Today is the 3rd anniversary of the death of my son. Sorry, need to wail.
Today is the day I never want to remember, but always, there is someone who goes out of their way to ensure I do not forget. I hate them for it! And that messes with my brain, because it is usually my nearest and dearest, and with their very best intentions behind it. This time I almost escaped it by being out of town and busy (They couldn’t visit and have at least learned not to phone ) I never read the obituaries and had actually managed to forget what the date was. Until late afternoon when I clicked on to Facebook. There it all was , in graphic horror, pictures of his skeletal last days and oozing embellishments of his brave misery, ripping my guts out with a blunt saw!
I cannot decide whether to shriek my anguish at them and make them all shut the F**k up, or just keep graciously accepting their words and enduring. Words that, to most of them, mean less as the years fade their grief. They wax ever more lyrical as, apparently, they think my grief has faded too.
Maybe it would if I didn’t have to face this yearly re-newel of it, which seems to have set into a memorial ritual to rival Anzac day. I am powerless to stop it without breaking all the rules of propriety and consideration for those others entitled to show respect as they see fit. We are talking of a wife and two children, the extended family and literally hundreds of friends and fans. My son was 44 when he died of lung cancer (not a smoker) He was a musician and a popular man. A hall had to be hired to hold his funeral and it was televised . His obituaries take up half a page in more than one newspaper and I am just his mother. I shouldn’t be here for this. Parents are not supposed to survive their children. And when they do, then their duty must be to comfort those he loved and left, shattered by their loss.
I understand this, mostly, and it even keeps me going, because he was a wonderful husband and father and it is my one solace that his life was well lived, that he earned the love and respect of the people who publicly mourn his passing with such fervour (to the point of memorial wakes involving all his musician friends and hundreds of people). Meanwhile I know I am internalizing pain that needs to be expressed. But there is no one I can bear to hurt with the reality of what they bring to the surface , every year, from the depths where I hide it. I only have one other son and his grief is equal to mine. I am grateful he does not have the memory of that final, torturous hour of his brother’s life, I cannot burden him with it to lighten my own misery.
How do I fade the horror of the 8th of October 2008, at 7PM, when the cancer finally ate through his spine and his neck snapped in my hands? Only my hands held his head still attached to an unbroken spinal cord and his final chance of life. My baby, my beautiful son. I would have held him together with my bare hands forever, if I could. But his leg was eaten off with metastatic bone cancer. His pain was beyond imagining. The doctors stood around and just waited, they could do nothing. He needed to die, it was all he had left to beg of me.
“Let me go, Mum,” he said. And Idid. I had to. I watched the light of awareness fade from his eyes as cord compression stole his voice, his mind and his love, from me. I could not fault his medics as they ensured he had enough morphine on board to obliterate any chance of pain remaining, as he continued to breathe for that long, horrible hour. The rest of the family was called to share it. And they needed my care then.
I didn’t cry. I packed it down in my guts and just helped make sure his last senses had the essence of my presence, that Mum was there for him and his kids. I held a sachet of tissues with the perfume I always wear under his nostrils. He always gave me that perfume every birthday, the first from pocket money he saved. He loved the smell of it and kept that sachet under his pillow when I couldn’t be with him in the last days of his illness.
He knew I was there. I cling to small comforts like that. His wife is a beautiful girl and she still hasn’t cleared his clothes out of her wardrobe. I am not the only griever. I do not begrudge her need to express her loss via memorial and share the comfort their friends gathering to remember him. I just need to find a way to manage my lonely memory of this lousy day
The irony is, I’m a cancer nurse, with all my skills I failed him. I’m also a grief counsellor, myself, and know I have to get it out and let it go, so that I too, can smile when I recall the beautiful boy who grew to be the man I was so proud of.
My son, Born in my seventeenth year, my best friend. We grew up together. He was my reason to strive when we were left to fend for ourselves . He was the person I laughed and cried with in the best and worst moments of 44 years. And I miss him so, I cannot bear it. Not at this moment. Not with this horror in my head. Damn them all! How do they think a mother feels when their child dies an excruciating death, inch by inch, being eaten away from the inside? How can I forget? Do they realize that my only solace is that he was cremated and so I cannot still picture him rotting in a box beneath the earth?
Some comfort. The flames were quick, I tell myself, and now he is just out there, Ashes on the wind, free of pain, a part of my universe still. That works, mostly, plus the knowledge that at least I don’t have to worry about what might happen to my kid, as parents do. The worst has happened. It’s done and I won’t make him sad when I die, that’s a bonus. God, I wouldn’t want him to watch me die! But he would have held me in his arms and made sure I wasn’t alone, I know that. It would have broken his heart . That doesn’t have to happen now. Yes, there’s always an upside.
So let us face this bloody hour and finally, shriek and wail to cyber persons, any audience will do. They won’t lose any sleep over it, probably won’t even read it, but I can imagine they do; That I have lessened my burden by sharing it. God knows I really appreciate now, what all those mother’s who lost their son’s to war went through. Did Anzac parades make them feel better?
Will I feel better next year after spilling my guts to strangers? Hope so. It’s gone midnight now, so I do feel better. The day is over. Thanks for listening if you did. The Gypsy.
