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Authors: Ellen Mitchell

Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child (17 page)

BOOK: Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child

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Ariella: “It sounds wonderful. We should get someone to show us all how to do it.”

Until this writing, Carol’s husband Don knew that she practiced meditation, but she had never told him that she uses it as a means of communicating with Lisa.

Carol: “He doesn’t believe in it.”

Among us, Barbara Eisenberg is the only one who cannot envision meeting her son again someday.

Barbara E.: “I want to believe there is an afterlife and that I will meet Brian again, but deep down inside me I don’t believe it’s going to be. I think when I was growing up, I had more of a belief in an afterlife and being reunited with people and heaven and hell, but it all stopped when Brian died. I really never had a lot of religious faith. And I really don’t see how it would work. If Brian is now a soul, how do I recognize a soul? As for prayer, people say they prayed hard and a miracle happened. We prayed. Why not us? Why didn’t Brian get well?”

Whether it be reality or fantasy, we all spend a good deal of time imagining what we will say to our children and what we will do should we ever meet them again. We write poems about it and dream about it. It is a form of escape from the reality that they are gone.

We intend to ask our children if they had any premonitions that their lives were about to end. Obviously, when tragedy strikes it is not unusual for a person to look back and wonder if there were forewarnings of what was to come. We hear such musings all the time at bereavement meetings. Among ourselves we look back and recall events that might have foretold of tragedy. One of us, for instance, lost the little boy charm from her bracelet, which held a charm for each child. That occurred just prior to the diagnosis of her son’s illness.

There are always things that can be construed as signs or omens, but in our cases they proved to be all too true. Did our children know what was coming? We will ask when we see them.

Audrey: “I think maybe Jess had a premonition about dying. One day out of the blue she commented to me, ‘Do you realize one of us will have to bury the other?’ I responded that I expected to be around a long time to bother her.”

“And after Jess died, I was convinced that I was privy to information that no one else knew. I envisioned a cataclysm of such magnitude that the world would end … chemical warfare, an epidemic caused by a new viral strain. And then 9/11 occurred. I was right … she was spared.”

Ariella: “During one of the many times Michael was in the hospital, he had two nightmares. In one he thought he was in a concentration camp and that all the people there died. In the second nightmare, he was in a sinking boat encircled by sharks. His father tried to get a lifeboat into the water to save him, but it was too late. I knew he thought he was going to die and he was terrified.”

We agonize over what our children experienced at the time of their deaths. We want to know if they experienced pain, if they knew they were dying. So many questions. Will we ever have answers?

Phyllis: “When we meet, Andrea and I will hug and laugh about who hugs top and who hugs bottom. We’ll cry, we’ll smile and laugh. How much we both have missed each other. Where will we begin? Who will talk first? I’ll say, ‘I’m the mother, me first.’ Or we’ll decide to take turns. I’ll ask how she got to where she is. How did she feel when she was hit by the car? What did she see and could she remember? I will tell her about my life, her father, her sister and brother’s lives, her nieces and nephews, bring her up to date on her friends. (I hope I will remember.) I will want to hear what Andrea does every day. We will be so excited.
Both our worlds at this time will be one. No more yearning, longing, emptiness. I’ll be with Andrea in Andrea’s world.”

“As her mother, I showed Andrea the way in life; now she will show me the way. I’ll meet her new friends. I’ll ask to see Grandma and Grandpa. Andrea will be my leader. In life, Andrea taught me how to cope and deal with people, now in death her message will be the same.”

“I will not have any more pain. I will be free. I’ll hear her famous one-liners. We’ll talk about the different worlds we lived in. I’m starting my list of things we will talk about after we love each other up and touch. Now we will be together forever. I know she will recognize me because my love for her will reach her. Even if she is in a large crowd, she will feel my love for her.”

“Eventually we will argue and I’ll hear, ‘Oh, Ma!’ I know then I will be safe.”

Audrey: “When we meet again I will be too emotional to speak anything but your name Jessie, Jess, Jessica. I will hug you to me and when I gain my composure we will talk and you will know what has been in my heart for all these years since your death. I will continue to hold your hand for fear that you will slip away from me and you will lead me down a path of my choosing. I will choose the one in which I witness you maturing into adulthood. You will go through your last two years of high school, the anxiety of applying for colleges, waiting for your college acceptance. I will see you at your senior prom and at graduation. Next we will settle you in college and witness the tribulations of your freshman year. Would you be happy with your choice of colleges? Would you be homesick? Will you be happy with your new friends and your career choice? When I can experience the anxiety of these struggles, I will know I am in heaven.”

