Requiem

This was your place, Dad.

This was the place you took your family every summer.

Where mother turned “brown as a berry” while dripping sandcastles with your daughters

who would only trade their seat in the sand for a ride on a float with you at the helm.

And the waves rocked us and the sun baked us and love filled us.

This is the place I brought my family

and where my family brought their families

because Josh only wants to go to “our beach”.

And we never did what tourists do because we weren’t tourists.

We were home.

This is the place I came when we knew something was wrong,

when you refused to stay in the hospital because you “weren’t sick”.

You’d never been sick.

Not even a headache.

But you were and you went.

The beginning of the end.

This place is still yours.

I feel you everywhere.

In the blue and green of the ocean

and the whitest sand of the “prettiest beaches I’ve ever seen”.

In the wind near the surf and the sidewalks along the beach road where you walked until you couldn’t.

There are some places I can’t go yet,

where walking in the door opens an empty space

where the sound of people calling out your name should be

and there will be empty barstools where we should be sitting

and you would order grits and hug the chef

and squeeze my hand, at least once while we were eating.

Long Shot

Mr. Lucky died. I found out he died the same way I learned he was alive, in a post on Facebook between a political rant and a photo of last night’s dinner. Just yesterday I saw a photo of him and his adopted brother, Mr. Max. They were sleeping the way small animals and children do, in a mix of limbs forming a pile of sweetness.

From the start, he was a long shot. His adopted Mom found him on a sidewalk and knew, right away, that something was wrong. She loved him anyway…in an irrational way…in a way someone loves a cat she grew up with…or the way someone who knows what it feels like to be kicked to the curb loves a kitten who was.

Daily postings revealed sleepless nights spent wielding an eye-dropper in a manner enticing enough to encourage the kitten to eat. I read her words. I studied her photographs. I imagined what it would be like to be completely responsible for the welfare of something so utterly innocent and gray and furry and sweet. I soon began every morning with a click of the mouse, anxious to know how Mr. Lucky was doing.

I’m not a cat person, but I’ve lived with cats. As a kid, we always had cats. My mother loved cats. Her favorite was named Cleo. She called her Cleo-Meo. She was calico and long-haired and if anyone other than my mother deigned to touch her, she left marks. Her death, at a ripe old age, devastated my mother. She never replaced her.

Many years ago I found a stray kitten in the ivy surrounding our shed or, to be more accurate, he found me. A white and gray ball of fluff, he approached me, mewling. I picked him up, cradling him against my chest. Needle-like claws pierced my shirt as he climbed to curl up in the spot where my neck meets my shoulder, leaving me no choice.

“Look what I found.”, I said to my partner, the cat-lover, whose face softened as he reached out to touch the kitten. “Too bad we can’t keep him.”

“We have to keep him.”, Roger countered. “He can’t live out there!”

Plucking the kitten off my shoulder, he walked away.

“He can stay in the spare room. We’ll keep the dogs away from him.”

The kitten lived in our spare bedroom for nearly a month. Keeping his end of the bargain, Roger cleaned up after him. In exchange, I relented to his suggestion that we allow the kitten to visit our bedroom at night before we went to sleep.

I held my breath every time Roger opened the door separating our dogs from the tiny kitten. They knew he was there. I’d seen them sniffing around the door.

On that night, I listened as I always did. The knob turned, the door creaked, and what happened next can only be described as chaos. I maintained my position against a stack of pillows on my side of the bed, even as I knew the horror taking place down the hall. I steeled myself against the words he’d say, making it true and, when he said them, my grief poured forth in a scream of accusations. There were only two possible explanations for what happened; stupidity and carelessness. To this day I can’t accept one without wondering about the other.

When Lucky’s mother offered her friends an opportunity to participate in his care, I jumped at the chance. Others followed suit. Soon Lucky had a following, and a special kind of formula, and a cozy bed. I clicked the button that would magically send money across the country to a person I’d never met to assist in the care of a cat I only knew from pictures on the internet. Even as I did it, it felt a little crazy. But isn’t life a little crazy? Doesn’t every day present us with risks we wouldn’t take if we thought about them, even a little bit, ahead of time?

