Next Month I'll be joined by two dear friends in the 2012 Hospice Hope Run!
In preparation for this year's Hospice race, I've completed weekly 5K training runs through Old Salem, Washington Park, and down the Greenway - all places Errol loved.
Thank you all for your support, encouragement, advice, gatorade, and generosity!
The mornings find frost on the south facing car windows, the days end earlier, my gut tightens as our half of the earth tilts away from the sun. The slant of the weakening light reminds me of the thinning days when we were losing Errol. At night, I lie mute, alone on my bed, falling asleep while Owen reads alone in his room. I stare up at the crumbling plaster ceiling, my mind tracing back over the contours of my life with Errol, trying to understand something that cannot be reckoned.
I pick up a picture from the bedside chest, one of the many pictures of Errol that litters our house like empty wrappers, and rub Errol’s shining face. I rub little flecks of ink off on my fingers, slowly wearing a hole into his picture. I hold the picture, looking down at Errol and think back.
Errol looks back up at me, a mute supplicant. The camera that I hold to my face hides my smile as I gaze down upon Errol’s buoyant face through the lens. I see his wet eyes, his surprise at the metal attached to my head, the smile spreading across his lips. He is my only hope, I think; so forgiving, so gracious. The light streams into the camera and then the lens snaps shut.
When Errol was alive, we were so connected that sometimes it was like my nerves were inside Errol. When we were at the doctor’s office and the needle entered Errol’s vein, I could feel the cold metallic taste on my tongue. But now my nerves feel nothing, and as I hold Errol’s picture close to my face, I wonder if his goodness, clarity, generosity was real, if I could have imagined him, if Errol could have all been a dream.
I put the picture back on the windowsill where it sits fading under the sun. I walk around the house unsure of what to do with so much time. Thinking: when you have a dead child, you never get home. Home is always somewhere else. I pace around my empty house looking, looking, looking everywhere in the thinning light.
Other loses come and go, are sloughed away by time, but Errol’s loss sits hard in my gut like the pit of a peach; indigestible.
That night, I finally sleep, but I still can’t dream about Errol. Instead I dream that Owen and I are swimming. As we swim, a few tiny sharks approach and swim harmlessly around our legs, then a huge dark figure emerges below us, and before we can scramble from the water, a huge Orca lunges up out of the water, and I scream to warn Owen to get out of the water, but he cannot hear me. Then the image shifts and Owen and I are walking home for miles and miles and we walk up a steep hill, crowned with tombstones, white like Errol’s hair, and Owen asks me where we are but I do not answer and we walk on silently through the crowded graveyard trying to get home as a steel blue sky swallows the light from the east, and the night falls upon us like a blanket and we were still far from home.
I wake and realize that it is the start of daylight savings time, and I reach to turn the clock back an hour, and then fall back into my bed and try to go back to sleep, but I just lie there in the bed staring up at the ceiling, wondering where the hour we lose this weekend will go. I remember that last hour we sat with Errol before he had stopped breathing, knowing the moment would finally come, when there would be no going back, no turning the clock back. When there would be nothing to look forward to. He was lost to us and there was nothing to find in the steel blue night.
As my life unfolds and I look back upon it, almost all of it seems inevitable. Of course I went to college. Of course I married Cary. Of course there is a wild seven and a half year old sleeping in a bunk bed right down the hall. But as it rattles around my mind, Errol’s death feels like the opposite of inevitable. In fact, what seems inevitable is that he should still be here with us now. After all, the hopes we held for our frail boy were so real, the future we imagined so vivid - the boy turning seven, learning to talk, learning to walk, graduating from his beloved school – that my mind plays tricks on me, and at times these aspirations meld with my actual experienced history and seem completely real.
Our family is out to eat, sitting around a thick wooden table, telling stories and playing games, when Owen becomes distracted by a girl with Down syndrome, who wobbles into the restaurant, hand in hand with her younger teenage sister. Her family is slightly embarrassed of her heft and the amount of space she takes up as she totters into the restaurant and they look down to avoid the eyes they imagine will be gawking at her. They have good reason to feel this way and I worry they will see Owen staring at her and scold him for gaping, but I know what he is seeing: himself with Errol in the future he imagined. But instead, this girl is here, plodding through the room with her slow unwieldy steps, hands entwined with her sister, and Errol is a year and a half gone.
Memories of Errol reverberate though our days like aftershocks of his life, disrupting our plans to move forward.
As the family stands there, waiting for a table, I want to walk up to them I know how hard their life must be, tell them how jealous I am of them, hug each and every one of them. Instead I watch Owen watch them walk off to their table, and I remember the elderly woman at the cafeteria two years ago who kept looking over at me feeding Errol his special bottle.
The old woman turns to us, across the room and through tears says, “They really are special.” I nod, lost in the shuffle of buttering Owen’s biscuit and mixing up another bottle for Errol. “I lost my boy when he was 32.” She says, and then went back to eating, unable to keep her eyes off our little family the whole meal. They sit for a long time after they have finished eating then her husband takes her arm to help her out of the restaurant and she looks back through glassy eyes at Errol laughing at his brother pushing slices of Jell-o across the table.
I remember thinking, that’s sad, unable to imagine Errol dying at 32, which seemed so far away, much less at 3 and a half. And now I realize that she was a prophet and I wish I had listened more closely to her warning and held Errol even more closely after that meeting.
I steal a glance at the family seated uncomfortably around the table, their younger daughter helping her sister keep her straw in her drink, and my mind is full of memories of Errol – imagining him here with us, wondering if things could have turned out any differently.
In the fragile days after Errol's death, art therapy, grief counseling, and Camp Carousel at Hospice has been a salve for our mourning family. There isn't much I'd run a mile for (much less 3.1) but Hospice has kept us moving, and so on April 16, I will run for Hospice.
I don't set an alarm for 3 in the morning to practice getting up each day, and being opposed to the idea of running, I had decided that my training for the 5K would be the race itself. But after numerous warnings about the necessity of training, the fear of being lapped by toddlers, and the beautiful April weather, I began my 5K training in earnest last week.
The hardest part of the training was the first block, I cursed the asphalt, rued the invention of running, and scorned my shaky body that disobeyed all my positive thinking. But as my panic passed, my muscles relaxed, I settled into a rhythm with the breeze, and thoughts of Errol propelled me along under the bright sky.
On Saturday, April 16, with Errol's name written across my shirt, in a sea of runners propelled by memory, your generosity will push me through the day, as I run in honor of Errol.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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 18th 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.