Maddy: “In the movie
Field of Dreams
Kevin Costner is asked over and over again by the spirits of the deceased ball players, ‘Is this Heaven?’ He responds, ‘No, it’s Iowa.’ Neill used to love Cliff’s imitation of Costner saying that. When I meet with Neill I will ask, ‘Is this Iowa?’ and he will say, ‘No, it’s Heaven.’”

Carol: “There is nothing I want more than to hold Lisa again in my arms, to hug and kiss her and hear her sweet voice again. I don’t think I will have to fill her in. I think she will know it all. Even though I have been resistant in
many ways, I feel her presence at times, so she must be near me and she must know all about my life since she left this earth. I want to know where she has been and what it has been like.”

Barbara G. : “Howie will take my hand and lead me to this new place after a hug which I can feel as I write about it; my arms wrapped around his thin body, his head towering over mine. I will show utmost restraint in not wanting to know immediately what happened to him. It will no longer matter. I would like to sit quietly alone with him and drink him in, listen to his voice, touch his hand, kiss his face, see the sparkle in his eyes and generally catch up with his life. All of my senses will then be satisfied; all that I have missed doing since 1991, I will now be able to do.”

“I want to know what he has been doing in Heaven. Has he realized his dream of becoming an attorney and eventually a judge? Has he met the love of his life? Does he have children? Is he doing what he wanted to do, which was to just help people in need? I picture my son unfettered by life’s problems, free in the glories of the heavens to pursue whatever he wishes.”

“I know that when I take my last breath it will be with a smile on my face, for I will be going on a long journey to be reunited with a part of myself that I have missed for so long. Balanced against leaving those I love behind will be all the years when we were cheated of being with one another.”

“I have left instructions to be buried in the dress I wore to Howie’s bar mitzvah, for that holds special significance for me. Intellectually, I know that only our spirits will meet and no other baggage will go with me; but emotionally I need this special dress, so I’ll be sure he’ll know me when we meet in Heaven.”

As we wait, we dream. No matter the passage of time, dreams have the power to bring our children back to life. Of course, waking and finding our children are not there can just as easily plunge us into gloom.

Lorenza: “I had a dream of Marc one night and I woke up shaking. I felt his warmth so vividly. I held my arm for the longest time. I thanked my son for the hug. It kept me happy the whole day. But one night, Joe woke up and he was crying badly. He said he had just been with Marc.”

Ariella: “My husband said seeing Michael in his dreams was awful because he would wake up over and over and realize Michael was not there. He has a lot
of dreams of Michael in which he will see him at a train station. He’ll try to talk with him and Michael will be gone. He tries not to talk to Michael now in his dreams, so Michael will not go away. Then he wakes up and is depressed the whole day.”

Guilt, most of it totally groundless, is something we have lived with in varying degrees since the deaths of our children. A mother and child reunion would give us opportunity to assuage some of that guilt. As we’ve said, we initially thought perhaps our children were taken from us because of something we had done. Their deaths were our punishment.

Some of us still harbor a degree of that guilt years later. It may express itself in different and unusual ways, as in Barbara Eisenberg’s case. She is the only one of us who, if she were to see Brian in heaven, which she doubts could occur, would hope to be able to make some changes in their relationship. Brian, was the younger of two children, and his older sister was born with physical disabilities, which always demanded the greater share of Barbara’s focus.

Barbara E.: “Brian had a tough time in our house. He had to do things to get my attention because I spent so much time with his sister. I always felt I would have time someday to make it up to him. I didn’t. And I haven’t really dealt with my feelings about that. I put them away. Talking here about this is making me take out my feelings and look at them. I don’t like that. It’s easier to just forget everything.”

If we were to see our children again, we would want them to know how we regret ever making their short lives difficult or even troublesome. We wish we could take back all the times we spanked them or refused to buy them a much-wanted toy. If we could, we would undo all the arguments we ever had with them.

