Grief and Puerto Vallarta

Showing Riley our view in Mexico

It was the day after Christmas in the Puerto Vallarta airport. My husband and I just spent a week in a sleepy beach town known for its gentle waves that entice surfing newbies onto waxed boards an hour north of there. As we sipped lattes while waiting for our boarding time, a familiar face passed as she headed for the restroom.

No, no, no, I panicked, feeling bemused about how there could be an acquaintance nearly 1,900 miles south and two time zones east of our Northern California home. We ran away from the holidays and the merriment of friends and acquaintances and their living children to a remote part of Mexico where I imagined hearing the words Feliz Navidad would feel less painful than hearing their English equivalent. But in that moment, in the busy terminal, there was the chance of no longer being anonymous. Anxiety replaced the serenity I found in the days spent perched above the sandy shoreline, and peppered with my enthusiastic, yet flawed Spanish.

Why would the sight of an acquaintance cause emotional distress? Because I have no idea what that person will say to me if we catch each other’s eye. While I can guess the topic--my dead 11-year-old son--I suppose it’s the approach, rather than the topic itself, that I most dread. Because I love talking about my son Riley.

Just like you enjoy bragging on your kids, I like bragging about him. I want to tell everyone about his quick plays at second base during his seven years of Little League, about the short stories and poetry he wrote, about his love of maps, of his siblings, his interest in penguins, hot sauce, and his desire to open a restaurant one day. We used to joke it would have been called, “Riley’s Salads and Fried Things” or “Riley’s Tofu and Salads.” His favorite dinner from the time he was just two years old was salad. I have photos of him, fork in hand, to prove it. Caprese sandwiches were his favorite. He loved that he had Italian heritage and enjoyed making his family bruschetta and croutons; he liked eating cloves of raw garlic. I can remember sending a little three-year-old boy into the backyard to pick handfuls of basil for batches of homemade pesto that would be spread on to thick slices of crusty bread.

But as a bereaved mother, I have found conversations with acquaintances to be painful, not because I am asked to speak about my son. But because the weight of the conversation is so often plunked down on my wounded heart with good, but flawed, intention. How are you? or even Sheryl Sandberg’s modified How are you today? sounds innocent enough. But in order to answer, I must access myself for this other person, in what ultimately is a passing moment in their daily routine. To me, it is so much more as I frantically scan myself in an attempt to sum up what it is like to live today without my son for a near-stranger. Ok, fine, or hanging in there are grossly inadequate and false. 

The moment’s complexity is exacerbated because interacting with humans with healthy, living children in general, is--quite frankly--a skill I have yet to master. You see, I'm still largely terrified of all of you. I'm also confused by all of you; your smiles, laughter, or your annoyance at traffic or the wrong latte at Starbucks. To be fair, I imagine your lives are far more complex than what I catch a glimpse of as I blast through my kid's school with my head down. We share the same roads and schools and grocery stores and oxygen supply, yet it feels as if we exist in parallel worlds. Most of the time I want to be invisible; yet, having you ignore me is a different kind of trauma. You're dammed if you do; you're dammed if you don't. I don't make the rules; I'm just stuck in this miserable grief game of trying to figure out how to exist among the living and having no clue about how to do it. 

To avoid that potential airport interaction, I turned around, slunk down in my chair, and watched the three kids opposite me--particularly the boy who looked about the same size at Riley who wore a “Most Valuable Player” t-shirt--eat pizza and chips. And I hid under my hat. I’m sure she didn’t recognize me with my short hair in the first place, anyway. 

Grief and A Leap of Faith

Gorgeous art from Issue 3 of Six Hens

* Note to reader: This is the "Letter from the Editor" from my literary magazine Six Hens. Issue 3 launched today. Feeling enormously proud. Read, feel something, share... *

A nurse tapped on the door before turning the handle. “I thought you’d want these,” she said as she approached me. She offered two Polaroid pictures of my newborn. Curiosity or instinct elevated my hand to receive them. “He’s beautiful. Do you have a name?” I shook my head then parted my lips to thank her. My words were reflex rather than gratitude.

