errol, I can’t ever think him back.

It is like riding a merry-go-round. You travel far but you never get anywhere.

My favorite French particle physicist turned monk, Matthieu Ricard, traded a scientific career at the Jonas Salk institute for a life of contemplation in a hermitage high in the Himalayas.

“Isn’t it the mind that translates the outer condition into happiness and suffering?” Asks this smiling Buddhist monk. Somehow, Errol’s unusually wired mind makes him smile at the nurse who draws his blood, the doctor who taps his spine. By all rights, Errol’s physical life was endless night. But some switch flipped in his mind and made him delight in the little life he had. Although he couldn’t speak, his whole joyous self laughed out his answer to the monk’s question in sweet delight. I try to translate these long dark nights into something light, but without Errol’s steady smile I’m at a loss.

Owen is trying hard to think his way back to the dawn. He retreats from his empty room to his best friend’s house for some imaginary play: Roman in the role of the mother cat, Owen as mama cat’s six-year-old kitten. Mother cat has had a new baby, who is just back home from the hospital. The baby kitten, Mama cat says, is a little like Errol. He is going to have heart surgery, but the doctors are going to be able to fix him. The cats are singing to the baby kitty and giving him presents. They are telling him not to worry. The baby will be in the hospital for only two weeks.

The doctors have fixed the baby, and he's out of the hospital now! His name is Water Brother and the cat family is opening presents.

Two months after he died, I am finally able to watch a video of Errol. He is in the backyard swing in the summer of the postponed surgery - that saved his life for another year-and was probably the highlight of his health. I am holding Errol in the swing, close to my chest and then I let go and he swings far away from me and up, up, up to the end of his arc and he is laughing uproariously and then gravity pulls him back to earth and he is swinging toward me, and that is funny too, and his laugh continues as he swings past me to the other end of his arc and when he comes back towards me on the way back I yell, “I’m gonna’ get you!!!!!!!!” and reach out for him and he swings past me and he laughs and laughs and this goes on and on and he never tires of the fun.

The smiles and laughter become more rare as the summer wears on and Errol outgrows his heart. And by the time the next summer – his last summer – rolls around he is very sick and weak.

We miss Errol so much. More each day, it seems. The further we swing from his life, the more we miss him. Our heartache grows, the space between sadness contracts, our despair deepens, our ability to do other things diminishes. Can it get even worse still? Is there an arc of grief that will one day bring us back to earth? How hollow can you get without breaking?

Early one morning, about the time when Errol used to wake me up, I am lying in bed when I hear Errol. My heart leaps. I am thrilled. Has his death just been a horrible dream? But just as quickly, I am deflated, distraught. It is just the cat.

One night after dinner, our little family, now numbering three, watches videos of Errol. On the small screen, Errol is flapping his hand, his chin wet with spit from laughing, and he is smiling - so alive to the world. Suddenly, the video is over and Errol vanishes again.

The video upsets Owen, and after a few cloudy minutes he has had enough. We stop the tape and Owen brightens. A few minutes later, Owen jumps to the top of the sofa, mumbling something unintelligible, as Cary and I look at each other, wondering what he means. Then Owen whispers, “Errol’s ashes went with us to the movie today.” I must have misunderstood him, I think. But then Owen says, clear as day, “Errol’s ashes go with us everywhere. Errol is with us wherever we go. His spirit is always with us.”

Easter

At first, after he died, Errol was still in my muscle memory. My muscles flexed when we went out the front door and I reached for his stroller. Flexed when I got in the car and braced my legs to counterbalance his weight in my arms. The longer Errol is gone, the more my muscles lose their memory and relax. It’s only when we go to the doctor, or Errol’s school, or to the farmers market, or do something we often did with Errol that my muscles tighten and warm.

But Errol is still in my head, in the constant loop of memories that conjure him.

I receive a visitation on Easter Morning. My head is full of beautiful dreams, backed it seems, by a soundtrack of loud brass music filling the night air. Then I awake disoriented, and realize I’m not dreaming, that it is Easter morn (barely – it’s 3:30 – don’t these people ever sleep?!) and the sounds in my dream are coming from the Moravian brass band assembled on our street corner to play hymns about resurrection and everlasting life.

Bands of peripatetic Moravians roam the city streets in the middle of the night every Easter morn to herald the good news of Jesus’s ressurection. Or at least that’s what they say they’re doing. I had heard a late night Moravian band once before when I was recovering at home from an illness, so this concoction of music, suffering, and healing seems very natural to me. At least, at 3:30 in the morning, half asleep and half clothed, it feels reasonable that a brass band would be on our street corner, playing 18^th century tunes, to herald spring and rebirth. Of course, these insomniac Moravians blowing their wake up call into a sleeping neighborhood probably don’t have the first idea about Errol’s death. Most likely, they have picked our house at random and aren’t doing anything more than just playing notes. But that morning, walking out into the dark, standing on the front porch in my underwear, listening to the hymns float through the humid night air, my head is filled with Errol and in my mind, these Moravians know our story – our loss, and this is an annunciation – a direct call - to us, to bring good news of our dearly departed Errol.

I fall back into a deep sleep but I still don’t dream of Errol.