THE Nightmare
My friend Kelly called last night and asked if we could babysit Ambrosia on Saturday. Kelly has to go to a funeral: The three-and-a-half-year-old son of her friend died in a car crash.
This shocking fact is bouncing around inside my head; I cannot look at it straight on. It sneaks up on me regularly–when I’m doing the dishes, when I’m working, when I’m driving to pick up Lucas. It jerked me out of my doze a few moments ago, when I was lying down with Lucas to help him fall asleep. This is THE nightmare–the one that makes my heart race and the tears fall. This is the unendurable event. The most crushing disaster. The unfaceable fear.
This is exactly why I cannot watch or read the news. My mothermind is on too much of the time for stories like these to roll off me. They crash into my heart and take up residence for a long painful time. My empathizer is turned up too high.
It isn’t even my son.
Please, please never let it be my son.
January 26, 2006 at 6:41 pm
That must be a awfully powerful fear. I understand how it feels too, at least from my own point of view, I just do my best to not let it become paralyzing.
January 26, 2006 at 7:02 pm
I have two friends that lost thier sons when they were 8 years old, I never met the children, I have only heard them heartbreakingly try to relay the memory years later without totally falling apart, they both failed. The conversations ended with both of us in tears.
One of these conversations happened earlier this week. All I can think is not my baby, not now, not when he’s 8, 10, 15, 40, NEVER EVER! I want to live to be old and grey and watch my children have lots of joy, maybe some babies, long happy lives, if I can’t have that I will be happy with them outliving me.
I agree, this is the worst fear beyond measure, It’s ugly, and imobilizing, and I didn’t know that my heart could actually stop beating until I had my son and thought something might take him from me.
I have to focus on all the joy he brings, and not think about all of the horrible things in the world, or we would end up living on a desserted island somewhere.
Sorry you’re feeling this way sweetie, these things can really hit home, and feel yucky.
Here’s to two shining little boys that are going to turn this world upside down for many, many, many, years to come.
I Love you
~J~
January 27, 2006 at 12:02 am
It is powerful. Last year Ian improved (increased) his life insurance and I finally got some. We are each covered now so that the surviving partner could fall apart for a time, continue to take care of Lucas, have a home, etc.
I lost it in a meeting with our financial planner when she gently and pragmatically suggested we get a rider on one of our life policies that would cover Lucas in the event of his death. It would effectively pay for a funeral service for the most precious person I know. That it was suddenly and unexpectedly time to face the idea of losing our only child in such a calculating and practical manner was a blow. I cried. Ian held me. The financial planner apologized. And then we signed the appropriate papers to get the rider with an urgent prayer on our breath: May it never be needed.
January 27, 2006 at 12:48 am
I can’t imagine what those mothers feel. Or maybe I can imagine it. The dread of something like that happening is immobilizing, as you said.
In my family, a cousin of mine married a woman named Lisa who is approximately my age. Before Lisa married into the family, she had two children. Her youngest, a girl named Hayley, died of some kind of leukemia at the age of four or five. Coincidentally, my brother knew Lisa at that time. Hayley died one night at home; Lisa was with her. Lisa’s friends were too afraid to come to her side. My brother, Jonathan, at the age of 23 or so, came and sat with Lisa while she held her daughter for several hours.
I didn’t know any of this had happened until a couple of years ago. I was shocked and saddened to learn that Lisa had lost her daughter, but also surprised and proud my brother was the only one brave enough to witness her unfathomable grief.
It’s hard because it makes me think about things I don’t want to consider.
January 27, 2006 at 11:42 am
Even though I can only imagine being someone’s mother, I can easily understand how that sense of dread goes way beyond anything emotional. I can see how it would be cellular, a component of you. It’s got to be a root sense of survival that rumbles up from a deep place and asserts that you will not live to see your child die. I had a friend in Los Angeles who went through long battles of will with her son over his addiction and in the end it killed him. Even in her anger, there was a part of her that could not accept his death. It made perfect sense to me.
So. Please know I say that same prayer with you. And I love you and the mother (and family!) you’ve all become. And then there’s that son of yours! There must be moments when it’s like having the sun come down and perch in your living room.
January 27, 2006 at 1:01 pm
I don’t know much about chakras, but yes, this is something I feel way down deep. One thing that has been hard about becoming a mom is how fundamentally it has changed my nature, my identity. I am no longer one alone. My wholeness as a person is now essentially inclusive: my son is part of me–part of my body, part of my mind, part of my Self. So yes, the dread of losing him is cellular; I think it would be akin to losing my heart out of my body.
Thanks for your sympathy and prayers. Saying some of this stuff out loud is frightening (I’m tremendously superstitious). I think I need to try to be less morbid now. I’m experiencing that wicked compulsion to look under the bed for monsters and confront those skeletons I have stashed in my head. I can only hope that inviting them to tea once in a while will keep them locked up the rest of the time. Maybe that way they won’t need to take up residence in my real life.
January 27, 2006 at 2:11 pm
I’ve seen a family lose a child (a teen) and can hope with everything I have for safety and well-being for Lucas and all of us.