She switched to nurse mode, asking when I’d last urinated or if I’d passed any clots larger than my fist and whether I wanted to breastfeed. When I said yes to that last question, she said she’d arrange for a lactation nurse to explain the basics. I didn’t protest, although I couldn’t understand how I could learn to breastfeed without a baby. Then her cool fingertips pressed my doughy abdomen. After her exam, I felt her access me in a different way. “You need to name him,” she said softly but firmly. That wasn’t any of her business. It wasn’t part of her job. But she must have heard about his x-ray, the one that showed his heart on the opposite side of his chest. She must have seen paperwork declaring “probable heart defect.” She must have known it was serious. She must have known that naming a newborn—even one with scrambled up insides—was more important than the possibility of him dying nameless.

Chalky morning light muted pinks and blues on the walls of the small room in the recovery ward of that Northern California hospital. It was before rush hour on April 3, 2003. Blankets and pillows swallowed me, but I was cold for the first time in months. My eight-pound-two-ounce furnace was in the nursery somewhere else on the floor. My fingers gripped the edges of the Polaroid pictures, which were face down on my lap. I flipped them. They were almost identical, showing a round-headed baby, eyes closed, head turned left with a breathing tube disappearing into his mouth. One image showed his torso where the umbilical cord stump had been removed. His skin was orange-red from iodine, which could’ve been mistaken for blood. I had read that a newborn’s stump normally fell off several days after birth, revealing a bellybutton. Our son, who we had yet to name, needed his cut away to use as a place to insert an IV.

I thought back to the moments after he slipped from my warm body into the cool, room-temperature air. As a hushed urgency of doctors escalated to my right, I noticed the baby was silent. “Ken? Is he breathing?” I asked my husband. He was, Ken said with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, “but something is wrong.”

A few minutes later, a nurse asked if I wanted to hold him briefly before they took him to the nursery for more tests. “I don’t think so,” I said unconvinced. After twenty hours of labor, my body was relieved to be free of him.

“You have to hold him,” Ken said. I reluctantly agreed. With my baby wrapped like a burrito in a blue, green, and white hospital blanket, the nurse set him on my chest so that I could see the creature that had been rolling around in my tummy for months. He wasn’t the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. His skin looked ashen, his face was contorted, and he was stretching his neck; it looked liked he was in pain. It felt like everyone waited for me to ooh and aah over him. But I didn’t. I just looked at him, at his twisted expression. The nurse said they had to take him. I didn’t want him any longer anyway. I felt faulty because I was not instantly in love.

When my husband returned to the recovery room, he explained that a neonatal transport team was on their way to ferry our baby to UCSF more than fifty miles south. I gave him the pictures. “You can go see him,” Ken said as he studied the photos, “if you’re ready.” When I didn’t respond, he lowered himself into the plasticky armchair to my left and took my hand. He looked thin, and dark patches underlined his pale blue eyes. It had been nearly nine hours since an initial newborn assessment forked us into separateness; I refused to accept that things were going horribly wrong. Surely he was just exhausted from being born; I was exhausted from giving birth. A few minutes later the nurse returned and parked a wheelchair next to the bed. I hesitated. Did I want to see my baby? A good mother would want to. Surely I was a good mother. Like a sack of rice, I slouched as Ken rolled me along. In a hallway carved of fluorescent light, it felt like we moved forward and backward simultaneously.

When we arrived in the nursery, I don’t remember seeing any other babies or cribs. Instead, the small space was crowded by neonatal transport experts. They prepared a special plastic box—a high-tech mobile incubator that would be placed in their ambulance. Plexiglass and a wall of EMTs separated me from my son. Through uniformed bodies, I could see bits of baby. An hand here, a knee there; so tiny, barely human under the web of intervention. He was enclosed, packaged, foreign. I wish I’d kissed his moist skin, inhaled his mossy smell when I had had the chance. The team assured us that he was stable and would be in the best of hands on his fifty-six-mile ride to UCSF, one of the top pediatric cardiac centers in the country. And then they were gone.

