If he had lived, our son would be two years old today.
Several close friends have had children in the past year. I have been too afraid of breaking down in front of the parents to accept invitations to meet them. Just the other day, however, we were at a restaurant and some friends came in with their nine-month-old twins. I decided I was feeling strong enough to finally meet them.
Before approaching them, I washed my hands in the bathroom, since I have been fighting off a cold. I pumped soap from the dispenser, and ran my hands under the tap. Absentmindedly, I began lathering up my wrists and rubbing furiously. I was back in the hospital, scrubbing up at the sink inside the entrance to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Back then, I washed my hands vigorously, thoroughly, twice in a row–up to the elbows and underneath each fingernail. I shuttled over colostrum and came back with empty bottles, stole away in the night while Val was sleeping off the anesthetic, aware each visit could be the last. Every time, I scrubbed down furiously, as though some miracle of cleanliness could restore the electricity to our son’s brain.
It has not been an easy two years. But James’s death caused me to reevaluate what matters. I rediscovered the young idealist, who left the engineering department at Berkeley during the height of the dot-com era to study poetry instead. I recommitted to my writing, and signed up for an MFA. With such loss has come not only grief, but great compassion. I want to write about what makes us human, because never has it impressed upon me more that this is precious in its entirety–from my flashback in the bathroom to the radiant abandon with which infants squirm in their highchairs. There is so much to life. Sometimes it overwhelms.
I say once again: Godspeed, little James. There is so much more to love than could ever be comprehended.
13 Comments
Thanks for sharing this with us, Robert.
Your message is a moving reminder to all of us about our proper priorities.
My thoughts are with you today.
–Ed
Thanks for your kindness, Ed.
Thank you for that post.
I’m glad that you posted this.
Thanks, Nick; thanks, Kurt. I sometimes question how much I should disclose about my process of moving through grief to hope. Then I hear how it has helped someone else to take stock, to focus on what matters most. Still, we went through “personal updates” at our company-wide meeting yesterday, and staring out at my colleagues, one-quarter of whom were new, and I just thought: “how personal do you want to get?” In the end, I just let one secret slip — that I write poetry.
Robert:
What a touching post – you so eloquently reminded me (and likely many others) not only of the preciousness and value of each little life, but the strength of the link between even the simplest physical task and the strongest of our memories – even when this memory is of our best and our worst moments in stark proximity.
Best,
Peter
Love and strength of spirit to you at this time, Robert. You have so much of it–may you have even more!
Michelle
Thanks, Peter. I thought it would be the moment of meeting my friends’ children that would have been most difficult — but it was actually the conscientiousness with which I prepared myself to meet them that brought back the experience of fatherhood — an experience of wanting to be impeccable, stemming from a visceral desire to do anything and everything I could for my son.
Thanks, my friend.
A very touching post. My thoughts go out to you, Robert.
Thanks, Brian.
A very moving post. But also good writing. The part about the lather and handwashing and memory would make amazing short essay.
Thanks, Leslie. I appreciate the suggestion from someone who certainly knows their way around prose.
The scenes I carry from that time are difficult to express. This one just resurfaced. I thought the hardest part would be seeing the children. I wasn’t expecting it to be the few moments before.
Last semester Sandra Alcosser sent me a copy of a very short piece by Brian Doyle called “Two Hearts.” It tore me apart.
So, I am actually looking at haibun and prose introduction and other multi-modal forms, which might help me frame and shape my thesis more forcefully than a straightforward collection of poems. We’ll see.
Thanks for stopping by.