We Deal

We do not "get over" a death. We learn to carry the grief and integrate the loss in our lives. In our hearts, we carry those who have died. We grieve and we love. We remember.
~ Nathalie Himmelrich

There’s the peaceful death of old age when the body simply slows down to an eventual full stop. My mother went out this way. Sleep became a sanctuary and, ultimately, she didn’t come back from there. She felt no pain or fear – my father, who lived on, felt it all.

There’s the scary as fuck, slow arduous death when body parts fail one after another but the mind is still rock solid. That was The Amazing Bob’s lot. The battle with his bod finally became too much. He would’ve loved to continue on but the carriage in which he was traveling had four broke wheels, a thoroughly crapped out suspension and the fuel injection wasn’t, ya know, injecting anymore. Oh to live free of these treacherous skin suits! To be free form, fluffy, floating, sentient clouds would be divine.

And then there’s the horror of sudden, violent death. Two years ago, Ten’s 16 year old grandson, Jonathan, was killed in a motherfucking, assholian car wreck. The driver, who hit him head on, was, at the same damn time, texting AND illegally passing a too-big-to-be-seen-beyond truck, The driver walked away without injury. Jonathan as well as his girlfriend’s mother, also in the car, were both killed.

If the driver had been drunk, she would’ve faced charges – vehicular homicide or vehicular manslaughter. Mebbe involuntary manslaughter or second-degree murder? If the driver had been, not just stunningly stupid and insanely careless, but buzzed or utterly potted, she would have faced felony charges. Had she rocked a darker shade of pale than white she undoubtedly would have.

Grieving is intense and it is non-stop intense. Even if things are quiet, and you're sitting there in your chair, kind of staring off into space, inside, the intensity is raging.
~ Nathalie Himmelrich, Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple

Jonathan’s girlfriend, Korin, had both her beau AND her only parent horrifically ripped from her. She now lives with Jonathan’s mother, Ten’s daughter.

There are no words, not in English, Spanish, Arabic, or Hebrew, that have been invented to explain what it’s like to lose a child. The nightmarish heartache of it. The unexplainable trepidation that follows. No mother loses a child without believing she failed as a parent. No father loses a child without believing he failed to protect his family from pain. The child may be gone, but the years the child were meant to live remain behind, solid in the mind like an aging ghost. The birthdays, the holidays, the last days of school—they all remain, circled in red lipstick on a calendar nailed to the wall. A constant shadow that grows, even in the dark. As I was saying…there are no words.
~ D.E. Eliot, Ruined

Yesterday would have been Jonathan’s 18th birthday.