Kneeling in front of me as if he were about to propose, Ken’s warm hands reached for mine and pulled them to his damp face. Holding my gaze for a moment before putting his head in my lap, there was nothing to say. My fingers pushed through his trim brown hair and convulsions began. Unfamiliar sounds built in my diaphragm and erupted from my mouth, penetrating an otherwise quiet corridor. Nurses walked around us. No one asked us to move. We were left to mourn that moment. His birth. The unknown.

Eventually Ken pushed himself from the speckled linoleum and assessed my droopy posture. He brushed matted hair from my eyes. In whispers, we decided he should drive to UCSF, the hospital on a hill in our old neighborhood near Golden Gate Park, instead of waiting three more hours until I was allowed to be discharged. With that, he wheeled me back to our tiny room and helped me into bed.

“We have to name him before I leave,” he said with arms folded. I looked at his body, his denim pants and T-shirt, his waning hairline. Only in a twisted world would I debate pros and cons of naming my baby.

I hugged myself, squeezing my arms, rubbing open palms along my sides and over my vacant, shrunken stomach. “Okay,” I said after a long silence, still unsure. “Where’s the paperwork?”

He grabbed the form from the end table and clicked the end of a pen. The lines were long and blank. Without knowing his diagnosis or prognosis, I thought of the nurse, her prodding, and assumed a named child would be harder to forget than an unnamed child. He picked up the Polaroid photos and put them next to me. I studied the baby’s face and hoped it would tell me what it should be called. The blankets vibrated as my muscles shook. The stack of thin layers over my limbs didn’t seem to make a difference. After sinking down further, my eyes closed.

“We both like Riley,” he said, doing his best to keep me engaged.

My eyelids rose and focused on him. He nibbled at his cuticles as he waited for my response.

“I still like Mackenzie for a middle name,” I whispered eventually. “It means son of Ken. Then everyone knows you’re his dad. No one ever wonders who the mom is.” With that, he pushed pen to paper and our son’s name appeared. I sunk lower, clutching a pillow. He kissed my forehead, gathered his things and left.

It was incomprehensible. Riley was gone. I imagined miles of highway separating us, when nine hours earlier we had been connected. His flesh inside mine, held safe with breath and heartbeat. Nothing felt safe anymore. Ken drove home for a shower and fresh clothing before braving that unfamiliar San Francisco hospital, where he would start learning about our imperfect son, a baby I grew so horribly wrong.

It was just me in that little room. I had labored. I had delivered. But I was alone.

I didn’t know it at the time, but naming Riley despite terrifying uncertainty was a leap of faith. It was me desperately wanting him to be okay, hoping it was all a misunderstanding, a mix-up. It was also the first of many moments that define this mother’s love during my son’s truncated, eleven-year lifetime. He would have turned twelve on April 2.

Check out more powerful writing in the third issue of Six Hens!

Suzanne Galante, Editor in Chief

Grief and looking

The wall between me and you...

The afternoon was a mishmash of things to do. Thirty seven items returned to the library. Two checks deposited at the bank. Two certified letters retrieved from the post office. Empty shopping bags piled at my feet waited to be weighted with carrots and milk and apples and edamame.

It was just after 3 pm, not long after the last bell launched children from the nearby middle school like a voice through a megaphone. My team usually walks home, but we decided to pick them up before heading to the grocery store so that they didn’t arrive at an empty, locked house. As we turned toward the school, there was a storm of students in every direction. They walked, rode skateboards or bikes, and carried instruments in bulky, oddly-shaped, black plastic cases.

