She Carried Him First

There is no art to telling your 15-year-old that his mother died unexpectedly at the age of 42.  The finesse that characterizes meaningful father-to-son communication doesn’t apply to this one – because there’s no creative language or any comparison to a famous athlete that could help me through it.  I thought about it hard – how to break the news to him – creating a moment in his life that he’ll remember as long as he lives.  I invited his aunt and uncle (his mom's brother and sister) to join me in the conversation.  Looking back, that was a huge mistake on my part. 

He took the news hard.  Tears.  Hugs with strength.  Ten minutes max.  Then he was off to the shower, and I stood in my living room taking insults from one of my invitees.  It was a bad situation that just got worse moment – that I too will remember for the rest of my days.  Good intentions.  Bad results.  Then, after they left, it was just my boy and me in a quiet house.  The carnage of a kid who just lost his mom was then mine, and mine alone. 

This wasn’t one of those situations like when I was a kid, and my Aunt Jennie died.  She lived with my grandmother on the second floor of our house in downtown Niagara Falls.  The night she passed, the house was jammed with family and friends.  And everyone brought food.  I was tight with my aunt, so I took the news pretty hard.  She suffered through a battle with cancer that she ultimately lost.  Now, looking back at it, all that I can say is that it was a loss that filled a small home with as many people as could fit.  Death has a way of bringing people together, sometimes. 

While my son was in the shower, I sat on my couch in silence.  Our dog, Louie, knew something was up.  He made his presence known by tucking his whole little Boston Terrier body right up against me, then his head was on my lap, and he kept his eyes on my face.  That helped. My son wanted to know what happened.  Expectedly.  Predictably. He asked me again and again, how did she die?  It was a TBD situation, and my suspicions, I’d be keeping to myself. 

I called for reinforcements – three of my son’s friends and their parents joined.  It helped him and helped me too.  The kids powwowed in his room, and the three of us adults took to the kitchen.  I needed a break, so I went and got food for everyone.  I was tested there too.  A year and a half ago and any time before that, there’d be a glass of wine in my hand for something like this.  But not anymore.

On my way to pick up the food, I thought about something.  When my son was in his mom’s tummy, I went to all the doctor’s appointments.  I saw the sonograms, and even paid up for the 3D imagery – and still have it on a compact disc.  At one of the appointments about five or six months into his creation, Dr. Sinopoli told us that this was the time that the baby’s hearing was developing…becoming active.  So later that night, and every night thereafter, I sang to the tummy that held my son.  I am an awful singer, so he and his mother both had to suffer through it.  The same song, over and over again.  No music.  Just my voice.

May the Good Lord be with you down every road you own.  And may sunshine and happiness surround you when you’re far from home.  And may you grow to be proud and dignified and true.  And may you do unto others as you would have done to you.  Be courageous and be brave.  And in my heart you will remain.  Forever Young.  Forever Young.

Again and again for the next three months, my son asked me how his mother died.  I threw up flares.  Could have been an aneurysm.   A heart attack.  But it wasn’t.  And I knew that. 

A couple of weeks ago, my son told me that he was going to lunch with his uncle and that he’d be out all afternoon.  When he was dropped off, I wasn’t home.  He called me up and asked if he could go to a friend’s house – and of course he could.  So he did.  When I called him to find out when he needed to be picked up, I could tell from his voice that something was wrong.  That was when I found out that the same uncle and aunt who were with me to tell him that his mother died…told him how she died. 

They did this without talking to me first.  Then they dropped him off at home.  And he was all alone.  The cause of death: complications of alcohol use disorder.  More carnage.  And just like before, it was just him and me – with another grenade that just went off. 

Complications of alcohol use disorder. Those five words finally answered his question, but they didn’t come close to telling the story of his mother. They couldn’t. She was 42 years of life before she became a five-word cause of death. Alcohol use disorder is an awful condition, and whatever else I may feel about the years that led us here, I have compassion for the fact that she suffered from it.

He is becoming a pretty remarkable young man. She is going to miss that. She’ll miss him getting his license and graduating from high school. She’ll miss whatever comes after that, too. Someday, a wedding. Maybe children. There will be a whole adult life filled with ordinary days that nobody thinks are important until a mom who should have been there isn't. That’s the saddest part of all.

And I keep going back to that pregnant belly. The three of us were together then. His mother carrying him, me singing terribly to him, and this little boy somewhere inside listening to a voice he didn’t yet know belonged to his dad. Neither of us could have imagined where the next 15 years would take us. I certainly couldn't have imagined that someday I would be sitting beside that same little boy, now nearly grown, trying to help him understand why his mother was gone.

If I could go back to those nights, I’d still sing the same song, only louder. Because I understand now that Rod Stewart’s rendition of Forever Young was never really a wish for eternal youth. Nobody gets that wish. The song is a wish for what will become of our littles.

I want him courageous. I want him brave. Proud and dignified, too. And I hope that when he thinks about his mother, he remembers that she was a human being who struggled with something powerful enough to take her life, but never powerful enough to erase the fact that she gave him his.

She carried him first, and I will be carrying him from here.  Forever Young.