CHAPTER 1
December
The top of my chest collapses under solid concrete blocks. The lower chest sits hollow, absent, vacant. Breathing hurts, as if it, too, searches for its genetic extension, its life, its child. I sip gulps of air — just enough to cling onto my own life. But I'm not sure I can live and I'm not sure if I even want to. The breath, they say, is life force, prana, our connection to life itself. Over the years, when I practiced yoga, I spent hours examining and then controlling the breath. We worked with the cleansing breath, the belly or deep breath, and noticed the shallow breath, often induced by anxiety and fear and uncertainty. Absent the breath, there is no life.
I enter the wide double doorways and hear only the sound of artificial breath — the steady forced push, the insistence of the machines that drape the sides of my son like a cloak. That is not Thomas's breath. I hold mine in, afraid to exhale and disrupt the stillness. My throat fills and the paralysis rises up through my jaw, the same jaw I'm looking at on my son — sharp, chiseled, assured. Everything stands still and the numbness falls heavy like the sentence of a crime committed. My son's eyes are closed, his black hair smoothed over but uncombed. And then I recognize the stillness again between the machines' sounds. It is the absence of life force in my son's trauma room. His is gone.
My eyes look up at my husband, who is also named Tom. As an emergency-room trained nurse and former Air Force Pararescueman, he has answers, I tell myself. Tom has seen combat injuries and fatalities, saved lives, and watched some go, but when I look up at his face for the answer I am seeking — the possibility that Thomas will live — it's not there. He looks blank and numb, and I sense the sadness that has already settled into his heart.
I turn and look at my son for the answer then, but it's not there either. Thomas's left foot is turned in toward his body in an awkward twist that looks like a broken doll's. I walk around the bed and touch his right hand, noticing the faint green color under the skin of his narrow fingers. It's colder than it should be. His neck is full and enlarged, and a small piece of gauze extends out from either ear. I hold my breath again. I see the blue, plastic cold-water syringe that's lying next to his left ear, the final test of unresponsive brain function. The fingers on my right hand reach for my son's left cheek and I whisper to him, "Thomas, it's me, Mom. Thomas, I am here. Thomas, I love you." I pull my son in close and crawl halfway onto the bed because there is not enough room for my legs with all of the machines filling the space around him. All I can think is that I have to warm his body, because warmth represents movement of energy, cell exchange, and the possibility of life. Warmth is hope. He doesn't respond to my touch; there's no relaxing of his shoulders into my embrace. I keep trying to warm him. It feels futile, but I won't let go. I will never let him go.
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I tell myself that I should take a picture — not a mind's-eye kind of picture but an actual photograph — because I already know that if my son is gone, I will cling onto every memory of him and of us together for the rest of my life. I am already desperate not to forget a single detail, like the colorful green and blue and brown ribbons that color his eyes, like the way he chuckles. I will do anything not to forget, including taking a picture. It's pure panic. But I catch and chastise myself for thinking this morbid thought. Most people would find this beyond the boundaries of sanity. Why would anyone want a photo of her dying child in a trauma unit bed? I reconsider. There will be no photo.
A man enters the room cautiously and unannounced, wearing a taupe suit with brown shoes and a tie of a color I cannot recall. He's barely taller than I am and he sports a white halo of hair. He asks gently, "Can I pray with you?" If I speak I will cry so I only nod my head. My husband wraps my shoulders with his oversized, strong hands. The prayer is thoughtful and long and sad because it's a confirmation that my son isn't here. I don't believe it, though, because none of this is real. The man asks for God to embrace us — my husband and me — and give us comfort in this dark hour. He asks that my son know peace and love into all eternity. It's as if my broken heart seeps through my tear ducts. One, two, three drops fall. The lump in my throat turns solid. This cannot be happening. I whisper again, "Thomas, it's me, Mom. Thomas, can you hear me?" I'm trying to hold onto life force, both Thomas's and mine, and I feel it slipping away like the slowing beeps of the monitors that push and pull his life. I ask my husband if the crash cart has scissors (it does) and if he can get them for me. He peels back the sterile packing and hands them to me. I reach over the top of my beautiful son's head, just as I had a million times during his twenty-two years of life to comb his hair or trim his bangs or brush the hair off of his forehead. I cut off a piece of his hair, slide it into a plastic cylinder that, moments before, contained his gold chain necklace, and close the light blue cap. It's my son's DNA.
