It's Not About Facts

After someone dies people have a list of things they like to say.  They have beautiful intentions. They mean to make you hurt less.  They mean to divest themselves of the guilty way they feel as they witness your pain. None of the phrases on their list can accomplish at least half of their purpose.

 

“He’s not suffering anymore.”

 

“God has a plan.”

 

“God needed him back.”

 

“God picked a perfect angel.”

 

God. These are all bullshit especially when applied to a ten year old boy, but you smile and thank the messenger because they mean so well. They mean to find the silver lining, wrap it up, and give it to you, to be helpful.  They want to fix the thing that will forever be broken, and you can’t help but love them for that.

 

Why was this happening to Beydn, to people who loved him? I could never see.  I don’t think I ever will. Why was he being stolen away when he had barely been with us?  The first month of diagnosis I thought God would take care of us in the way that I needed. I had no doubts.  Beydn would be fine. As one half of his family this would put us where we wanted to be anyway, with him.  This was given to him, to make him stronger, to help him see that no matter what obstacles he came up against he could do absolutely anything.  He would be the kid who lived, and I had intentions of always reminding him of that.

 

As the weeks went on I still believed Beydn would be the one that made it. Through surgery, through mysterious bleeding, through fungal diagnosis, he would be it. When they broke it down, and we did the silent math that told us his odds weren’t good I still believed he would be the miracle.  I asked Josh to take pictures of everything he was going through at the hospital, which he as doing anyway. I wanted Beydn to wake up and be shown this thing that he had slain. I wanted him to read his own case study, see his own mortality lain out and conquered. When your parents all tell you that you’re special it’s one thing, but when medical science shows you how can you negate that?

And then Beydn died.  And I didn’t want to know why. The scenarios that played in my head were only how could we have let this happen?  What different understanding could have prevented the fact that I will never see his face again? Regardless of my part in any of his life or death, I felt responsible.  I felt like there was a part where I should’ve said “Hey, everybody just wait a minute we can’t do this thing the way you are now.  It won’t end well.” It’s not logical, it’s not possible.  But it’s how I felt. It’s how I still feel. I didn’t keep him alive. I didn’t do a part of my job, the part he trusted us to do.

I am not a cancer parent. I’m not really anything.  But I loved a little boy who died from cancer, and I’ll never be the same. He wasn’t even a boy anymore more like a half grown almost teen man. But he was my first baby. I cooed over him in the hospital. I rocked him when he was sleepy. I fed him, and dressed him, bathed him, and worried over him, worried for him.  Oh, I worried. I became frustrated with his inability to listen.  I became enraged at how I perceived others treated him.  I cried every time I had to send him away.

Every time we took a picture, or did something special without Beydn with us I felt guilt.  Every time I looked at my other babies while he was with his mom I saw the hole.  And now that hole will never ever go away. Not eventually. Not for holidays.  Not for summers.  That hole is gapping and wide and has teeth that tear me apart in my sleep. Constant parents hurt because their every day is gone.  I hurt because it never was. And yet we had that once when he was little and the Army had us all in one place. Except now he’s not anything, and we’re still here.

 

Your own babies are different people told me.  It’s a different thing to have grown a baby and felt it inside of you.  You don’t want to believe it, but you’ll see. And it was.  Different. Very.  But he was still mine.  I could never find the argument to prove that until I knew he was dying, until it was broken down to just him. All those things that frustrated me about sharing him had nothing to do with him and everything to do with situation and circumstance. All those innumerable ridiculous, petty things that for most of 8 years had made me want to pull my hair out, they weren’t him and they didn’t matter. I closed my eyes and I tried to imagine that I could save him. That if the doctor came in and said the fungus was just in his intestine or his brain or his heart and a transplant would cure him then I could give him mine.  I tried to feel the breath of hope that he would have if this was what would happen. Maybe it’s just because I couldn’t, and somewhere in my subconscious I knew it wasn’t going to matter, but the thought of dying for him didn’t give me the desperate flight or fight feeling I get from just thinking of dying in general. All I could think was that my 28 years were still more than just his 10. I opened my eyes and there was no doctor.  There was no hope, just the desperation seeping out of my skin. I think the nurses felt it. I could see it in their eyes on that last night.  Watch this one.  She’s the question mark. But I stayed calm, because what right did I have to be anything else? Oh, that I had been anything else.

The thing that has gotten me through many days recently is this-

The reaction you have to trauma is not about actual facts.  It’s about what you felt.

And I felt responsible. The way I felt when he didn’t have the right shoes. Or a coat. Or jeans. The way I felt when he told me had wanted an electric scooter for Christmas, but he hadn’t told me because someone told him he didn’t need it.  Defeated. Just tell me and I’ll figure it out I’d told him. We’ll always figure it out. But we hadn’t.

And he died.

There are indescribable and simultaneous peace and destruction in my heart always battling to wash the other away. And I am so tired.