The World Will Miss You

How sad it is that Lev will never meet anyone else. He was so interesting, so intense, so unique, that almost everyone that met him could not help but be struck by him. He added something different to a world that can often be so mundane. He went out of his way to forge new paths, to think like no one else did. It pains me to think of him just being a name to people and nothing else, because they will never get a chance to know him. I will do what I can to write down everything about him, so people can perhaps get some idea of the person he was, but it won't be the same. The world will miss you, Lev.

Balls

Looking at a tennis ball reminds me of the last time we played together at the Woolley courts. Finding his football in the garage is hard; we threw that thing around a lot, running hard, catching passes, dodging tackles. Discovering the little pink bouncy ball is particularly sad. We had played quite a bit of handball against the garage, then switched to using the wood paddles, which he liked a lot. The thought of never playing tennis or football or handball with him ever again hits me hard, what could be worse than never seeing or hearing your son again? It makes me so sour, so down, where just the act of being, of existing from minute to minute, hurts so much. The unjustness of it all digs at me, makes me angry and moody. Is it so much to expect your kid to live? Why am I deprived of this most basic pleasure? Fate forces me to turn away from family to find happiness, which is the opposite of my intentions for all these years.

Growth

French was the Future

Lev was fluent in Spanish, after going to school abroad from kindergarten through fourth grade. He was so dark, and fluent that people would often ask us whose kid he was. When we moved back to the States, he went to a bilingual school, where he learned a gringo accent. At first we thought he was joking, then we realized he really did acquire the accent of the non-native speakers. We tried to keep the Spanish up at dinner time, as family, but found it hard to follow through with. We just kept forgetting.

Freshman year Lev took Spanish four.There, he regained his fluency, and made Latino friends. But, he really wanted to take German next. It is what Zay was taking, and it would be good for going to Europe. Our school doesn't offer German, so he settled for French. He got it in his mind he wanted to take French two, with his background in Spanish and ability with languages he thought he could do it. He met with the teacher and got workbooks and a DVD to study with over the summer. He found the DVD hard to start with, so we went to Barnes and Noble and picked up a learning French CD to start with on our trip.

We played it in the car on the way to Jasper and Banff. The whole family was learning French, much to Jaal's dismay. (He found headphones with his iPod useful during our French sessions.) We would listen, and all repeat the French poorly in our bad accents. We laughed at ourselves as we went.

Before we left on our trip I found a French camp near us and enrolled Lev. It was in the San Juan Islands, and although quite pricey, decided to enroll him. It was medieval themed, with morning French lessons from French counselors. He was totally psyched. He was set to go mid August for two weeks, after our Canada camping trip, the visit with relatives on the East Coast, and his time with Zay. Is was set to be a great summer for him, and he was really looking forward to it.

He had a future. He thought French would be fun to learn, and it would help him if he went to college in Switzerland, with Zay learning German and his learning French, they would be set. He had plans.

And, it was taken from him. French, for us, represents the future that was stolen from him. The dreams and aspirations that have failed.

I think a lot about his future, about how much of our lives as parents revolve around planning for their future, imagining what they will do next, and setting them up for success in life. That there will be no future, and that the past needs to be re-written in my mind to accommodate this new, horrible reality, is often more than I can bear. So I take it day by day. I don't want a future without him, yet that is what I have, and it doesn't have to be miserable. Not always, not forever, but for now, I am happy with miserable, with sad, with distraught. It seems good, appropriate.

People are "proud" of me when I appear to be doing well, but I am still ashamed of myself and more satisfied when I stay in bed and weep.


Rebecca

Friends

It is good to be with friends. It is just a bit of relief from the monotony of the thick blanket of grief that lies upon us.

My counselor said to squeeze every bit of happiness that you can get from any situation. There are so few, and the sadness is so deep, that your brain needs a break from the grief to give you time and space to heal.

Tony thinks it's crap, but I like the visual. I have trouble letting go and letting myself not be miserable for a moment. I am fine being depressed constantly.

