He Was Here 3 Years Ago

This has been heavy. I wasn't expecting such heaviness. Maybe because the rest of life has been lightening up, around the year, that it is more shocking to go back into the rounds of the anniversary, the re-living of it all.

On the days it hits hard my legs are heavy, like right after Otto died. They feel like they are made of something else, a heavier earth than flesh. My hands don't work, I can't open anything, the toys or drinks that I usually can. I have anxiety, my stomach tightens up, life feels daunting and big and like, at any moment, something terrible can happen.

When you're not in this state it seems silly, it's easy to comfort someone with anxiety and say, no, the chances are so slim. You think that nothing bad can REALLY happen to you, not if you make no mistakes.

But we all make them. Not even mistakes, really, just being slightly off with your timing... A little boy in our town was killed this week in a crosswalk, going back to his car from soccer practice, with his family, and he was just walking a second or two behind them, and a driver didn't see him, and now he is gone. Four years old. This story is sunk in my stomach like a rock. Every crosswalk I see is a moment to gear up, get my senses sharp, whether I'm driving or walking. I think of this little boy, how his parents are feeling, how horrible it is.

We really are vulnerable. So the other side of it is, that right now is really good. Even though we are tired and hungry, or wish we had more money to cover the bills, or wish for more success or a bigger house, or whatever it is, the other side of this vulnerability is realizing that, since it can all be taken so suddenly, I might as well enjoy this really good moment right now, like the walk we had yesterday at dusk around the neighborhood park. "We are all alive," I told myself. "I am with my husband, my daughter, my dog, we are walking down the street to our house, and we are happy." And it becomes warm and covers my soreness and I sink into my life, into the trueness of it.

But this month has a deep darkness to it too, a deep missing, a deep tearing, I truly miss my son, my little boy, I cry really hard, my ribs constrict my lungs, knowing that, in this body, in this life, I will never see him again. It seems too hard. My whole being feels off, I can't return calls, I can hardly get the dishes done, a big part of me is gone with him. I love him and he's gone. He's my little boy, my first child, and he's gone. I want so badly to see him on the swings, hitting a tree with a stick, laughing with other little boys. Seeing how much he looks like his daddy.

This is my month to be more soundly WITH him, and part of it means that I hurt a lot. It's not a choice I make - well, part of it is. I could choose to ignore all these feelings and go crazy trying to be normal, or I could be fairly sane but really sad. It seems like it should be the opposite, but it's not. And it's much easier to choose the sad route. The feeling route.

It's beautiful to go to his grave and cover it with rose petals from his rose bush, with the leaves from the tree where we sat with him, to burn sage and kiss the stone and talk to him, to feel my body evaporating and sitting in the world of spirit, to feel my prayers to him rise up with the smoke from the sacred sage. This is the other side of the pain, the extreme beauty of love and being carried over to a big peace with the surrender to grief. The quietness of my heart after a good cry with him.

This year, in short, is no easier than others. It almost feels harder. There is some sort of realization in this triad, this 3rd year, that his time here is really over, it's not coming back, there is no way he can come back. It takes a long time for a body and soul to really sink this in.

We look at his pictures, his beauty, his soft, strong, sweet body, the comfort he took in cuddling up to his mom and dad, the love, and it is beautiful, but, let's be honest, it's horribly tragic too. This year the tragedy is in first place.

This too is part of life. Many have tragedy. I don't feel like glossing it over with anything to sweeten the story. Or make anyone feel better.

But there are things that are easier: I don't blame myself. This is pretty huge. To let that burden slide off. And I don't feel embarrassed when it comes up with strangers. I just tell them what happened. I don't worry about how they'll take it, I just tell them. I don't need them to understand or have the right reaction as much. He's my child, not theirs. Also, I know he is here, and that he loves us. He seems to let me know all the time, in ways that are special for me.

This is a long road, my friends. We are just at the beginning.

August

Oh, I miss my boy so much. I miss his smell, the dear and kind expression of his face, the back of his head, my son, my first child.

The one that made me know the hugeness of endless love, that opened my heart so big.

I miss my child. You see, he wasn't just A child, it was not a matter of getting pregnant again and having another one and making everything better that way. He was Otto. Singular. A person all his own, and my boy. He grew and moved in my belly, I loved being pregnant and holding his life. I loved that amazing closeness, that constant hug and love, the honor of being a mama.

I loved seeing him in the ICU, tape and cords everywhere, I loved looking in on him in the middle of the night and seeing his nose, and seeing his hands and feet and touching him and knowing he was mine, this beautiful boy I could never have imagined. How big he was, how strong and tall, I knew he would be a beautiful man one day.

I miss HIM.

So darling friends, I want to tell you something. Something that will be interesting to you because it doesn't come naturally. When I am sad about Otto, and missing him, I only need you to miss him with me, or to hear me missing him. I don't want you to make it better.

I don't want you to remind me that I have Luna now because I know, Luna is the light in my days and my laugh and my amazement. I need to talk about just Otto sometimes.

I need him to have a place of honor, a place of his own, and I need to feel the pain of missing him. Especially this month. This is my month with him, the one where I want to sit in a dark room and cry and talk to him. The one where I remember the saddest of days, the one where I remember the bliss of holding him for the first time, of loving him so much, of getting to rock him to sleep. Of changing his diaper. Of kissing him. I need to feel all of this, and it naturally comes to the surface this month. It is an intimate and hard and amazing thing. It is mine and I need to have it. And sometimes I need it to be witnessed and seen. And it will hurt for you too. Hurt is just part of joy. The other part.

I feel so much love from my friends this month, from people I hardly know, that remember that August is his month. This means so much to me. He is such a part of our family.

Today Luna got out a photo album of her brother, closed the cabinet, threw the album on the couch, climbed up onto the couch, and looked through it, naming all the people in the pictures. "Mommy, Daddy, Otto," making sweet, soft sounds of her own words too, and when she was done, she got down and put it back in the cabinet. She doesn't normally put things away. She knows this is special. She has a sweet love for this baby Otto that her Mommy and Daddy loves so much in the pictures. Sometimes she kisses his picture. She calls him budder. (brother.) What a darling girl. He is part of our family, I feel him here so much, he is mostly in my heart, and he loves Luna, and Luna loves him, and we will find our way through this family shape.

I am grateful for my son. I am so grateful to be his mama. I would rather have this pain than not have him at all, because he is mine and I am his and it will never be broken.