Backpack straps pushed into shoulders and rolled along bumpy sidewalks. Crossing guards blew whistles, waved cars through an intersection, and launched “stop” signs into the air to pause traffic for impatient kids. Cars lined the block near the park -- a popular after-school meeting spot. Kids waited, parents talked, toddlers swung and climbed and slid. Unseasonably cool air reddened cheeks and forced arms into jackets that had hung in closets since the beginning of the year. 

From the passenger seat in my family’s dinged minivan, my eyes searched and my ears listened for the familiar faces and voices of the women I used chat with while I waited for my own crew. In that moment, I knew that somewhere in the last thirteen months, grief had shifted. While much is the same as it was a year ago -- I am not any less sad, for example -- things are also different. The fact that I even was looking beyond the brim of my cap was a change. I could not do that last year. I could not be near school, especially at pick-up. It was as if my fear of other parents and living, healthy children made me afraid of anything and everything. Seeing them doing their normal things was like a paralyzing storm inside of me. My limbs were like downed trees, immobile and broken. My mind was like a clogged gutter, mucky and stuck. 

As we looked for the kids, a longing rose within as I missed the time when I was among the friendly mothers who met their children at the park after school. There are so many things I miss...

After noticing that slight internal shift, that desire to see the community of people I used to move through and among, I considered the errands I had just participated in. They were nothing out of the ordinary. From store to store, my feet carried me. My arms reached for gallons of milk. My mind made the to-do list. But I was not terrified. After Riley died, the world seemed like it was made of make-believe. I felt sidewalks would crumble under my shoes; I feared walkways were obstructed with sheets of glass; walls wobbled; branches angled like arrows aimed at my heart. Moving like a wounded animal, I cowered. I hid behind shelves and scoped safe pathways between myself and the cereal aisle. With arms wrapped around my torso, protecting my weeping organs, I scurried with eyes down. Like a raccoon, I avoided people. Like a deer, I froze as if to be invisible. I imagined people judged me when they saw me, that they believed that it was my fault, that I had killed my son. I imagined they were thinking: Why did you put him in the hospital? Why did you grow him wrong? How could you be out shopping or getting your nails done? 

Hats still cover my forehead. A spasm still jolts my limbs when a familiar figure is spotted. It’s often (but not always) followed by a pirouette that launches me to a different part of the shop. But like glancing around for familiar parents at the park, I realized I look up a little more often in the first place. 

Grief and scowling

Tile at Riley's elementary school

My husband was not home for dinner Tuesday night. He was at a school meeting. I sat at the table with three loud children. Enthusiastic children. They were excited about the cheesy garlic bread I made. They wanted to grate mountains of cheese onto their spaghetti. They did not like the look of their apple and beet salad with walnuts. But they laughed. They hummed. Told jokes. Asked for seconds of bread and pasta and cups of water. Said please and thank you. They were just being themselves.

I scowled at them.

I couldn’t wait for mealtime to be done so that I could excuse myself and retreat to my quiet bedroom. I spend a lot of time in my quiet bedroom these days. But just before people were done eating, my nine year old caught my eye in a lull in the hullabaloo and said: “Mom, I want to apologize. I know we’ve been acting a little crazy. And it seems like it’s really upsetting you.”

Wow.

Despite their version of craziness, they see what’s going on. How sweet of him to notice. At the same time, how sad that he’s noticing. How sad that mom was scowling in the first place. Scowling so much that my son felt the need to apologize. I said thank you for noticing. I told him it wasn’t about them having fun; it was just about me feeling sad about Riley.

He was right, though. I was really upset. The things I used to enjoy about my kids are upsetting now. I get mad at them. I scowl. I don’t like fun. Or laughter or any kind. Mealtime used to be a joyful event. A few months before Riley went into the hospital last year while my husband was out of town, we spent an entire meal only singing to each other. As in, anything that needed to be said was sung, not spoken. “Would you please pass the cheese?” was a melodic request followed by: “Yes. I will pass the cheese, pass the cheese, PASS the cheese.” Think Bohemian Rhapsody. It was the best. 