Time freezes in the depths of a winter that my soul has never known. It feels as if the life support machines — the heart and lungs that replace those functions of my son — begin to replace mine as well. I am losing my own life. He is my life. The blip blip of the heart monitor slows; the silence in between each blip is a painful reminder that life is escaping, shutting down. I know it's just a matter of time, because the nurse tells us that Thomas will likely die within two hours of my DNR, "do not resuscitate." The machine blips slower and slower and slower until I cannot take the agony any longer. I abhor the widening gaps of silence. I ask my husband to turn off the heart monitor so I don't have to hear it any longer. He does, but the push and pull of air continues its steady pace into Thomas's lungs in stark contrast to the life force that is disappearing. The hand of the clock on the wall jumps ahead one minute and I just hold onto my son. Push, pull of air. Push, pull of air. God, help me, please, help my son. I can see right before me the slowing of energy, the gentle release of life, the dissolving of hope. Life tiptoes ever so softly away. It does not apologize for leaving. The doctor walks in the doorway with my son's trauma room nurse. His face turns upward to the clock and he speaks lightly: "Zero zero five three." The official time of death.
My son's friends are first to arrive — his roommates, Mike and Elliott, and his best friend's parents, Becker and John. John holds a special place in Thomas's heart and he treated Thomas like a son, teaching him how to shoot a rifle and making sure, on nights when Thomas slept at Elliott's house in high school, that Thomas had a sack lunch prepared on the kitchen counter and ready to go. Thomas used to admonish me that I didn't have a sack lunch prepared for him each morning like John did. Thomas also worked for John doing odd jobs, most recently this past summer laying grass in 110-degree Florida heat.
None of us talks at first because there is virtually nothing to say. They are shocked and deflated too. All of this happened much too quickly, and Thomas is already gone. Mike speaks the first words of admission of this tragic loss. He tells me through sad breaths and rolls of tears that Thomas used to tell him I was his favorite person in the world. I nod because I know that. My son and I share a connection that is rich and deep. The intellect of his mind, the wit in his words, the tenderness of his trust. What I don't know is how I am going to live without him, breathe without him, laugh without him. Life is just too long without him. I also know that the task I am asked to perform, to live without Thomas, is beyond my capability.
My daughter, Rae, who is Thomas's only sibling, is next to arrive. She was home from the university when the police officer came to our front door holding a copy of my son's driver's license in his hand. Not knowing the details of what had happened, we agreed that she would stay home and wait for any news. I promised to call her. Thomas is two years and nine months older than Rae. Since their father and I divorced more than ten years earlier, they have had to journey together through many life events and travel together to visit their father in Colorado and family in Ireland and Boston. They are very different personalities, but also close in heart. When they argued as children, I always warned them, "Someday you will need each other." Now I am speechless; there is no "someday" for Rae and Thomas.
Rae should have been here sooner, but trying to get her a ride proved difficult in all the madness of frozen time and emptiness of space. The fog is setting in heavily, and it feels like I am moving in slow motion. We are waiting for her, and I know she's coming up because my husband leaves to bring her upstairs and walk with her to the trauma unit. My heart is beating so fast now; I wish I could give those beats back to Thomas.
When Rae enters the room wide-eyed, all I can do is awkwardly blurt out, "Thomas loved you." Her sky blue eyes, light with life, contradict the downcast somberness that makes the air stiff and thick. She pulls at the pale, peach-colored scarf hanging loosely around her neck. She looks straight through my sinking soul and repeats, "loved?" emphasizing my use of the past tense verb. Then she turns to see her brother and her breath halts, too. I see it on her face as she hangs in disbelief. Oh, God, I think, how can this be happening? He left too fast, too quickly, before Rae arrived. It is the second biggest regret of my life — the first is not protecting my son enough to keep him from this accident; the second is not keeping him alive for my daughter. I was unable to think clearly, to reason through any options, and sustain his life until she arrived. The blank stare on her face makes the room more surreal. The entire night reeks of loss and tragedy, and I feel as if I have fallen into an endless black pit, sinking deeper into darkness from which there is no way out.
My parents drive up from Tampa in the early morning hours of December sixth, the last to arrive. My mother enters the double doorways just like I did. We have been waiting for her to arrive with my stepdad, Bill, the only grandfather my son has really known. Bill holds my mother upright; she looks like she will collapse with only the puff of a gentle breeze. I called them at the stroke of midnight to tell them about Thomas. Bill picked up the phone after five rings and there were only two sentences spoken. "Bill, Thomas has been in a motorcycle accident." "We're on our way."
My parents packed suitcases, just in case. They had no idea what they would face, and they didn't call as they drove the two-hour journey. Theirs is the wisdom of years of life — the unpredictable, uncertain knowledge that life force can disappear in an instant. They prepared for every outcome.