If their death was sudden or accidental, we want to tell them that we continue to harbor terrible remorse that we weren’t with them to comfort them as they went through their ordeal. If a child died on the water, we want them to know we still blame ourselves for teaching them to love the sea. We rue the day we bought them cars or water skis.

Carol: “No matter how they died, you think there was something you could have done differently. And you blame yourself for that. You think back to all the times you yelled at them or made them do something they were mad at you for. You feel like a monster. I go back over when I was pregnant. Maybe I did something wrong. You cannot believe the soul searching I go through. Why did I make her walk home from the orthodontist?”

Rita: “If I knew my son was going to die at twenty, do you think I’d have made him go to school? Go out and earn money? If I had known, he could have had anything he wanted. But we did not raise our children to die, we raised them to live. We built such character into our son. But we didn’t get a chance to finish the job. So, now we take it out on ourselves. Even if you were a perfect parent, you still feel guilt.”

We lament and we re-examine. We go over everything we did in our lives. It’s not rational to blame ourselves for the deaths of our children, but we continue to do so, even beyond those early days when blaming ourselves occupied so much of our days and nights. We want to be able to tell them face to face of our guilt. We want to hold them and tell them of our sorrow, tell them that they left this life too soon and that, could we have done so, we would have given anything to have prevented their deaths.

We want to tell them that even in death they have had a deep and lasting impact on those they touched. In dying, they have become bigger than life to those who knew them well. Their friends keep them alive in their memories, picturing them always as they were when they died, forever sixteen or twenty or twenty-five. Just as they are always within us, so they are within others who knew and loved them.

Lorenza: “We sometimes wonder if our children are together. Why did this group get together? Is there a connection someplace? We all wonder about that.”

With this book, which none of us could have written in the earlier days of our grief, we are making certain our children are not forgotten. We are ensuring that their lives made a difference. Helping another bereaved parent along the way is our tribute to them.

MICHAEL VOLPE

Michael was always in motion. At the age of three he could swim; at four he rode a two-wheeler, and at eight he learned to water ski. At twelve he broke his foot playing tag but was back on his bike in two days, grinning from ear to ear, with the cast balanced on the pedal. Nothing could stop Michael Motion.

Some people spend their lives reacting to others. Michael was the one to watch, action personified. He was filled with a fire that burned with a fury and it compelled him to leap at and absorb anything he felt passionate about, whether it was a sport, a job or his social life. He gave no mind to schedules. Rather he welcomed each day as a new and exciting challenge to be reckoned with and conquered.

To watch Michael was to watch an athlete. He took great pains to develop an agile and well-coordinated body. The autopsy after his accident was a testament to his efforts. His body was perfect … perfect.

In high school, Michael ran track and was a sprinter. I know now how appropriate that was. His life would run but a short distance, but he would sprint through with enormous fervor, as if he knew the track that stretched before him would not be a long one.

Michael loved any game with a ball. He played basketball, baseball, stickball, football. The punch ball bounced off the wall in his bedroom while he was “doing homework.” The football skipped down the street as he did his touchdown dance; the basketball bounced up the block as he returned from school. Even now, when I hear those sounds it breaks my heart.

He was never much for studying. You’d tell him to study in his room and then you’d hear him banging around in there, making something, improvising on a new type of pen or whatever. He went to Archbishop Molloy High School and then on to St. John’s University. Still, he didn’t study. He didn’t have to. He was in the honors program, and he was just naturally intelligent.

Michael loved the water and we always said maybe that came from
his being a Pisces. Someone once told me that fish never stopped moving. That was Michael. He loved music and he loved to dance. He knew he was a good dancer and he wasn’t shy about it. He enjoyed an audience. Whenever certain songs would play he would run and get me to join him. I loved every minute of that. To this day, whenever I hear one of those songs, my heart dances again with him.

Michael adored animals and his room was home to quite a variety. He would change the salamander’s toys with the frequency of a nervous parent and prod the nocturnal hamster awake during the day to enjoy its company. I even remember him once trying to pet the fish when he was moving it from one tank to another.

Faith was a mainstay in Michael’s young life. He was a very spiritual person, but it was low-key. It was Michael’s interest in the church that brought us back to going to mass as a family. He worked at church as a sacristan, setting up the altar. When he’d see family members, he’s come down and greet them. He was a pure spirit, always bringing family together … all heart.