The greatest risk of all, of course, is love. There are no guarantees with love. You may not be loved back. You may invest lots of time and effort, and a large amount of your self, in someone who can’t or won’t reciprocate. You may carry a child and raise him into adulthood only to watch, desperately, as he makes choices that end his life and, in many ways, yours as well. Or you may take a chance on a long shot kitten whose death hurts more than you expected. What matters is taking the chance.

Two

I want a cigarette. Bad. I’m sure I could scrounge up a pack if I looked hard enough.

I can taste it. It wouldn’t be menthol. He doesn’t smoke menthol. And it’d be short…much shorter than the ones I used to smoke. I would breathe deep. I’d fill my lungs and then feel the burn as smoke poured out of my nose.

I want a drink. Make mine a whiskey…cinnamon flavored whiskey and coke, please…on ice, of course. I want whiskey at 9:43 in the morning. I want to scorch the back of my throat as it slides down.

Cake would be good. Bakery cake with sticky white icing. A decorated cake…pink flowers…green leaves…no writing, please. And the inside should be yellow and spongy and leave gooey brown goodness on the bottom of the plate when you slice it.

Yesterday morning I looked at myself in the mirror as I dressed for work. My face, despite the artificial glow of carefully applied foundation, bore no expression. Good Morning America played softly in the background as the words “Happy New Year” came to mind.

Only it’s not happy. It’s not happy at all. Not that it’s not ever happy, there are happy days. But this day is not happy. So it’s a new year but not a particularly happy one… so far.

I hadn’t realized this before…this marking of the year that I do in my head. In a way it’s a relief as it serves to explain why January 1st has little to no meaning for me anymore. My year doesn’t begin and end at the same time as everyone else’s. My year ends on February 25th and begins again on the 27th…if I make it.

I leave the “if” in there because I need permission not to. On this day, more than any other, I grant myself permission to consider what would happen if I didn’t. Because, I don’t have to. No one does. Life is a choice we make every day. Someone else said that first, I know. Maybe that person, like me, experienced the capriciousness of life. Maybe they lost someone.

I don’t like to use the word “lost”. I didn’t lose Trey. He died. Actually, if anyone is lost, it’s me. I’m lost. More lost on some days than I am on others, but I’m always lost. I’m navigating a path I never thought to take. And yet, now that I am on it, I often try to imagine what would happen if I had to start all over again. What if I became even more lost? What if the thing that I never thought would happen happened again? Because that is the one thing I do know. The one thing I do know is that the worst does happen.

It’s a gray day, as it should be. It was this way last year, too. I suspect it always will be.

You can’t prepare. It hits you about a week out, without warning. Sadness covers you like a blanket. You feel the weight of it and you carry it around all day until, at last, you can close your eyes and escape. With any luck, sleep takes your blanket and leaves a respite in its place. It might last a day, two days. This year I was lucky, I had a few good days before the words “Happy New Year” appeared as though written in red lipstick on the mirror in front of me. And that was that.

Yesterday my boss’s face appeared over the top of my cubicle.

“Enjoy your time off tomorrow.”

Filled with irrational rage, I stood up and left the space without speaking. A big part of me hopes he realizes sometime today. That same part, the hurting part, the part that I’m allowing to run rough-shod over any and everything today and only today, that part hopes that he feels like a worm when he remembers.

It’s 10:43 now. I’m still in my bathrobe, my hair looks like shit, and I’ve never needed a mani/pedi more in my whole entire life. But, I’m not smoking and the half-empty can of Coke Zero on my desk remains untainted. The jury’s still out on the cake. My son and I are having lunch. He, too, is marking another year. He and my daughter-in-law are choosing the restaurant. I may choose to eat cake.

That’s what today is about; making choices and leaving room…deciding not to smoke, how to dress, what to eat, and whether or not to live. And, I’m leaving room…for tears, irrational emotions…and, quite possibly, cake.

Last First

Tonight, at 10:36 pm, exactly one year will have passed since I received the news that my son, Trey, was dead.

Within minutes I had my first conversation with a county coroner.

Within the hour, two policemen stood on my front porch. I’d never had policemen on my front porch before.

Two days later I wrote my first obituary.

