You Departed Nine Years Ago Today

  


 

Daniel, one year in costume as Charlie Chaplin.    Daniel would be 21 years old in the present day.

        
 Daniel,

     I won't ever forget your special days.   I will always remember your birthdays. I will always remember the anniversaries of your sudden departure to Heaven.  I will be here until I am called. I will continue to take care of your animals, and there are still quite a few you would know from the farm.  The ones you knew seem to try to live lives as long as possible as if to spare me any more grieving, for as long as they can.

      This year, it is not only the birthday of a special friend of yours, but one of your friends has a baby that is due today.  Please look in on her if you can. 

       And so, the anniversary of your departure nine years ago today, is no different.  I will man the fort. I will find warm homes for the things you owned and loved while you were here. I will watch and care for your siblings as they grow, and I will continue to be comforted by the love we shared while you were still my youngest son, here on Earth.

        You have my love and my respect always.   Please send love to my Dad.

A Cataclysmic Loss: Nine Years After

Dearest Daniel,

               On the twenty-eighth of this month, you will have been gone from Earth for nine years.  I can just imagine you at 21, had you remained here.  You were only 12 1/2 when you departed.  I have to wonder how I might feel, in three more years, when you are gone for as long as you were here.
                I know that you keep an eye on us all.  Somehow, some of your animals are still alive. It's as if they knew you had to depart in haste, and they wish to stay as long as possible in order to support us.  Sometimes, when I am scrubbing a horse bucket, or working with one of the horses, I feel as if you are watching me.  I think of you often, and I try to be as busy as I can be.  There is no "closure".  The loss of a child will always be a crater in one's life, but we must continue, for your Dad, for your siblings and your animals, and also it's what you would expect from us, and I wouldn't want to disappoint you.  You know, I still love you, wider than the oceans, and deeper than the seas............and yes, I know, just as you always said, you love me more.

And the Bathroom Still Stands as Witness

              

Daniel

         In a few days, it will have been nine years since you entered the bathroom, collapsed, and died. My immediate  CPR, a precordial thump, a shot of epinephrine, and then another, followed by the sheriff's deputies use of the AED made no difference. You hit the floor, and you were gone.  In the crazy days and weeks which followed, there weren't many answers. Eventually, multiple world class pathologists at university medical centers said that although your autopsy was negative for anything that should have caused your death, that your collapse, your fall forward, and the number of sudden deaths in older members of our family coupled with our strong family history for arrhythmia (heart rhythm disturbance) is likely what took you, even at only age 12 1/2.  Since then, so many more children and teens have died suddenly from sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS) and sudden unexplained death in childhood (SUDC), that although I am sure you have a lot of company and friends to talk to about it, it is of no consolation to their families, or to myself.

                I often think about the bathroom you died in.  The house was new when you died there. The shiny walls and lights, new marble tub and shower. The mirror and new shower curtain, and the photos of lighthouses are still there.  When you died, the baseboards and shoe moldings were new. Today, they are showing just a little age, the result of steam and occasional splashings by your siblings and your toddler nephew. A few days after you died, I lay on the floor, as you had, looking up to see if anything resembling a stairway to Heaven were there, something, anything, but there wasn't anything.  It was simply a bathroom. I couldn't imagine how your active and shining soul could have seeped out of the cheery new room.  How could something so cataclysmic have occurred in such a pleasant and ordinary room?  One of your doctors called it a "supernatural passing".  How could a supernatural passing have occurred in a modern bathroom. Wouldn't it have needed to occur in a church?

               Since then, we haven't changed  much in the bathroom.  There are some prints that are hung on the wall in blue and white which look quite good.  James uses the bathroom more than anyone, since he occupies your old room, after we moved all of your things to a new bedroom we finished in the basement. (To those who don't know us, James in a young teen who was adopted the year after Daniel died, something Daniel had always wanted us to do.) Also since that time, your nephew bathes in the tub in that bathroom, and spends more time in the tub there, than anyone else ever has, since all of you preferred showers.

              The bathroom remains the same, and on some levels so do I.   I still can't believe that my youngest son could celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends, play a soccer game with college students, and then arise the next day perfectly well, with the intention of Black Friday shopping.  We were getting ready to go, when you collapsed and died.   Black Friday is all it will ever be for me.