Laughter is now grounds for disgust. I just don’t know how to let things roll off of me anymore. Or really be in the moment. I’m lost in despair because of what happened to Riley; I’m lost in anguish because I have to live this life without him. Most of the time, I feel like I’m in sensory overload. It’s like the whir of a stove fan overpowering most of what’s going on around me. It makes it hard to hear things. It makes is hard for me to concentrate. Before Riley died, I struggled when there was a lot of sensory input around. When the kids were talking and there was music playing and the oven fan was running, my brain was stuffed with too much to process. Now I feel that way all of the time, even in a quiet room. That is my baseline. I’m always running at capacity. Add three enthusiastic voices singing and laughing and talking over each other and my brain feels like it’s going to burst. Hence, the scowling.

If my brain were a balloon, and grief was water, my brain would look strained by the amount of liquid forced into the allotted space. Grief has exceeded its capacity. Each person or sound is like turning on the tap even though the latex has no room for another drop. Even kids’ laughter. Or maybe I should say especially kids’ laughter. My brain cannot take the input. Despite the talks we’ve had about them feeling sad on the inside even though they look happy on the outside, it’s hard to accept. All that laughter feels like a betrayal of the truth. All that laughter is stretching my brain beyond capacity to tolerate my reality.

There are times that I can manage, that I enjoy being with the kids. I like reading together before bedtime. It doesn't happen very often, but I like it when it does. It's a sit-and-be-quiet time. We are together in a way where I don't feel overloaded. We read Riley's favorite books or talk about whether Riley would like this or that in the stories. I can almost imagine that he's there listening, too. Although, I'm sure he was also there laughing at the table, making jokes, singing along, sprinkling hot pepper flakes on his dinner, then lifting his shirt over his head, spinning it around like a lasso, trying to get everyone to laugh.

I really don't know why I manage one, but not the other. I could speculate, but I think I'll just be grateful that there are times when the scowling gives way to togetherness.

Grief and Riley's Handprint Memorial

I am truly humbled by all of the people who came over to participate in our memorial. It was healing for me to see that so many people are still thinking about Riley and to be surrounded by so much love on this especially painful anniversary. We made a time-lapse video to capture the transformation of our garage door. Watch it, and let your heart soar.

Grief and the First Anniversary

#CentralTeamRiley

The first anniversary of Riley's death is October 20, and we invite you to join us in honoring and remembering him with the following activities...

* October 20: Handprint Memorial
We have turned our garage door into a memorial, and we want your help. Come add your handprint. We will supply the paint and the soapy water for clean up! Bring your whole family. 4-6 pm at Riley's house. Email me for the address.

* October 20: Evening Lantern Lighting
Pick up a lantern and battery-powered candle from 4-6 pm at Riley's house (email me for the address). Decorate your lantern, then place it and battery-powered candle in your front yard at dusk. If you can, share a photo with Riley’s mom by either tagging her (Suzanne Galante) on Facebook, by posting it on Twitter (#CentralTeamRiley) or by emailing her.

* November 1: The Riley Run
Join us for a 5K walk/run around San Carlos in memory of Riley. Everyone is welcome. Proceeds from the $25 registration fee will be split between Camp Taylor and The Children’s Heart Foundation. The deadline to get a t-shirt has passed, but you can still register by sending an email to: rileyrun1101 at gmail dot com

* Ongoing: Riley geocache token
When you pick up your lantern, you'll also get a wooden Riley token for your next geocaching adventure. Or take photos of it at cool places like AT&T Park or Burton Park and share them via Twitter (#CentralTeamRiley). Another option is to just keep it somewhere special and think of Riley often.

With gratitude, Riley’s family
#CentralTeamRiley

Grief and quiet, powerful moments

Cover art for the second issue of Six Hens.