And, the next day I designed a funeral program for the first time.

Five days after the call came in, I greeted the first guests to arrive at the first funeral I’d ever arranged for one of my children.

Despite never having done so before, my brother-in-law led the service beautifully.

Afterwards I hosted my first wake.

Friends and family, anxious to express their sympathy, appeared at my door; some for the first time.

Eight days after my son died, I returned to work from bereavement leave. I’d never taken bereavement leave before. I’d never been so bereaved.

A couple of days later I made my first request for a copy of my son’s death certificate.

The following Wednesday, my oldest son visited the sheriff’s department for the first time to collect his brothers “personal effects”.

Easter was the first family gathering that didn’t include Trey.

Several weeks later, we maintained our tradition of having a combined birthday party for both Trey and his older brother. For the first time, Trey didn’t attend.

Not since before my youngest was born had I celebrated Mother’s Day with just three children.

On September 1^st, I spent my birthday knowing that, for the first time, I could never have the only thing I really wanted.

For the first time in decades, I served Thanksgiving dinner without having to answer the question, “Are there any onions in here?”

As Christmas neared, I realized that for the first time in years I wouldn’t need to order that expensive chili water from Hawaii. I hadn’t anyone to give it to.

For the first time since 1997, I placed Christmas gifts for only three children under our tree and, during our Christmas party, no one visited the dessert table before dinner was served.

This past Sunday I didn’t watch The Oscars on television. It was the first time I’d missed watching since I was a kid. The last time I watched, I had to pause the show to answer the telephone. It was February 26^th at 10:36 pm.

Today is the one year anniversary of my son’s death.

There will never be another one year anniversary.

There will be another first.

This is the Last First.

To Tell…or Not to Tell…

On first sight, his cerulean eyes put me in mind of an open sore, compelling me to touch his hair and tell him…“It’s ok…”

As we shared a couch in my living room, we sipped “sweet tea” in front of the television, as he remembered the morning they came to “get him”, and the long ride through artificially lighted streets that ended at the door of an orphanage. He was three.

His younger brother had the good fortune to be adopted. His older sister was reclaimed by his older brother. His mother visited occasionally, leaving a sock-full of dimes in her wake.

The recounting came in fits and starts. Nights filled with stories were followed by canned laughter, as time rocked on, and lives changed. By the end of the year, we were more than friends.

In the ten years we spent together, he talked often of the camp that would shape his life without ever naming it, though I never realized it, until now. He has been dead for 3 years.

Reverence colored his voice when he spoke of Dr. “P”, the camp director; the same man accused of child molestation in 1986. I listened as he spoke of his mentor, never mentioning the charges. And now, as I read and uncover the atrocities visited upon the children relegated to Dr. Poetter’s care, I wonder if my silence was in deference to his pain, or to mine?

The information I have gleaned has shed new light on his pain, his demons, and his personality. He never explained that the gloriously primitive canoe trips he spoke of, so often, were part of his therapy. And, he never mentioned the back-breaking labor of hauling hundred-pound rocks or digging latrines. He never told me that admission to Anneewakee meant complete isolation from family and friends, and he never told me that home was a tee-pee, or that baths were taken under a pail of mountain-cooled water, regardless of the season.

When the compulsion came to me to research the camp, I had no idea of why, or of what I might find, and the results lead to questions that can no longer be answered.

For ten years, he did the best he knew how to do, as did I, with the information provided.

Would things have been different had I known?

He is with me, still, in his final form. His spirit lives with us, even as his ashes lie, dormant, in the container his childhood friend, Beau, reverently handed me, inside a quiet funeral home, on a cold December evening.

The expression on his face told me Beau had information he wouldn’t reveal, while his hands performed in a way long-since taught, and honed, by years of practice. He chose not to give details, sharing only what was necessary, but the pauses between his words filled in the spaces, making the picture complete.

The call came from his sister, once reclaimed, and the picture she painted, expected, yet, still jarring. A newly purchased, red pick-up truck sat in his driveway; a sign of reclamation. And, inside, two pictures adorned his walls; one of me, old, faded, and dated, and the other, of his son.

