Been thinking about you a lot as notes and cards have poured in for Infant & Child Death Awareness Day (oct 15th) and Month (all of October). It means a lot to me that so many people think of you.
And then I got to thinking about all the angels no one thinks of anymore. Child death has been a part of humanity since the beginning of time. So that means bereaved parents have been a part of humanity, too. And how many billions have passed, dust to dust, back to the ether of the universe, names long forgotten now.
While stewing on that idea, my mind flitted around and landed on three souls who were killed in a car accident when I was a young teenager. Beaner, Link, and Vig. I had spent that whole school year with the maddest, silly school girl crush on Beaner. Given my life experience up to that point, I was convinced I loved him. In a way, I did, though he took no more notice of me than pesky friend of someone's baby sister, you know? But I remember his laugh. That sly grin. How much his mother must miss him.
His sudden death was my introduction to this crazy grief experience. To that long-lasting battle, trying to reconcile the physical absence with the ever-present love that never goes away.
I was so much younger than Beaner that I really didn't know him, you know? I wonder now, did he have a steady girlfriend who mourned him? Had he lost his virginity yet? Was he planning to go far away to college or stay with a home-state campus to play football? What was his favorite color? I know he had/has a sister. Did he have other siblings? Do they now have kids?
All pretty much unknowable.
I remember the morning I answered the phone. Shaye was on the line crying. They are all dead. That's what she said. They died. She said. I told her to leave immediately and meet me at the jr. high football field. She and I often met up there. She was already on the bleachers when I got there. I remember being cold. The field was huge, silent, empty as was the parking lot, the whole school. Must have been a Sunday maybe. We sat there till we shivered I think. Or something else made us finally decide to go back to her house. We went in thru the kitchen door around the back as we sometimes did.
And I remember being struck by how different the kitchen seemed now. No matter what we did or didn't do from now on, that kitchen would never again fill up with Beaner's laugh. It was a sudden lesson in the finality of death. And introduction to a lifetime of transition.
Everyday before, and everyday since, there are children who go through death's veil to the other side. How many are unnamed now because no one remembers.
Well, for what it is worth, Beaner -- Chris -- I remember you. Kota, if you happen to run into him over there, give him a little hug for me and tell him I'm sorry there wasn't time for me to find out all those details about his life and love.
Love you, baby.
-Momma
