365
As I sit in the heat and the dirt of the Yosemite Valley, I think about the last year. A year of loss. A year of heartbreak. A year spent taking small steps into each new hour trying to convince myself that life is a better choice than death for me. Very early someone said to us, “Don’t let this define you. This is a catastrophic loss, to be sure. But don’t let this define the rest of your life.”
I don’t know how that ever will be true. It does define me, bud. It defines me daily. I am the Father that lost his child. I am the parent that was on duty when you died. It defines me. There is nothing else. Maybe my other two children would say I was a good Father to them. Maybe my wife would say I was a good spouse. I feel as if they are footnotes. I was those things UNTIL…. until you died on my watch. That is who I am. There are some things, mistakes, errors, bad luck, whatever you need to call it, that change your entire life. And this event is that.
Hypothetically, say a person has given their time and effort to supporting and raising a family. To supporting charity, to doing all the good deeds that make people look on them as pillars of their community. And then one day they lose control of their car and wipe out a family on the highway. Was it an accident? Yes. But do we look at that person differently? Yes. Whether by choice or not, they have ended others lives. And it’s not fixable. This isn’t an error that a person can fix. They haven’t broken a wine glass that they can rebuy, or glue back together a figurine that had been dropped. Some errors can’t be repaired. And if you can’t repair them, then it defines you. Maybe it is one of multiple definitions? I could go with that logic. But as you’re reading down that list of “definitions” when you come across that line item of “Child died under your care” that is a showstopper.
This is just the mechanics of it. This isn’t even touching on how deeply I love you Benjamin. How this hole that is left threatens to break me every day. And that’s pretending I’m not already broken. We’ve been over that part already. That my life is all just me pretending like I can continue. You had made our family a unit. We encircled you with all our love and caring. And the unspoken agreement from all of us was that you were ours to take care of always. A part of us. And the physical part of us is no longer. How do I rebuild from something like this? The self hate, the guilt at losing what is so dear to me? So dear to many?
It’s hot here, the sun is bright. You have shown yourself to us in multiple ways as this camping trip has progressed. In a child wearing a Lightening McQueen t-shirt similar to yours on the trail in front of us at Tuolumne Grove. Both down, and then in only the way you tend to do, on the way up as well. That little boy, with his little boy walk, reaching and holding his fathers hand, and then getting on his shoulders when the walk was too far, too hard, too much. I too had my McQueen shirt on that I had just bought in your honor. This was not a coincidence. You dropped the feather in the middle of the campsite that your mother spotted. With no other feathers around. And you extinguished your candle that early morning of June 30th at 1:24am (one minute from your “official” time of death on the death certificate) , as I lay there with tears in my eyes… watching the candle slowly blink out. Impressive timing on your part, I must admit.
Some of that helps. Sometimes when I feel your presence like that and I know you’re talking, it helps. And I know you know that. But some things can’t be repaired, little one. And I think you know that too. And today, this day, June 30th, 2022 it is blatantly obvious to me that I’m going to have many challenges not giving up the fight as I move beyond day 365.