I do not like to call these days “anniversaries” because I feel that word should be reserved for occasions of celebration. The day my only son died is certainly not cause for festivity, but nonetheless, it is a monumentally significant day.
When I call our tragedy a whirlwind, I think of the personal devastation tornadoes leave behind for residents and helpers to dig through and clean up. Eight months and one day ago, I saw my life as a neat and tidy little house. It could be one of those cute houses from the story books with large front porches, dormer windows with lattice work, and white picket fences.
We felt we had it all, relative security: a strong marriage, two handsome children who follow all the rules and make us proud at every turn, a house almost paid off, and a couple cars in the garage. Just as tornadoes come in with little warning and rip lives apart at the seams, changing the very lay of the land, the tragedy of losing our son has done the same.
About the time Roger and I were married, his uncle and aunt lost their home to a tornado in Northeast Ohio. This was not just a home, but one that Roger’s grandfather built by his own hands during the Great Depression. He built the tiny house and added on as years progressed and prosperity built. His son also added to the house with intentions of keeping up the family homestead.
The tornado ripped through some time in the mid-1980s – taking out a path of homes. The family’s belongings were strewn unceremoniously about the property with what was once valuables and treasures reduced to dumpster fodder. Little by little the family would return to their home site and gather what they could recover from the waste. They collected, cleaned and repaired as best they could to begin from scratch and re-build their lives.
Soon, a group of volunteers from the Midwest – if memory serves me, from the Mennonite faith, came out and helped the actual home rebuild. A few years after the tornado, Roger and I visited his uncle and aunt and they were living in a larger, nicer home on the same property. This was not the home build by Roger’s grandfather, as the original home could not be salvaged, just bits and pieces of memorabilia from their old life placed among the new things.
At eight months since Nick’s passing, Roger, Elise, Scott, and I reside somewhere in between the gathering stage and maybe a baby step beyond toward rebuilding. We work through grief in our individual ways and on our own time tables. We pick up pieces of our former lives, just as tornado victims – then try to create some sort of a mosaic of what used to, know we will eventually have to rebuild.
Acceptance that the pieces we gather from what we know as life will never come together as a whole again is the most difficult part for me. I miss my son. I miss the wholeness our family embraced just last summer. I want to turn back the clock and change events; this will never happen, but the facts remain that our options are now to keep gathering relics – protect the memories and gather the materials needed to rebuild our lives.
The information I read about families in grief tells me that we will rebuild. The new lives we construct and nurture will be solid and good. Our family will grow, and our family will heal. We stay close to each other and continue to carve out a new “normal.”
Just like tornado victims and victims of so many tragedies around the world, survivors learn the process of rebuilding one day at a time.
While today is a significant day, I chose to not dwell on the dreaded 22nd. I followed my regular routine and even finished out the afternoon by knitting on the front porch with friends. While winds blow in and cause devastation, we always have the chance to look ahead to brighter days.
No comments:
Post a Comment