Every eight weeks

I donate in honor of Riley

I was reading a book at the juice and cookie table today about why people donate blood, and one of the stories really resonated with me. A woman wrote that while the doctors made decisions about her care, it was blood that saved her. Doctors could not have saved her without blood. Same goes for Riley all the years he was alive. 

It’s that time again, people. Every eight weeks. If you are eligible, please donate. Do it because giving feels good; do it because you can; do it to honor someone; do it because someone you love may need it one day. And it doesn’t cost you anything aside from an hour chunked out of your calendar. Just one hour every eight weeks. Make an appointment. My next one is already booked for March 27. Let me know if you want to go together.

Grief and time

When babies are brand new, we talk about how old they are in days, then weeks, then months. Eventually, we move on to years and halves. I have an 8 ½-year-old son. I had an 11 ½-year-old son. That organizing of time seems to be happening in death as well. Right after Riley died, it was, how did he die four days ago? Then, how did he die two weeks ago? And when I started writing this, on the 20th of the month, I wondered how it could be that he had been dead for three months.

How do I keep living when he is not? The months keep piling up without him.

Top of Mauna Kea, elevation 13,796 in honor of my son

A weeklong retreat to the Big Island earlier this month gave my aimlessness shelter. While being aimless at home feels like laziness, being aimless in Hawaii with close friends felt natural. So many people are on vacation and being aimless is often the point of being on vacation. An entire day was spent in a cabana crying and laughing, the ebbs and tears flowing and retreating like the water pushing forward along the sand and then receding into its own vastness. Emotions rode that surf as it gently tapped shore and simultaneously pounded the rocks 300 feet offshore. They were both of those things at the same time, not unlike when I can laugh and then instantly feel pummeled by the waves of grief pushing me under every time I notice his absence, which is constantly.

One day we ventured to the highest peak in Hawaii, Mauna Kea. There were snow-covered rock faces and thin air. The elevation changed our breathing and made our motions slightly slower. Being there was profoundly beautiful, yet ordinary for most humans with healthy anatomies. I felt lightheaded and heavy-hearted. I had avoided elevation most of Riley’s life. How could I go to elevation when he could not? Yet there we were on the top of that mountain for Riley. At the Celebration of Riley's life, a friend distributed wooden token that he had had made. One side says, Climb a mountain in Riley's memory. The other side has a picture of Riley's likeness. We honored Riley on that mountaintop and reflected on all that has happened from that new perspective. Two of my kids had painted stones to leave there. The idea was that we could discover them during a future visit. The perfect hiding spot was under a large volcanic boulder with a bit carved out on one side. I pushed the stones in and covered them with rocks.

The process of burying those stones was surprisingly painful. Leaving them behind felt like abandoning Riley alone in the cold, thin air. It was like I left pieces of him unprotected to endure the elements without me looking out for him, without me taking care of him. No, the stones aren't actually my son, but the symbolism was not lost on me.

Returning to my Northern Californian town was unsettling. Being aimless here feels much less acceptable. There are routines and schedules and lunches to make, days to endure, weeks to pass. And soon enough the 20th of the month will reappear. Every single month, round and round we go, the accumulation of life without him. Eventually October will come around and stab me with each of its passing days. One year, then two, and then somehow my 8 ½-year-old son will surpass my 11-and-a-half-year-old son in age and the younger brother will become the older brother.

Grief and light

As I sat on the sofa in my friend’s mountain house, a ball of light burst onto the painting of trees opposite me. The condensed glow was the tired afternoon sun splashing its last rays before drowning, and I was entranced because in it, I saw you, sweet boy. That splash of light was you in the room with me in the mountains, a place we didn’t go together when you were alive because elevation was not a place you were allowed to visit. The altitude could not provide you with enough oxygen. But there you were for a few minutes. And just like your short life, the glow inched to the edge and disappeared. Then the trees on the painting, just like my life, were dark. You were gone.

As the light glided across the picture, my husband sat and watched it with me for several minutes. He

Moonlight and death

saw a bright spot on the wall, the simplicity of the setting sun. I found the profundity of your soul or your energy or whatever you want to call that thing I need to believe still swirls among the atoms in my universe now that your physicality from it is gone. Nothing has face value anymore. It was you. I know it was. It has to be because seeing you in the inanimate things around me is the only option from now on.

Green was your favorite color. Your favorite shorts were green; your school binder was green; the comforter you chose for your bed was green. You wanted to paint the walls of your bedroom green. So what do I do? I see you in the greens of nature. I see you in the shade of green that we painted our front door. And just as I saw you in the vertical beam of light on the wall after your heart stopped in October 2014, I see you in every lighted spot the sun manages to push through window shades and door jams. But the fleeting beams of sunlight and the green paint and sprigs of grass and spindly pine needles are pointless because they bring you no closer.

Yet finding you all around is what people want me to do. “We do these things to remember him and to nurture this new relationship we have with him,” someone told me. I don’t want a new relationship with my eleven-and-a-half-year-old son. Yet, what choice do I have other than to adapt? The relationship we had is never coming back.

Even with the green and the glowing reminders, I don’t need visual cues to think of you. I breathe you; I exhale you; you are always sitting on my lap and holding my hand, in my mind. You are humming as you etch the math answers onto the paper, in my mind. You are peeling garlic next to me, popping raw cloves into your mouth, in my mind. You are organizing your bottles of Tabasco so that all of the bottles are neatly facing forward, in my mind. You are petting the dog, shouting: “Pepper’s tail just hit me in the penis” just so you could say “penis” loudly in the living room, your smile counteracting your attempt at indignation, in my mind. All of it, only in my mind.

Let’s be honest, shall we? Moving through grief is all about me accepting the world as it is, with exactly the people who tread upon it—no one more, no one less—is it not? One day I will go to buy groceries without feeling panicked when my husband is not in my line of vision. One day I will go to the café and order a latte with a friend. One day—I am told—that your memory will make me smile instead of burn with the need for your forgiveness. Only then will I stop pleading: “ Please forgive me, Riley,” my nightly mantra as I will you into my dreams.