We all sit like defeated soldiers in my son's trauma unit room number 4106. Nurses come in and check on us and assure us we can stay for as long as we need. Need? I want my son. I want to ask them, "how about forever?" but that is not fair to them. The white round clock on the wall across my son's room ticks, tocks, but there's no more time. It's just a silly illusion. Two university representatives from the Dean of Students office arrive. They, too, offer to help in any way, but I'm pretty sure that they can't reach through life and bring my son back to the present. My mother breaks the silence and suggests gently that there is nothing more for us to do here. We should go home. It's after four am. I cannot recall my feet walking or my body leaving the hospital. I'm suspended in air, as if stopped in the middle of a jump on a trampoline.
Everyone tries to get me to rest but they don't seem to understand that resting means my life energy shifts and I might lose the connection to my son, the connection we have when he's alive and I'm alive. I'm so afraid to change, shift, move, breathe. I hear my mother in the back bedroom of my house — Thomas's bedroom — making call after call. I hear my sister's name, my brother's name. My mother comes out and tells me that they'll all be in Florida from New England by the next morning. I tell her that's absurd, because, I think, Thomas is going to find a way back to me. They are going too much out of their way — a mistaken nuisance — but she tells me that they all have insisted on coming. What's more is that all my nieces and nephews are coming, too. "Oh, no," I think, "this must be pretty awful." I don't consider, however, that it might be real.
Over the next few days, my parents stay with us and attend to many of the arrangements that need to be made. But they cannot do everything, and I find myself — as if I am outside of myself — two days after the accident sitting in the funeral director's office trying to decide the minutiae of flower types, urns, and funeral brochures. All of my family has arrived from Boston and they are with me, working out the details of flowers. I'm pretty sure I'm in a dream, because my brother and sister are supposed to be at work now and definitely not here.
The funeral director's name is Margaret and she has a unique mixture of the qualities of a shrewd businessperson and a compassionate social worker. People in the room keep asking me, "What pictures should go on the brochure? What background image?" (all I can think is "seriously?") "Do we want all red roses? What size urn?" Margaret tries to organize the ruckus. All the while I think, "I'm not supposed to be doing any of this. This is not my life. It's someone else's life that I'm in. Thomas is supposed to be here." Thomas, I beg furiously in my mind, please come back — please, my son. I can't do this without you.
I barely hold myself together and don't have much of a desire to even do that. Why bother? Why am I alive? My heart aches with overwhelming loss, unthinkable sadness, and unconscionable emptiness. This is not possible, not in the probability of life experiences for me nor for my son nor for my daughter. I literally feel my heart broken; my chest hurts deep inside, as if there were another compartment in my body that I wasn't aware of before. I feel like a mother bear searching for her baby cub. The image alone makes me cry a thousand oceans of tears. I look everyplace I go, in every room, on every street corner of our town. At times, I feel like I wander aimlessly around; at other times, I purposefully take a longer route just to pass a place that I went with Thomas.
The ticker tape continues to play in my head, Thomas, it's me, Mom. Can you hear me? Thomas, where are you? The tape repeats every morning, but I don't hear anything back, despite listening intently, praying, and talking to Thomas in my mind. I am anxious and worried. If Thomas wants to communicate, he knows how to find me. My mother keeps telling me that I'm too agitated to hear him and that I need to listen for Thomas, but I disagree. Thomas and I held a special connection, and I know beyond a doubt that he will find me in his way.
I finally mention to my husband my need to communicate with Thomas. Tom graciously tries to soothe me when I melt down and cannot stop crying. He tells me ever-so-softly, "I'm so sorry." That is the only thing that he can say, because everything else is inadequate. There is no way to fix this, reverse it, change it, even though I hold out hope that I can. He feels helpless for me and helpless for Thomas.
I also tell this to Emily, my ten-year-old stepdaughter, who is Tom's daughter. She, too, has struggled with her step-brother's death, having some difficulty in school. She draws pictures of her combined family, which includes step-siblings on both sides, but in the picture she draws Thomas twice. She hadn't realized it; Thomas was clearly on her mind. Thomas used to tease her with jokes and playfully toss her about the living room when she was younger, Emily's long, dirty blonde hair flapping behind her around the room. I tell Emily how difficult this is, how much Thomas loved her, and how I've been trying to communicate with him but he doesn't reply. She turns to me and suggests, "Mimi, you have to ask him late at night. He might hear you then."
I remember hearing that children are closer to God, metaphorically speaking, than we adults. Perhaps their souls are newer on earth, having spent less time being acculturated and socialized into families, communities, and societies. Perhaps their ability to filter out the ego world, the material items, the complexity of life and human relationships has not yet interfered. Or perhaps they are better listeners. I'm not sure, but I take Emily's suggestion to heart and begin the nightly ritual of lighting a votive candle and asking my son if he can hear me. I pray that I will dream about him or see him or somehow feel the warmth of his life force energy. I'll take anything at all, I am so desperate. I don't know if I can survive this.
