again. And again. And again. If I read them more, then I would believe. I had to believe. I had to know Sam was going to be okay. Why couldn’t I just know?
Reading did not work, so I wrote the passage in the notes application on my smartphone. I stared at the words in my own electronic writing and felt no relief. So, I prayed. I prayed that God would do something. I prayed that God would prove Himself and save my precious boy. Sam was so young; he had so much longer to live. God could not take him from me now. He couldn’t. Not if He existed. God would not do this if He existed and stood for justice. There was nothing just in the death of a child.
The door opened, and a nurse waited with an empty wheelchair. I took a deep breath as tears escaped down my cheeks. Then, I held my boy in my arms and walked to the door. As we neared, Sam saw his fated seat. I felt his little body tense, and as I tried to lower him into the chair, he clung to me with all the strength left in his depleted body. He stared into my eyes and summoned all his might to utter a single word. It was the only word Sam had spoken to me that day, the first day of the rest of my life.
“Home,” he requested.
There was not a trace of fear or doubt in his eyes, just the conviction of his decision and the resoluteness to see it through. It was as if the future strong-willed man hidden deep within his eyes had swum to the surface to greet me, but a mere glimpse of that man would not do. I wanted to meet him. I had to.
The nurse helped me wrestle Sam into the wheelchair. He did not take his eyes off me. He waited. Waited for me to deliver.
“We’ll give you a call when we get him all situated in his room,” the nurse said.
I nodded, and she turned the wheelchair down the hall. As soon as it moved, Sam resigned himself to his fate. He slumped in the wheelchair, devoid of any more strength, and let the nurse roll him away. I watched as they disappeared down the hall. A nagging voice in my head told me to go retrieve my son. To grant his wish. To take him home. But, instead of following him down that long narrow hall, I turned to the left and entered the waiting room.
Since I had a few minutes and had to exit the Cancer Center to enter the adjoining hospital anyway, I took a lark to get some coffee. The emotions had drained me, and I was tired. I needed something to get me through the morning.
The coffee shop was just down the road, and I felt guilty when I saw the prices. We were on such a tight budget that splurging for a coffee house latte was an argument-worthy offense for my wife. Still, I bought the drink.
As I exited, my phone rang. It was the hospital, so I answered in haste.
“Thomas?” Doctor Abaddon’s too familiar husky voice asked.
“Yes?”
“I’m with Sam, you should come quick.”
“Is everything okay?”
“He flat-lined. We’ve revived him, but we don’t know how much more time we have. Get your wife here, too. I’m afraid it’s time to say your goodbyes.”
Panic struck along with adrenaline, grief, and fear, all of which seemed to hollow out a pit in my chest. I called my wife in a daze. It was fortunate Doctor Abaddon mentioned it, because the thought would have escaped me. She answered, and I entered the conversation with the grace of a sadist.
“He’s dying! He’s at the hospital and he’s dying! They don’t know how long! He’s dying!” I cried.
She must have responded before I hung up, but the grief wrapped around my brain, sucking away my consciousness like an octopus, so I did not remember.
I drove in frenzy back towards the hospital. The phone rang again.
“Hurry. He’s dropping again. I don’t know how much longer he can hold on,” Doctor Abaddon warned.
The hospital loomed in front of me. I turned into the parking lot with a screech of my car’s tires. I zipped into the first parking spot I could find. I jerked the car into park. Turned the ignition off. Retrieved my keys. The phone rang again.
Silence.
Followed by, “I’m sorry.” That was all Doctor Abaddon said.
People admitted they felt relief after a dying loved one passed, but that was not true. The first thing I felt was resignation. It was not overwhelming, soul-crushing grief. I had experienced my share of that and had plenty to come. It was cold resignation. It was admitting the battle was over, like a hiker stranded on the top of a snowy mountain with no rescue helicopters in sight, only frost and wind slipping him into unconsciousness. There was nothing left to fight for, and I felt stupid for ever thinking I had a chance at all. This was predetermined. I did everything I could in my naiveté to stop it, but I was just jousting with windmills. I was resigned not just to my son’s fate, but also to my own. I knew nothing.