Like glossy carpet, photographs lie all over my son’s bedroom floor. They’re spread out, poured from tipped-over boxes. They’re stacked in piles. They stand in a line at the back of his desk. It’s the same boy over and over again. There he is posed in his Astros uniform. There he is holding hands with a friend outside the Exploratorium. There he is, face pressed against his brother’s as they concentrate on something just outside the frame. There he is perched proudly in front of the 1000-piece puzzle he completed the summer before starting second grade. There we are, tongues out, eyes wide attempting our silliest expressions on his 10th birthday.

There are 11 ½ years of regular moments. There are 11 ½ years of milestones. On the morning of his 6th heart operation last October, when he sat next to his brother and two step siblings in the waiting room, how could I have known the last picture of them would be captured? As doctors escorted him through the double doors, his voice fell into my ears for the last time. “I love you, too,” it said.

“I don’t know what to do without you,” I say to his wardrobe, to the assorted stuffed animals, his map of the United States dotted with pushpins. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know how to be me, without you.” Waiting for a reply, I hear a skateboard roll past our house, a child shouting to a friend, laughter. I’m reminded of a day when our neighbor’s dad gave Riley a tandem ride down our hill on his skateboard. Riley beamed. That was probably one of the few moments where he felt really alive, invincible. Normal. You see, his single ventricle heart prevented him from having energy to master physical feats like skateboarding. Or the wherewithal to endure the falls that go with them.

As I stared toward the laughter, lost in memory, my husband found me sitting on Riley’s sleeping bag with a stuffed penguin in my arms. “He’s everywhere and he is nowhere,” I say. “I don’t understand. I can’t understand.” I bury my face in his cotton-filled sleeping companion, searching for my son’s scent.

“I’m not sure it will ever make sense,” he said softly, looking into this closet of neatly folded t-shirts. We scanned the room, me wanting to inhale what he had exhaled. There were puzzles and LEGO and books and posters on the walls. “These are all of his things; he’s touched all of these things.” It was only a couple of weeks earlier that I spent the weekend in his bed wearing his t-shirts, his watch, his Rainbow Loom necklace. “And look, he forgot to put his socks away,” he added, trying unsuccessfully to tether a smile to my grief.

After my husband wandered back into the house, I found myself curious about the woman in all of those photos. She’s smiling, laughing, joyful. I studied her long blonde hair. It cascades down the sides of her neck onto her chest. Through the years of photos, she’s the same. Even when a hat covers her hairline or glasses outline her eyes, her long strands follow her through the years. The baby grows into the toddler, who becomes the Little Leaguer and viola player; the long locks are consistent. Like a mother’s love, I think. Through long hospitalizations, holidays, separation and divorce, it’s there. Through new love and step-family and pets, it’s there. As his heart slowed last October and squeezed for the last time, it was there.

Four months later, it was still there. I pulled my fingers through it. It was coarse and dry from years of highlights and lowlights. I dragged a clump of neglected strands across my cheek. Frayed ends scratched dry skin. Pulling at brittle strands, pieces broke. I kissed the penguin and tucked him into the sleeping bag before heading into bathroom light.

“Who are you?” I demanded of the reflection. I stared at the her; she stared back, vertical crease between her eyes, eyebrows pinched, unrelenting furrowed brows clenched. I ran my fingers over the pinched skin trying to smooth it out, relax the angry, heartbroken muscles. There were several inches of dark growth near the scalp. “You were so happy, weren’t you? Smiling and laughing. You ignorant, stupid woman.”

Through the basket under the sink I rummaged until my hand grasped my husband’s beard trimmer. Inserting the plug into the outlet, I stared into her unblinking hazel eyes. “You don’t know anything about me.” My thumb pushed power into the clippers and vibrations ran through my arm. “Fuck you.” Blades skimmed across the ends of my hair sending clippings into the air like dust. I couldn’t go any further. For a long time, I stared her down, beaming hatred toward her, the clippers buzzing, threatening to destroy that long-haired stranger.

