It's been ten year since Lev died. Ten years seems like a long time, supposedly.
I don't look for Lev in other kids, or rounding the bend. I don't wait for his text or call. Somewhere around year five or six I stopped expecting his return. My parental instincts for him have dulled, which makes his absence less strikingly painful. I suppose that's progress.
Somewhere in the last year I let go of some of the guilt. Parents who have lost a child understand the guilt. It comes from the expectation that you keep your kids safe; that you raise them to adulthood. We failed. He died. It's that simple. Accepting it took a decade. I accept that it was mostly out of our control; those things we could have controlled we didn't know to do. We still don't know what little things would have saved his life. They are a bunch of maybes and a decade later I am ready to let those go on most days.
Maybe if we had sent him to the fair with ten more dollars he wouldn't have shared a drink which may have been where he got meningitis. Maybe he had some lingering weakness from the viral arthritis he had three years previously that we could have improved through chiropractic or exercise or some alternative therapy. Maybe if we didn't let him stay in the cold water as long in the icy cold lake in Banff the bacteria wouldn't have entered his brain. Maybe if I had woken up fully and realized sooner what was happening that night we could have gotten him to the hospital in time for antibiotics to save him. Maybe. I realize those maybes are not helpful, so I am better at letting them go. Just two days ago I let Liana jump in a freezing cold river and she survived. I made sure not to pressure her to go in, so that if she died later I felt less guilt. That's the world we live in now; we know people might die. That developed world facade of a world where everyone survives to adulthood has been lifted and raising a child with that understanding is sobering. It makes me step back and appreciate each day with Liana a bit more.
Ten years and I am able to focus more on memories of his life and move past the traumatic memories of his death. I looked through the Life with Lev blog and can enjoy those memories more fully. http://life-with-lev.blogspot.com
That's my hope for the next ten years; that I am able to focus more on his life and less on his death.
A couple verses I wrote yesterday:
All the times that are forgotten,
others strong as steel
Memories are slowly shifting,
frozen in a giant wheel
Round they spin
and grind and flow
Strong ones stick
and never go
I pause