Otis

He sat tall, wedged between his two new brothers. His tongue lolled lazily from one side of his generous mouth, his ears perked, and his eyes sparkled and shone with a sense of adventure.
As I looked into my rear view mirror, he answered my gaze with a look that said “Hey, Mom, where are we going?”
We had just met.
Just over a year old, Otis was a live-wire bundle of energy. During his first week in our home, he led us on several long chases through the streets of our subdivision, and the one adjacent to ours, as he exercised his sense of adventure, and our unaccustomed legs. Several times during the chase, he would stop to smell a flower, or investigate an errant piece of trash and move nothing but the quivering tip of his large black nose until our pounding footsteps fell within a few feet of our prey. And he was off again, in a mad dash, that was, for him, a joyful game.
Blessedly, as he became more accustomed to his surroundings and more attached to his family, the game lost it’s lustre, and Otis settled into his new home.
Once acclimated, his manners were impeccable, and one only had to say “Otis, where are you supposed to be?” and he would back away from the kitchen table and just over the piece of floor trim separating the kitchen and den. Once there, he would slowly lower his hips and sit patiently until the meal was finished. His eyes, though, never left the crumb-strewn floor beneath my son’s ill-placed chair.
Otis never met a stranger. He loved everyone and everything, and elicited the same emotion in everyone he met. He was pure love.
Weekends were his favorite, as he waited patiently for the recliner to be filled as the football game started. Seizing the opportunity, he climbed slowly into the space reserved for him, and wedged his large body, long-ways, into the space. Then, lowering his head to his outstretched paws, he slept, peacefully, for hours.
He was a great gardening buddy, loping behind me around the yard as I pruned and planted. He sniffed every flower placed in pot or bed, and took great pleasure from the sweet, earthy smell
of freshly dug soil, while happily sharing in the digging.
It was during these times outside, and in the kitchen, that Otis was most attentive, studying my every move as though in preparation for the time when he would be asked to complete the task on his own. He, and he alone, was allowed to share my galley-style kitchen during cooking, as he stood, alertly, just out of my way, but close enough to scoop up any falling debris after I moved away. He loved Christmas cooking the most, and waited, patiently, for the crackling sound of a bag of chocolate chips being opened. Otis loved chocolate, and particularly chocolate chips. He stood, still as a statue, as I wrestled with the bag, nose twitching, and only moved when I held a single chip between two fingers and invited him to take it.
If anyone loved Eufuala as much as I, it was Otis. He began the trip at the window, watching traffic and taking occasional gulps of exhaust-filled air, but, very soon, he stretched out in the back of the SUV and succumbed to the lullaby sung by spinning wheels.
On arrival, he lumbered slowly out of the back and stretched, languidly, as his nose caught the scent of the water. The race was on to see who would reach the dock first. Once there, we stood in companionable silence as close to the lake as we could get, gratefully allowing her peace and serenity to wash away the road dust. We gave thanks to her when we arrived, and Otis always insisted on one last walk before we left, as if to assure her we would be back.
His grace and dignity served right up to the end, as he faced serious illness with remarkable aplomb. Despite significant weight loss, disturbing tremors, and piles of appetite reducing pills which included embarrassingly productive diuretics, he never lost his spirit or his will to live, outlasting most doctors’ predictions. He fought to eat, he fought to breathe, and through it all continued to spread his special kind of love.
The void he leaves is multi-faceted.
He was the only dog I ever knew who preferred to sleep with his head on the pillow. This came in handy on cold nights spent in a half-empty bed.
He appreciated a captive audience, nosing open the slightly ajar bathroom door, to stand in front of the throne upon which I perched, offering the sweet valley between his eyes for a nuzzle and a kiss.
He valiantly guarded the bathroom door as I bathed, and I prefer to think it was my safety that motivated him, and not the dog treat he knew was waiting in the kitchen.
He ended every night, before settling in on an assortment of pillows spread for his comfort, by coming to the side of the bed and placing his large head quietly next to mine in a request for a final rub and a goodnight kiss.
And, on unsettled nights when sleep wouldn’t come, Otis silently accompanied me in my wanderings of dark hallways. When, at last, I sat, he followed suit, giving me a look that said, “You know, if you need me, I’m right here.”