the pain of whiplash reminds you you're alive
Sometime in between the latest of latenight and the earliest of morning my eyes pop open to see Liam, identical but different, teetering on the edge of our bed.
He’s going to fall...
I move slowly, not wanting to startle him backwards. He is wearing footed pyjamas and a striped hat he’s put on himself, and he wobbles on the mattress as he thrusts a fruitful hand in my direction.
Mama. TOY!
Something he’s found in his travels, colourful and cheery, and I oooh and ahhh and reach out to pull him in, tuck him between us for cuddles. My arms pass through him once and then twice and he evaporates like smoke, and I blink and remember.
Right. He died.
+++
Evan: "Action Force DINKIES!"
Ben: "DINK-Y."
Evan: "Brrrmmm... brrrmmm... AARRGGGGH! CRAAASH! ACTION FORCE!"
Ben: (gazes adoringly) "DINK-Y."
Evan: (casts appraising glance)
Ben: "Brrrmmm... brrrmmm..."
The big brother notes himself mentor, pleased.
+++
I am only implicitly sad, faintly so, the same tug you get when you leave your house without keys or wallet or purpose. I pause before addressing him, feeling less and less as though he was ever mine. I shoo the memory of him aside, shamed for his witness as I bark at his brothers.
One week until their birthday. I’m all blocked up with needing to write about him, yet nothing feels fitting except an abrupt two years ago right now he was everything he could have been and hey did I tell you, I see him at night.
+++
It’s a 1909 edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses and from the moment it came into my hands it spoke to me like a magical thing, a key that might reveal all the longing and hidden meanings of the universe. And it does, a wheel of fortune that clicks and whirrs with the flip of pages, promising a prize upon its settling—if not the trip to Jamaica, a set of nonstick cookware. Perhaps not always fantastic but at least useful.
This book is the only thing on an empty bedside table. I chose it, my bible, because I like that it makes him a king.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Reader Comments (36)
(i am missing the photos despite several reloads, i will come back later for them.)
Those photos of the mentor and his junior in the jaunty cap are just delicious.
Thinking of you and all your boys.
Confession: I am a lowly coward. Too many times I hesitate to click on your latest post because I fear where you will take me. Truth be told, I cannot breathe when I read you. But when I do overcome my apprehension, always, always I am thankful for having done so.
What a beautiful post. My heart aches for you and yet rejoices in knowing that Liam is King...always and forever.
The pictures of Ben and Evan are gorgeous. Ah, boys. I love watching brothers navigate their world together.
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, today,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever,
Long after all of the boys are away."
Keepsake Mill. As a child I had no idea what it was about, but the sound of the words enchanted me.
Hi, Liam. So glad you are visiting.
xoxo
Hoping you get that chance. It is so bittersweet.
And, wow, those photos - the sort of adorable that requires some sort of exclamation or serious adjective to hint at the degree of adorableness: "OMG! adorable," or "staggeringly adorable."
i so get this, the need to witness and yet to explain how it is that i am not really sad, that THAT is not what i'm trying to express, grasp at. rather it is deeper than that, and mostly sweeter, and in moments unutterable, like i have touched the core of something i cannot explain through this child who, yes, feels less and less like he was ever mine.
two days, for me, until he would have been four. and i want to speak only to honour him, yet i don't know what to say.
xo
I love the boys' clothes and the pictures... they seem to fit with the time frame of the book so nicely.
Liza
(from the middle of nowhere, but originally from Minnesota)
this is a most beautiful post, so heart-true.
Thinking of you as you approach your days and weeks. Wishing you room to come to them on your terms and peace with however that meeting ends up going down.
And on a completely separate note-- you manage to keep your bedside table clean? HOW? Cause I recently spent hours cleaning shit around the bedroom, and bedside table in particular. And in the "clean" version, it still has a couple of (now low) piles on it.
But this is something...isn't it?
It is.
Thinking about you.
xoxo
so glad he is still coming to you at night. i still see his light in so many of your images, especially with ben. makes me smile in a sad way.
be peace-filled these next weeks. so glad to read you. xo.
I cant imagine how difficult a situation you are facing. My thoughts are with you.
I find that with each passing year, as my baby grows into a "big girl" that I mourn the loss of her babyness, the newness of her. I try to focus on her, and her excitement. Because, with each year she knows that she can do more and have more.
The only thing I dont want you to feel is guilt. You love all your boys, and they know that you do, and that will never change. You are not supposed to forget. Take care, and keep writing, you are amazing,
Shannon
Liam will be the air in your lungs when you help blow out Ben's birthday candles.
And because we are one, know that I hold your life and all that it brings forth to this existence with the highest regard.
please keep writing him.