He hadn’t decided what he wanted to do in life yet, possibly law, possibly veterinary medicine. But he’d only finished two years of college. That summer of 1987, he planned to return home to work with kids as a day camp counselor. He’d done that before and really enjoyed it.

Two days before Michael’s death, we all attended a family wedding. I was standing inside a glass-enclosed room and looked out to see my two sons, Michael, twenty and Tommy, eighteen, arriving together. I was filled with pride as they walked in dressed to the nines … so beautiful, so wonderful, so gifted. They looked like movie stars. All eyes focused on them as they entered and lit up the room. I said to myself, “I am so blessed.”

Michael’s eyes sparkled as he looked my way, nodded his head and smiled with a sort of shy acknowledgment. The day, the scene is etched in my mind forever.

And then on a sunny Tuesday, at the very start of the summer vacation, everything changed. Michael had worked nonstop all that day filling
in for a friend who had a job at a neighborhood moving company. He stopped at the gym on his way home. After dinner he took a shower and gave himself a complete overhaul … hair, nails, toenails, the works.

He did mention he’d vomited up his dinner, but he seemed relaxed and in a light mood. He watched a little television and left to meet a friend. He was going out locally; he would see us later.

He left through the back door, completely preened, a picture of health and beauty, not even a cavity in his mouth. I didn’t get a chance to kiss him good-bye. I didn’t get a chance to say, “Be careful.” That was a ritual. Why was it missing that night? If I’d had the chance to say it, would it have made a difference?

My husband Tom and I went to a movie, came home and went to sleep. Our sons would always knock on our door when they arrived home. We needed to know they were safe.

At 1 A.M. I awakened startled and nervous. Why wasn’t he home? Oh, well, not a big deal. I fell back to sleep.

At 4 A.M. there was a knock at the door. Our son Tommy answered. Two female police officers. They wanted to talk to us. There had been an accident at 1 A.M. Michael’s car hit a pole at the Main Street exit of the Long Island Expressway.

Don’t utter those words. It cannot be … . It cannot be.

Such a few words and my son … gone forever.

He was almost home. He could have walked those few blocks. Either he was cut off or the car malfunctioned, or maybe he fell asleep; we remembered he had vomited earlier in the evening. We will never know the answers. All we know is that the car swerved off the road and mounted the guard rail, rendering the brakes useless, and leading Michael on a death trip to the pole. It became a monorail of death beyond his control. For years I could not remember the word “guard rail.”

Michael owned a small sports car, which worried us. That night he was driving our huge family station wagon; we called it “the tank.” We kept it because our younger son was a new driver and we figured it would keep him safe. We thought we could control our sons’ safety. We kept them close, we were strict parents; we thought we had the power to
protect them. Michael had done dangerous things in his life. That night was not one of those times.

My son, my husband and I were emptied, shattered. We sat on the sofa huddled together, a heap of flesh. We were dead, too.

We waited for the sun to rise only to curse it. Michael had to be identified at the morgue.

“Please, God, make it be someone else. This is all a mistake. Michael will come back to us. It cannot be that he no longer walks this earth.”

The one comforting thought is that my brother, Michael’s uncle, was standing at the roadside praying for the victim of that accident. He had no idea it was Michael. He was traveling on the expressway and had come upon the accident scene. He stopped and prayed over the terrible wreckage. Later, he would write a beautiful poem converting the horror to a spiritual level.

The thought that I was not there will forever haunt me. I brought Michael into this world, I comforted him in sickness, attended to his wounds and broken bones. He had always wanted his mom there for reassurance and I had always been there. This was his last wound and I wasn’t there.

As we look back, we realize that Michael entwined himself with family in the days leading up to his death. He went to the beach with his dad, he visited me at the school where I taught. He looked out the window of my classroom and noticed a beautiful tree in the courtyard. He said it looked “depressed.” He visited his grandmother and installed blocks in her driveway. Those blocks are now a memorial, which she will not remove. At that family wedding two days earlier, he stayed late and talked to everyone at length. He left indelible marks on everybody that week. Did he know?

At Michael’s funeral, his brother Tommy eulogized him. “He taught me how to love,” Tommy said.

Rita Volpe

BOOK: Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child

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