Yet, I really do feel a little bit of happiness in my heart when I am hanging out with Jaal and when I am with friends. It is good, when very little is good right now.

Brain Dump at 9 weeks

Sometimes it's easy to just keep doing things, staying busy and distracting myself. Other times, I just want to sit here and cry. Today, upon getting home and changing out of work clothes, I just got back in bed and cried a bit.

Why me? Why us? Why him? There are other unhealthier people out there, it's so unfair to Lev.

Fixing the unfixable. I just want to fix it and make it better. In my job, that's what I do, solve problems. But this is a problem I can't solve. I can't even figure out why it happened to avoid it in the future. I can't imagine the autopsy is really going to tell us anything helpful, but I still wait for it.

It has been 9 weeks, or two months as of yesterday. It feels like yesterday, yet it also feels like a lifetime ago.

I have never wanted something so badly. I really, really, really want to go back to our old life. I ache for it, yet I can't have it. I just want my Lev back, and I know he'd be pissed ab0ut dying, too. It hurts so much inside, it makes me ache.

So, it's been two months. It feels the same. I suppose I am able to distract myself for longer periods of time. But, other than that it hasn't changed. Although I am not as apt to start crying, I feel the same saddness and am still pretty quick with the tears. I don't feel like I've moved along on any sort of process. I have not accepted his death. I am still waiting for someone to come and tell me there has been a terrible mistake, or I am involved in some cruel reality t.v. show, and if I just give up and tell them I've concede they will give me my old life back.

I hold it together for Jaal. This is supposed to be one of the most exciting, happiest times of his life. He's going off to college, and is really excited about it. Yet, he has lost his brother and his happy parents. He doesn't want to talk about grief anymore, yet it's all we think about. I know he misses Lev a lot, and he says he dreams of him every night. But he doesn't like to really talk about it.

Tony and I do. We could just sit around and talk and be sad together. That's our great empty next plan. Sit around and be really sad. It doesn't sound so bad, really. It sounds appropriate.

Driving sad

I was listening to some old Billy Joel on the way down to Seattle, the albums I listened to when I was young. Thinking about my childhood made me sad, and I did not know why. Then it hit me: I was about the same age as Lev was. I suddenly felt the impact of a 15 year old dying, like it was me that died. I really let down some tears.

Listening to "Angry Young Man", I thought of Lev, of his anger, how I wanted to give him so much love to help him through, and now I will never get that chance. So frustrating.

The Grief Pie

Maybe sharing helps take off a tiny slice of the grief pie. Every day we eat a little crumb, sometimes a whole slice. But, it's a big pie, overflowing with berries dripping into the oven and leaving a scorched burned goo on the bottom that burns every time you bake something until you dig in and clean it out. Then there is still the beautiful pie. We can share a slice with you, but there will still be more, and more, and more. Maybe some day we will have consumed the whole pie. That day we will truly understand our loss, that would be an acceptance of our loss. Then we will have digested the whole grief pie. For now, I feel like I have only digested a few slices, some days only some little bits of crust hanging over, some days delving in for a large chunk.

Yesterday was a big slice day. Today I can reflect on it, digesting the slice. Maybe I'll crap it out tomorrow. :-0

More on money

Lev has money is his school lunch account, rolling over from one year to the next. It is about $30, but it pains me what to do with it. I could send an email to the food service director and get it transferred to my account. I could leave it. Or, I could find out the name of an acquaintance of Lev's and give it to him. There was a boy at the high school that Lev was kind of friends with. I remember meeting him in sixth grade, at their trip to Camp Orkila. He seemed like the kind of kid Lev could be friends with, but wasn't. I'm not sure why. He remained on the outskirts of Lev's groups of friends for the next few years. Last year, one morning I saw Lev getting thirty cents from our change jar. I asked him why, and he said, "oh, nothing." I asked again, and he told me the story. This kid, who he's not really friends with, but kind of, qualifies for reduced lunch, so it only costs him thirty cents. But he often doesn't have the money and he is always hungry. So, he asks around for change until he can get together the thirty cents for his lunch. Lev said he always tried to have change with him so that if he was asked he could give him money for lunch. I said I would put money in this kid's account, but Lev thought it was better this way. He kept doing it all year, just making sure he had change in case he was asked. No one knew, and he didn't want to make a big deal about it.

