CHAPTER 4, PART 1
Before Logan died, the Christmas tree lit in the corner of my brother’s house had piles of gifts underneath. With grandparents, sister, brothers, spouses, children and grandchildren, the house reigned chaotic with laughter. We heard a knock and our cousin Jennifer entered.
Our cousins had lived across the street from us for several years in our childhood and we put on many a play and production for our parents, from nativity scenes in our old shed to plays we wrote involving witches and princesses.
Jennifer stood for a moment surveying the holiday scene, then began to cry and hurried out the front door. I ran after her and she had stopped in the yard, still sobbing.
“I’m so sorry,” she said amidst her tears. “It’s seeing you all there together like that. It just brought back what I am missing.” What Jennifer missed was her son Tony who had died several years previously from epilepsy while running in a track meet.
I hugged her close and told her it was okay and wished I could be of more help. My brother followed me outside and Jennifer again apologized for disrupting the celebration. He also reassured her and told her to take the time she needed. We could not understand how deep her emotions were, but did realize they must be incredibly hard to endure. She cried for a while in my arms, and later we all went back inside.
Unfortunately, I was fated to find out the depth of her pain only a year and a half later.
CHAPTER 4, PART 2
Most humans have an inborn fear of losing their children, so we have a protective instinct. I, for one, tried to never think that anything could happen to my children. I have an active imagination as a writer, but into that one dark area, I chose never to let my imagination go. Instead, it came to me one day at a party.
An administrative assistant at the community college where I teach was being honored at a surprise party because she had obtained her Master’s degree. The administration, faculty and staff members, as well as her friends attended. All in all, it was a celebratory affair with balloons on every table, gifts piled high and smiles on all faces. As I ate boiled shrimp, I looked out the window and saw a female police officer, not one of our campus security guards, walking by the window and wondered vaguely why the police were on campus. Then, I went back to eating and chatting with Janice, a faculty friend.
A few minutes later our security guard Clint came up to me with the same police officer behind him and said, “Can you come with us for a minute?” I followed them into the kitchen, thinking perhaps I had parked in the wrong spot, although I did have my faculty sticker on the car.
“Do you have your cell phone on you?” Clint asked me.
“It’s in the car.”
“You might want to call home.” Both Clint and the police officer looked very somber and I told them that I would call from the school kitchen as there was a phone close by.
CHAPTER 4, PART 3
My husband answered and said without preliminaries, “Kathy, come home now.”
“Come on, Big Hon,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“You need to come home now.”
I argued with him, but Bob only firmly repeated that I needed to go home, so I hurried back to the table to grab my purse and keys, and told Janice I had an emergency at home, but that Bob wouldn’t tell me what it was. We remarked that not knowing almost made it worse, but we could not have been more wrong. If I had been told at the party, I could not have driven home and one hundred guests would have heard the anguished screams of a bereaved mother.
As I drove home, my heart pounded, but my mind analyzed the situation. If someone were in the hospital, Bob would have told me to meet him there, or if a child were in jail for something stupid, my husband would not have considered it an emergency. The only reason for his reticence had to be a death. Names flew through my head, but I disregarded my children’s names quickly because in my subconscious mind that reality could not exist. As my parents were both over seventy at the time, I thought one of them must have died.
Chapter 4, part 4
When I turned into my yard, a police car and an unfamiliar maroon van sat parked in my driveway. My heart, already filled with dread, wanted to stop. If a parent had died, my brother would have called, not the police. At the same time that this knowledge hit, I prayed maybe one of my children had only been in trouble with the police. Usually, you do not hope for your children to be at odds with the law, but it seemed a much better alternative than what I knew in my heart. The minute I entered the house, I felt an unnatural vacuum in the stillness of the air. A policeman and an unfamiliar middle-aged man sat in my living room with my husband.
The middle-aged man asked me to sit on the couch, introduced himself as the chaplain from the police department, and told me, “Your son Logan took drugs earlier today and he died.” He said it quietly and without details, probably the kindest way to break the news of this magnitude to someone. Details could wait.
I screamed, “No!” I screamed “No!” again. I looked at Bob’s face, back at the chaplain, and with all of my heart and soul, I shrieked one last fierce, drawn-out, “Noooooo!” that still echoes in my cells. Even as I write this, I want to scream it again and hope that by the force of my will, Logan will return. But it’s been two and a half years and I realize that he will never be back. That knowledge, however, does not prevent me from still wanting to protest.
The chaplain talked about an autopsy, when his body would be sent to the funeral home, and other details. I listened and heard and vaguely remembered, but over and over in my mind for days to come were the words, “… and he died.”
Chapter 4, part 5
I spent my first night alone on the couch in a darkened living room, awake, staring at the flickering light of the television, but not seeing or hearing the program. I alternately cried and hoped I was in a nightmare. Logan’s life was book-ended by mindless television. For several hours before his birth, I watched shows in the labor room, not really paying attention, but trying to divert myself from the physical pain of natural childbirth as I mindlessly watched a travelogue about Germany. Now, Logan was dead and I was doing the same thing, trying to divert my attention from the pain—not physical, but emotional hurt. I watched the Tour de France, but this time, it did not help.
Chapter 4, part 6
I had the news broken to me in the security of my own home, but others found out in different ways. One friend, whose son also had a drug problem, had the police call her at work; then, they handed the phone over to her husband. Her husband began with, “It’s Jack.” She had asked her husband to check on her son that morning.
“Did he overdose? Did you call an ambulance?” my friend asked him.
“The coroner’s here,” he replied.
She shrieked, then cried for two hours, but managed to drive herself home to face the upcoming weeks of numbness.
Hazel found out as the police came to her door to tell her that Peter had been killed in a car accident. My poor friend had the horrendous task of going to identify the body that night. I know of parents who would not identify the body of their daughter for several days—a fact I totally understand. That would make it real. I cry just to think of what they must have endured.
Chapter 4, part 7
My cousin Jennifer, after completing a few errands, went to the track meet to watch her son Tony run. When she arrived, they told her he had been taken away in an ambulance. His epilepsy had caused a seizure from which he didn’t seem to awaken. Panicked, she drove to the hospital, to be told the news.
No matter how we discover the news, the sudden death of a child throws us into a state of shock for an indeterminate length of time, depending upon the person. It might take a while to begin the work of grief, but at the beginning, it’s enough to just get through a day. I did not expect any more of myself than whatever was necessary. I chose to go back to work within two weeks after the funeral, not because I was callous, but because I did not know what else to do. Keeping busy is an antidote to depression; so work, even if it seems devoid of meaning, helps. Teaching made my body and mind function again, even if on a robotic level.
Chapter 4, part 8
ACTIVITY
Write a paragraph about the day your child first came into your life. It might make you cry, but tears release toxins.