After a few minutes, I silenced the clippers, too chicken to shave it off. Instead, I retrieved the scissors from the kitchen knife block. Clasping a fistful of hair, I chopped through one side, then the other. Then, pulling clumps away from my scalp, I chopped those too. Again and again, I cut and sawed and chopped until any visual sign of that happy woman was gone.

Like a mound of severed limbs, a heap of hair lay on the countertop. I stared into her eyes again. Without hair to hide behind, the dark rings from exhaustion and grief stood prominently above her cheekbones. While I didn’t recognize the short-haired stranger either, she was scraggly, ugly, and looked how I felt on the inside.

Certainly my son’s death was a defining moment, the tectonic plates crashing, destroying the landscape of my life. But what has surprised me is how many defining moments have rippled in its wake. As I’m learning from talking to other grief-stricken mothers at a weekend retreat, the deaths themselves knocked our lives off course, but their aftermaths continue to mold and shape us just the same. Those smaller defining moments are equally powerful, even though they are quieter, less public, internal shifts.

Every time I see the short-haired woman, it’s a visual reminder that I am different, physically altered as well as mentally and emotionally altered by my son’s death. And I still cringe whenever someone comments on how cute my new haircut is.

The second issue of Six Hens is now live. Go read and feel something.

Suzanne Galante, Editor in Chief

Grief and Back to School

As much as I have enjoyed the days when school resumes and my children put on new sneakers and carry clean backpacks with freshly sharpened pencils and empty notebooks to school, it was no ordinary Back to School for our family this year. On that morning, two weeks ago, when they trotted off to their first day, I sent fewer children to school. It wasn’t a joyous day; it was yet another milestone etched with sorrow.

Ushering the day in without any kind of acknowledgement seemed wrong. So instead of taking smiling photos of my living children and posting them on Facebook, I composed a letter to my friends, the mothers of my children’s friends, the mothers of my stepchildren’s friends, to the principals at my children’s schools. I just needed to be heard. And perhaps understood, if there is such a thing. I got the idea from another grieving mom who sent one less to school this year. It follows:

Flying kites near Riley's memorial before school

Dear Friends,

Every day is hard in its own unique way. Death means that Riley didn’t start 7th Grade today. It means that C, H, and B took their “first day of school” picture without Riley; it means they went to school with a photo of Riley in their backpacks. It means that I said goodbye to C at Brittan Acres and walked up the hill aching to send Riley off with a kiss at the middle school.

Imagine him walking to the new middle school gates with H and B. Imagine him walking the halls of the new school. Imagine him bounding up the stairs to the second floor with energy to spare. Imagine him excited to learn. Imagine him excited to be with the orchestra, ready to learn new songs on his viola--even though "Dragon Hunter" would always be his favorite. Imagine him humming as he does his math homework tonight.

Would he have been wearing a green shirt or a baseball shirt today? Would he be in class with your child? What teachers would he have? What would be his favorite subject this year? Would he still be writing poetry? Would he still be playing “butts up” at recess?

We flew kites near Riley’s memorial at Pulgas Ridge yesterday. We hung a flag in our garden this morning and all shared one of our favorite Riley memories. Say his name, talk about him with your kids, remember a day when we spent time together. Think of C, H and B, too. They are also navigating this loss; it’s twisting and churning inside of them. We are already trying to imagine how we’ll honor Riley on October 20.

With my hat pulled low and covering my eyes, I left school with tears dripping down my face. I suspect that the other parents who saw me imagined I was a mom who had a hard time saying goodbye to her child, which isn’t entirely untrue.

With love,
Suzanne

It feels like part of my job is to continue to help people have compassionate awareness for Riley who is gone from our physical world, and also for his siblings who need to continue navigating the world with a canyon of grief alongside them. Along with that is my need to share this journey with anyone who will listen. It’s almost like being heard is how I’m ensuring that people keep remembering that just because a new year has started, the grief over losing my son, like the universe itself, keeps expanding.