Public grief

Do we share our journal? Make it a blog? I am thinking about it. From the journal entries I have sent to others, I know they appreciate it. People want to know how we are doing. It feels good to share. Open yourself up a bit for them to peek in and feel a bit of what you are feeling.

Maybe it would be good for people to understand. To know that when they see you, and you are holding it together, eating, maybe even smiling or joking, that that is just one little piece of you. To really understand the deep darkness that is inside. To share the memories and the loss. But, sometimes it's a little deep inside. Do I want it open to the world? Why not, as Tony says. Maybe by sharing the grief it gets a little lighter.

Text Messages

Yesterday, in an attempt to torture myself more, I got my phone and looked for text messages from Lev. They went back through June. His last message to me was about picking him up from the Carnival on July 3rd. Others were about talking to his cooking teacher about his grades, and his failed fondue lesson. More about dinner, and picking him up from school. They represented parenting and our life together. Hard to swallow.

Then, I noticed at the top of the screen, it said "load more messages." I clicked it and waited. Through April. "load more messages" and through February, and it kept going until last August when I got the phone. We didn't text that often, but each one is precious to me. It brings back memories of the little things that I would have forgotten. Mostly food and picking him up after school. Jaal found a way to get them off my phone and into one document. So, I'll add them to my journal one day, and maybe explain what they mean to me, as some of them are just bits of a larger conversation we were having. But, they clearly show love.

Tony looked at his, too. He clears out his messages, so he only had through May. He was not happy about that. But, even the little ones he had showed the love of parenting and the emptiness that now follows.

Money

Money represents the future. We save it, we have it in our wallets, all for things we will do in the future.

Lev has $61 in his wallet. I wonder what he was planning to do with it. He usually spent his money right away when he got his allowance. He must have had plans - buying a new hat on our trip? A gift for Zay's birthday? A new video game? Money that just sits, lonely like us.

Lev had $2800 in the bank. $1000 was from his Great Grandpa Leo when he passed away peacefully at a ripe old age. That was to use when he went to college. That money I transferred to Jaal without much thought. That's what Grandpa Leo would have expected.
$1800 left. My initial thought, within a week after Lev's sudden death is with me still, give it to Zay for a Switzerland fund. That we will do, definitely. When I can wrap my head around the logistics of actually transferring the funds, closing the account, sending a check. Lev and Zay wanted to go to college in Switzerland together. Maybe if that didn't work out just a year abroad in Switzerland.

Why Switzerland? They both said that it was a fairly impulsive choice. They were looking at a map of Europe while talking on the phone one day. Lev chose it because it was in the middle and it looked good. They both researched the country, and decided it was fantastic. It was their Panama, the land of their dreams.

When Zay was here for the memorial, I gave him a little bag of Lev's ashes to bring back to New Hampshire. He always wanted us to move to New Hampshire to be near Zay. Zay's reaction when I gave him the ashes, standing in our kitchen, was to say that he would like to save some of them to bring to Switzerland. He still wanted to go to Switzerland with Lev some day. That's when I decided about the money in Lev's account. It should go to Zay for Switzerland. That much I'm sure of in life.

(Why the Panama reference you might ask? When the kids were little and we lived in Issaquah they had a tape of little old, odd movies that we watched. One of them had this animal that was unhappy where they were living. One day an empty box showed up, and it said Panama on the side. He thought the box smelled wonderful. It smelled like bananas. He said, "Panama, the land of my dreams, where everything smells like bananas." He packed up his things in a little bag and went walking to Panama. He walked for many months. Eventually he came to a small house, a bit of sun, pasture around it. The house had weeds growing in the windows and around it, but it looked like paradise. He said, "this must be Panama, the land of my dreams." And he settled there happily. (It was his house, the same house, but with a little time and perspective added.)