I thought about calling my wife but found no point. Instead, I slinked out of my car and stumbled towards the hospital entrance. I did not know what I was doing. I could not say I wanted to go into that hospital. Sam hated it, and I had already betrayed him enough by making him go there. Entering felt like another betrayal, but this one was different. It would be the first betrayal towards my dead son.
Sam’s room was on the third floor. I felt my lips move to form words to retrieve a visitor’s pass. I felt my legs walk me to the elevator and my finger push the “up” button. I felt my body moving but did not feel my heart, mind, or soul moving with it. I was detached. I was somewhere else, floating in the middle of the ocean, not sure if I should swim to the surface for air or plunge deeper to drown.
The nurse had tears in her eyes when I saw her. I resented her for it. She hugged me fiercely in an attempt at consolation.
“I was holding his hand when he went,” she gloated. “He went peacefully.”
I hated the nurse. She stole my tears. She stole the hand that should have been in mine. She stole my … SON!
I should have been there. I should have taken him home.
“Do you want to see him?” the nurse asked as she pulled away.
I did not know what to say. I had not decided which direction to swim, but I felt my lips form the word “yes”. So, the nurse escorted me into a room, where I waited for her to go retrieve my son. She returned shortly and left the body covered in white cloth.
“I’ll be outside if you need me.”
Before leaving, as if she needed to stick me one more time, the nurse added, “He was such a sweet boy.”
Then, she left.
I stared down at the white cloth with its contours in the faint impression of a boy’s body, and a sneaky thought entered my head … he was not dead yet, not to me. That cloth hid his death. I did not need to lift that cloth just like I did not need to accept his fate. I could pretend, like Sam and I pretended when we first heard the news. I could celebrate his birthdays. Buy him an old car on his sixteenth. Celebrate his high school graduation. College graduation. I would cry as I gave a speech at his wedding and tell him how proud I was of the man he had become. I would kiss my grandchild in the delivery room and look into my son’s enlightened eyes. The enlightenment shared between two fathers. The enlightenment of a father’s love. I would lie on my deathbed with him holding my hand and tell him how much I loved him. And he would understand. And he would be there to watch me go. He would be there. I could pretend, if not believe.
Without permission from my heart or soul, I felt my hand reach out towards the cloth. I felt it grasp the silky material and lift up the sheet. The hand paused a moment, one of those moments, and then it moved the cloth aside and dropped it.
Sam’s face was there, but I did not recognize it. His lips were parted, and his tongue poked the corner of his mouth. His eyes were open but closed to his soul. The transformation was so startling that my first instinct was to take a picture. I thought I could better understand if I could examine a picture of it instead of the real life image. Looking at his face on my smartphone did not help, though. He was there but not there. Something was missing. Then, it
struck me. My boy was gone.
My heart and soul returned to my body with a sudden jar and a persistent ache. Tears clouded my eyes, and I sniffled to keep from crying, but my soul had been absent from my body for too long and it intended to make up for lost time. I cried out. The tears would not cease. Even when I consciously thought I did not need to cry anymore, the tears poured. When I knew crying would do nothing and my minded quieted, the tears kept streaming and my heart still ached.
I could continue. I could describe what I felt a thousand ways with a thousand languages, and none of them would satisfy me. Loss was loss. Either you had it or you did not. If you had ever truly felt it. Truly. You knew it. If you thought you might have, you did not. If you were “pretty sure”, you were not. If you could think of your loss and not feel the emptiness inside you sucking your ribcage in like a vacuum, if you could think about your loss without feeling the familiar lump in your throat and moistening of your eyes and not welcome them both like an old friend you wished would never leave your side, you had not lost.
The door swung open and surprised me. Tears lingered on my cheeks over dried tears as I saw my intruder. It was my wife. I had forgotten. She dropped her purse and fixated on a spot just below me. On Sam’s face. She brought her hands to her lips, and her face contorted like Sam’s – in a way I had never seen