Grief and laughter

Riley was awesome at being goofy, as seen here.

The other day, I sat on the sofa in my yard with a half-eaten salad on my lap. The sun was shining and the broad leaves on the giant Sycamore were protecting me from the 80-degree heat. My husband sat by my side with his own half-eaten salad. We talked about C’s 9th birthday party that was held at our house a few days earlier. A few leftover Mylar balloons still swayed in the background; the bucket with uneaten fruit from our bobbing-for-apples game waited to be emptied; vases with drooping sunflowers and lilies reminded me of how I spruced up the garden for that day. If everything looked pretty, then I would get through it, I remembered thinking. I could show up in a way I couldn't with my husband's birthday. I had to.

We had swept and scrubbed and placed flowers. An extra strong Moscow Mule softened the anxiety I felt around talking to parents as they dropped off their kids. Orchestrating a water balloon toss and a game of “bobbing for apples” for twelve kids kept my grieving mind occupied during the party. And I did get through it, even if the crying jags pushed me off balance every so often. Riley wasn’t there. Being the younger brother, C has never had a birthday without him. Now he’ll never have another birthday with him. None of us will. In all the fanfare, I forgot to have the kids decorate a flag in honor of Riley.

As my husband and I ate our salads in the shade in our backyard, in addition to talking about C’s birthday, we also talked about wanting to paint the house, how the deck needs to be refinished, and in which order those things should happen. It was all very ordinary chatting about this and that. And then my husband said something amusing. It was a line I’ve heard before and one I will hear countless times during our years together. I cannot even remember what it was that he said. But laughter ripped through me. Heaving, can’t-breathe-laughter. My body’s response was far grander than necessary. It shook me, jolted me, and then slapped me across the face--it was that throbbing part of grief. The heat of regret bubbled up. There was anger. And annoyance, too, for allowing some other emotion to penetrate the wall I’ve built.

I used my napkin to absorb the regret that leaked from my eyes. After that, my husband held me for a while. I know people want me to laugh and feel better, but I don’t want to laugh or feel better. Not yet anyway. Maybe I will someday--at least that’s what people keep telling me. For now, my soot-colored world is where I’m meant to be. And the throbbing, like the pulsing of the umbilical cord that once connected us, is my constant companion as I navigate this world without him.

Grief and throbbing

Riley flags in our yard

Imagine petting your dog through rubber gloves. Imagine kissing through a sheet of plastic wrap. Imagine showering wrapped in a rain poncho. Imagine trying to smell freshly baked cookies with nose clip. Imagine listening to your lover while wearing earplugs. Most of the day, I’m wrapped in this numbness. My world is a spectrum of gray; colors covered in soot. Numbness fills the space between each throb when grief grabs me and strangles me for a bit. It throws me down and for that period, I feel everything. All the numbness disappears while I’m overpowered by a current, a rawness, the force of every ounce of grief bound together as a bus that rushes me at 110 miles an hour. It flattens me, leaving me breathless and weak and feeling even more broken. When it passes, numbness returns for another moment or few hours or days, depending.

This is grief nine months in. It’s like throbbing--the punch and the space in between. My 11 1/2-year-old son has been dead longer than it took to grow his beautiful, imperfect body.

* Want to make a Riley flag for our garden? Use any bit of plain fabric, any color you like about the size of a piece of paper. Decorate it with anything you like on one side only--Sharpies, glue, sequins, other crafty thing you can think of--bearing in mind that it will live outside. So if you glue stuff on or use markers, try to use ones that are designed to withstand a washing machine (or Mother Nature). Please leave about an inch at the top undecorated, as I'll need to sew the top so that we can thread it onto our line. When your flag is ready, shoot me a message and I'll give you my address. You can mail it to me or leave it on my porch if you happen to live nearby.