As I write this, it's only 11pm on the evening of August 9th, 2010. Sadly I know exactly where I was, to the minute, on this night 20 years ago. I was standing in the family waiting room at San Bernardino County Medical Center, in San Bernardino, California waiting for news from the pediatric neuro surgeons who has just taken my 2 year old son, Joshua, into emergency surgery to stop the bleeding from his brain, just mere short hours after he was struck by a pick-up truck in the high desert town of Phelan, CA.
One of my childhood best friends, Kim, had suggested that she and I go walk around outside. I remember feeling glad for the distraction. I didn't know how much more I could handle of not knowing exactly what was going on with Joshua, and the constant ringing of the black and silver payphone in the waiting room was almost too much...it was always Joshua's paternal grandparents wanting to know how bad it was, did we know anything else, when would we know anything else...? Once friends had heard what had happened, they seemed to have come from everywhere to be by our sides. There were so many people milling around in the waiting room and I was beginning to feel suffocated.
It was a cool night, for August in southern California. I was wearing a lavendar and white skirt, a lavendar blouse and beige sandals. I took my shoes off as we walked and told Kim how I'd thrown my sandals into the sagebrush on the side of the road when we arrived the accident scene a few hours earlier, so that I could run as fast as I could toward all the emergency vehicles. I knew my bare feet would grip the cooling asphalt and despite being 50lbs overweight, there was nothing that was going to stop me from getting to my son.
However there was...it was the Fire Department Captain that saw me running (and I later found out I was screaming and yelling and crying, but I don't remember that), and intercepted me. I do remember his arms grabbing me and feeling his scratchy protective gear against my arms and his arms meeting my midsection and it feeling like I'd run into a linebacker. He kept telling me over and over I didn't want to get too close to the men and women doing everything to save my son and that I'd need to stand clear because a MediVac flight was coming in to airlift Joshua to SBCMC. No one had told me a single thing about how he even came to be in the middle of that road, on what was a pitch black night. And now here was this man, holding me back with everything he had, and telling me that my son's injuries were so bad that he had to be airlifted to the nearest trauma center.
I continued to walk with Kim and looked down at my sandals in my hand and I told her I wasn't sure who found them but here they were. I remember thinking it a very odd thing...that I couldn't remember who gave me my sandals or even putting them back on my feet, but I remembered so very vividly, making sure I kicked them off so that I could run as fast as possible to my little boy, who lay dying in the middle of that dark, high-desert road.
To this day I still don't know who was responsible for picking my sandals out of the dirt and sagebrush and tumbleweeds. It's an odd thing isn't it...the things that stick out in our memories, years after such a painful loss? Even odder still that twenty damned years later, I still sit here and replay this night in my head...over and over again. Every year.
Despite the fact that I took enough Benadryl to knock out a horse, and capped it off with a Melatonin, earlier this evening, I know that I'll lie awake in bed until 1:14AM strikes and I'll remember the two pediatric neurosurgeons walking into the family waiting room, beads of perspiration spotting their foreheads as they looked down at Joshua's father and me and told us that despite their very best efforts, there was nothing that could be done for Joshua...he died at 1:14AM. For a moment I looked up at the lady who was seated at the information desk - who had been watching our family drama play out for more than two hours, and I saw the tears running down her face. I looked at my mom, who was standing to the side of the surgeons and I looked at her hands and saw her holding very tightly to her Bible. Her kncukles were so white and her wedding ring seemed a stark contrast to her white knuckles and the black Bible. And then I screamed and everything went black.
The tears are present now as they were then, but on this night I sit in my office at my desk and cry in the privacy of my own home. Gaby and Gareth are asleep. My friends and family are posting messages of love, support and prayer on my Facebook wall, via email and text messages, and I'm sitting here trying to see through the tears to my screen to make sure what I'm typing is legible. However, there will be something different about this year...the year that marks 20 since my darling boy left this world and my arms.
Tomorrow morning (this morning, as you're reading this), I'll get out of bed, get dressed and buy twenty balloons; red, yellow and black, in the color of Joshua's favorite thing in the whole entire world, Mickey Mouse. Then I'll take Gaby and together we'll go someplace high up and we'll send all of those shiny balloons up to Joshua and I'll smile and probably cry a bit as I celebrate his life...his 2 years, 3 months and 10 days.
For so long I have always felt that if I didn't spend this day in solemn, miserable, remembrance of his loss, that I was somehow not being mindful of the tragic and horrific way in which he was taken from me, and from those around him that loved him so very much. It's not unlike the first time I laughed after his death. I felt so guilty for actually laughing, that I didn't so much as smile again for weeks after that. A very good and wise friend of mine, Kim (another one...I seem to find the most beautiful and wonderful "Kims" in the world and I'm so blessed to call them "friend."), suggested that maybe this year, because she knows I'm having a really hard time with the milestone of "20 years", that I celebrate his life rather than mourn the way in which he left this world.
Sometimes the grief and pain that encompasses a parent when their child dies is almost too much to bear and we focus on that pain because really, It's the only thing we have left to hang onto. Because the pain is so tangible and real to us, we are hesitant to let it go, if even for the briefest of moments. We feel as if we are betraying the memory of our child by doing so. Then when we do smile and remember something beautiful about our child, and maybe even laugh at that memory, the fresh pain that washes over us is just too much at times.
Today? Today I'm going to try and drown out that pain with something different...I'm going to look back on his life and share with you the things that made him so special to me. And then, I'm going to look forward and share with you some very exciting news in my own life. A lot of people on Facebook already know what it is (no, it's not that other thing that I'm in the midst of trying to do! And even if it were, I can't tell you anything else about it! If I disappear from mid-October to January then you'll know it happened!) and I think that Joshua would be proud of me, and will be looking down at me and smiling, when I finally tell you guys about something I've been working on that I'm incredibly proud of! So please watch for a post later this afternoon.
In the meantime, if you're a family member or a friend that has some really special memories about Joshua that you'd like to share, please do. I want to spend today reveling in the wonderfulness of the beautiful and amazing child he was. I'd like to also reach out, in love and in the genuine spirit of healing, towards my former in-laws...if there is something special about Josh, a cherished memory or a funny aside that you'd like to share, please do. He was not only special to me, but to you all as well. I realize that - despite our many differences and the past 15 years spent in battles of heated words and angry retreats. I know how much Joshua meant to you all and would hope we could set aside our differences for one day and let others know how deeply he touched all of our lives.
I miss you Joshy...but I love you so much more!
Mommy