It has been a family joke since then, about Panama, the land of our dreams, where everything smells like bananas. (When we went to Panama, we found out that it did not smell like bananas, but we had a great time there, on the beach, visiting a fantastic bat cave on the island where we stayed.) Lev loved bananas, and we always called Switzerland his Panama.

Seeing Lev

The other day at a store there was someone checking out, and from behind the cashier they had this crazy curl of dark brown hair. They were about 5'5" and for a moment I thought I saw him. Then the cashier moved, and it was a woman in her 50s.

Sitting outside at our picnic table, after breakfast last weekend, I look up at Lev's window, wanting him to open it and blow that plastic blue horn he has, or shoot a BB, or just say hi. Suddenly I hear bass guitar. My heart leaps. Then I realize that Jaal is playing the bass. I sit outside listening for about half an hour until he stops. I am so glad that Jaal is playing bass, yet so disappointed that it wasn't Lev coming back.

The phone rings, and the caller is labeled "blocked." Lev blocked his number in May, so it was always him.

Watching the stairs, waiting for him to come down.

The shoes, those damn shoes. Will they really never be worn?

Takes my Breath Away

Yesterday I had a new emotion. I had the urge to finally watch the DVD I found in Lev's room. It was from the skit he and his classmates made for a school project. There were four students in the group, and one was missing for a month due to a custody issue, and one was sick. So, it was just Lev and Annie and their moms helping them create a movie that was due in two days. I did the filming. I wanted to hear Lev's voice so badly, and see him moving, so I went up to watch the video.

As I opened the door to Lev's room, I was awash with longing. I've been in his room a few times a week for the last eight weeks, but this was new. It was like a wind-gust of grief.
I gasped, as it literally knocked the wind out of me, and then collapsed crying on his bed.

I cried for about ten minutes and talked to myself, asking why he had to go so soon.
Then, I got the DVD and put it in Jaal's computer. I cried at first, and then I just remembered the afternoon when we filmed it, and it brought back good memories of that day, being with Lev, driving up there to her house, helping them film it. Unfortunately, Lev had taken on Annie's mom's British accent for the play, so it wasn't quite his regular voice — but very Lev.

Someday Tony will be ready to watch it. Then we'll post it on you-tube if we can.
But, will it bring him back?

Reaching out and siblings

A friend of mine sent me a link to two articles about grieving parents.
Below are two quotes from the second article, and I put the links below. It was from an NPR segment.

These stories obviously bring tears to my eyes, but what is most striking is how the grief from the loss of a child seems so similar from person to person, especially if they are in the ages of 13-25. The other thing that I always note is how they say the grief never ends. I can imagine that. I'm not sure how we would ever get back to who we were. We are different now, already, at only eight weeks since Lev's sudden death.

I'd like to be the same for Jaal. In one of the books I read it did say that siblings have double losses. They lose their sibling and the parents that they knew. We try to hold it together for Jaal. And, seeing him helps us to hold it together. I am often overcome with such joy, such thankfulness when I see him. It's like a gift. I don't expect us to be alive, and there he is, living, breathing, eating. He's gotten way more hugs from me than he ever wanted, and he laughs at my trying to feed him again and again. But, we try to do normal things together too, so he hasn't lost us completely. Yesterday, he was building a woodshed with Uncle John, and I was so satisfied to just sit there at the picnic table and watch him on the little roof hammering nails. He was so alive, so competent. Being alive is not something I expect anymore. My world view has changed.

Jaal slept over at a friend's house last night. I expect him home soon. I do expect him to survive the night and the drive home, I do, I hope for it. But, I will be relieved when he walks in the door, and I will give him a hug, and offer him food.

"her grief was profound and all-encompassing, it was forever."

"I mean, when your child is alive, you don't think of him 24 hours a day. But when he's gone, that's the only thing that's on your mind. And then you walk around and you see maybe someone wearing a cap that reminds you of your son, and you quickly turn — maybe that's him. Your mind plays so many tricks because it's so hard to really understand the depth of what has happened to you."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121403275&ps=rs

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128977776