Grief

UPDATE: I first wrote this in 2006 after my son beat a terrible brain tumor. We lost him in 2021 to leukemia, after a 14 month battle. Now, I read my original words below and think, “this wasn’t a terrible dream after all; it was a premonition.”

Original Story

This is a love song but like none you’ve ever heard. It’s grief and love wrapped around each other so tightly you’re not sure where one starts and the other ends.

I hold my son’s lifeless body in my arms and sob, uncontrollably.

My body spasms in purple agony as I shout “take me instead!” to my God “my god why have you abandoned me?!?!”

Suddenly I’m doubled over in pain and barely am able to lay my baby’s body back on the stainless steel slab before dropping leaden to the ground. I pull myself up and run my hands over my son’s half-shaved head and sloppy jagged scars and I’m suddenly ripped into the operating theater and inside the doctor’s head as he winces concedes and whispers “time of death 1:14 PM June 2 2004.” He sutures drunkily hastily with heavy heart and…

I am flung through time and space to October 2000 and Fanwood New Jersey and pull myself up alongside the same cold steel slab but with my brother Michael’s bruised and beaten corpse in place of my son’s.

I have no wind no breath and am gasping for air as I grab for Michael to awaken him… I see the funeral director rushing at me wondering why I’m in here, in the prep room where things happen family are not meant to see…

And I’m filled with a rage and my breath is back and I prepare to take the guy out, seeing instinctively where he is most vulnerable his left knee exposed to a snap kick and the bridge of his nose to the base of my palm when I realized I’m paralyzed and falling and he is reaching out to catch me…

And does, and sets me gently in a cushioned chair. And dazed I stand up and see the casket and stumble teary-eyed to it…

…to see my father’s peaceful face and it’s October 1992, the day after my son was born at the exact moment my father took his last breath and clutched his chest as his heart exploded.

My sobs have slowed to a keening tear-less wail and I’m fading in and out when the night nurse at Johns Hopkins grabs my shoulders and shakes me wide awake, puzzled concern on her rich chocolate unlined face.

I’m so lost.

The cobwebs slowly ebb and I hear the hiss of a ventilator and some unknown thrum and wonder where and when I am now. I turn to ask…

…and see my son’s temple and see that they’ve nicely cleaned up the ragged stitches for me…

And I see his chest rise slightly, incomprehensibly, and my whole body tightens up anticipating to be swept away somewhere and sometime but, nothing.

I am here and I am now and my son is alive and I’ve been sleeping and dreaming.

My father, my brother are still gone but I have my son. I love them all but he is here and now and love fills my heart and lungs and soul and I thank God. I reach over to my son and clutch his hand and he squeezes back and his eyes open and I am, I am crying and he just smiles and goes back to sleep. I wipe his brow clean and three dark red-black angry stitches fall but evaporate before my eyes before reaching the ground. I blink and quiver and move on.

I don’t know how much of this was a dream but whenever I see my boy and it’s not often because he is off living his life I feel an overwhelming joy. Ours is no perfunctory hug, each time we embrace I relive that day in 2004 and am infused with a love so sacred and sweet I know a small taste of what heaven will be.

This is what it is to be human, to feel grief and love, each with soulsobs seizing control of every bone and muscle in your body.

Love, grief turned inside out and upside down. I let go of my father and brother and feel my son’s heart beat and the grief is blown away. Replaced by love.