Memories More Than Gold A Mother’s story of survival after the death of a child. I clutched my chest in agony, I could feel my very soul being ripped from me like a thousand thrust from a jagged dagger. Hearing the devastating words like a sonic boom inside my head, shattering my ear drums, and leaving me in total silence. I shivered, numbed by an icy chill, my blood draining cold, pooling in the pit of my stomach from the gapping hole where my heart was literally being torn mercilessly out of my body . My eyes blurred and my lungs struggled desperately for oxygen but only gasping raspy noises would croak from my throat when I tried to speak. I grabbed for the porch rail trying to catch myself as my shaky legs buckled. I crumpled to the ground, time stood still, and the earth stopped spinning as it swallowed me into a deep, silent, black abyss. It was Monday, 4:22 pm , November 15, 2004. Less than fifteen minutes before I had been relaxing in my cosy living room, enjoying some classic rock music on the radio . I had spent the morning visiting at a friends house and was back home by noon. After spending a couple of hours tidying up the house and getting my things ready for work that night, I was admiring my sparkling clean house, and decided to light a few candles as I did a little rearranging of some pictures and other adornments accenting the American Indian decor of my little farmhouse. Listening to the music, basking in the glow of flickering candle light and giving in to the calming aroma of orange vanilla, I had just laid back on the sofa, closed my eyes and started to dose off to sleep. I was suddenly awakened by the dogs barking outside. Not the normal yap, yap, yap of seeing another dog, or someone walking down by the road, but the deep, serious warning barks of two Pit Bull dogs saying “there is someone in my yard and I don’t know them !!!” I looked out the window and saw two police cars and a neighbors van pulling in my driveway. I guess it is just a built in radar of some kind or something, but a mother just knows what she is about to hear with this scene. My heart started pounding and I didn’t want to acknowledge what I already knew was coming , I wanted to run to the bedroom, cover up my head and hide so I couldn’t hear it. Still standing in the living room, pretty much frozen in place, I heard the first knock, a few gentle raps on the glass panes, I hesitated for a minute almost deciding not to answer it, and it came again... louder this time... a heavy, urgent BOOM!, BOOM!, BOOM!, BOOM! echoed on the steel frame. I forced myself to walk toward the door, reached hesitantly for the knob, and slowly opened the last barrier between me and a heart ache that is beyond any other on this Earth. I took a deep breath, walked out on the porch, and stared into the somber faces of two police officers and one of my neighbors from down the road. I felt my heart pounding harder and my stomach start to churn its contents toward my throat. I felt it as all the color drained from my face, and then one of the officers took hold of my hand, and my neighbor, with tears streaming down her face, stood beside me holding my other hand. I vaguely remember the telephone starting to ring... the first of the hundreds of times it would ring over the next few days....., and the other officer, a female, asking me where my phone was and then her going inside the house to answer it. The officer holding my hand said, “Mrs Erickson?” I must have answered him “yes”, as he then proceeded to tell me in a very soft and sympathetic voice, of a terrible automobile crash that happened earlier that day and how he hated to tell me, but tragically at 1:45 pm, my son had been pronounced dead at the scene of that accident. The telephone rang several more times, and I could hear parts of conversations...... and then the female officer saying it was people asking questions about what they had heard on the scanner, or from someone that had been at the wreck location..... and was there someone she could call to come be with me?. My son being a popular athlete during his school days, and growing up in a very small town was well known by many, and news travels fast, especially bad news. The next few days were a blur of what seemed like hundreds of people in and out of my house, dishes full of food every where, my closest friends and family staying with me night and day, the telephone ringing off the hook, and ......... funeral arrangements. I remember sitting at the kitchen table for hours, looking up every time the door opened. Fighting off the reality, and impending disappointment, I still half expected, and desperately wanted to see my son walking in anytime, grinning at me, and stopping to give me a little hug before going over to check out what was in the refrigerator. I tried sleeping to give my mind some peace , but my dreams were haunted with sounds of crashing metal, broken bloody bodies crawling from smashed cars, and shadowy faces screaming out to me from somewhere.... I was running and running through the darkness, not able to see or get there in time. Then waking up startled, and out of breath ..... to realize that it wasnt all just a dream.... being awake was just as agonizing, and filled with the same unrelenting terror, and helpless hopelessness. It has been almost three years now since that day, and the death of my only child has taken quite a toll on my life. I am not a coward, nor someone that doesnt finish something once it is started. I am just tired. I am not a whiner or a crier, I am a very private person, most of my emotions I deal with myself, or talk to a very close friend. I have good coping skills, and the ability to shake myself off, and move forward in most situations. Both my parents, my only sibling, and now my only child are deceased.. my entire immediate family.. to which I was very close. I just do not have the will to fight that I used to. I have always prided myself in being a strong person. I stood up for what I believed in, and I gave one hundred percent. I was level headed, set goals, and worked hard to achieve them. I have had a steady job since I was sixteen years old. For the past two years, ten months and twenty six days I have struggled daily, sometimes hourly, and often minute to minute, just to maintain and try live my life. I normally have always looked at things from the prospective of the glass being half full instead of half empty, but these days I often feel the emptiness. From the time my son Mikale was born he was the center of my world. I rocked him to sleep at night, played cars and trucks with him, put band-aids on his ouchies, and loved him with all my heart. We did homework together in the afternoons when I was in nursing school, and he had just started grade school. I went to every soccer, basketball, football, and baseball game he had. I set the very best example I knew to teach him how to be honest, truthful, have good morals and ethics, and to stand up for what he believed was right. I reprimanded him when he disobeyed, I set curfews, and I was interested and aware of where he went and who he hung out with. For three and one half years I was his teacher as he worked on a home school program to receive his high school diploma early. I took a job working 16 hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday so I was off Monday through Friday to monitor his schooling. We went to museums, the state capital, and social events with other home school groups. On the weekends his dad took him hunting, fishing, and worked with him to fix up an old truck for his first vehicle. When he did get his drivers license, and drove out of the driveway for the first time by himself I cried, and couldnt relax until he drove back in, and was safe at home. We laughed and cried together, and had our share of disagreements and struggles that go along with parent-child relationships during teen age years. I talked to him about girls, the importance of treating women with love and respect, and to be able to expect this same love and respect in return. I taught him about God, and tried to set a good example in our home with church, bible study, and prayer. One day I looked up and saw a young man, head and shoulders taller than me, where there used to be this little boy that I had pushed for hours on the swing, taught to ride a bicycle, and tucked into bed at night. His face still so familiar to me.. his kind blue eyes, big bright smile, and that head full red hair. Mikale was a gentle soft spoken person. He had this deep hardy chuckle of a laugh, and was very free with his big hugs.. and you knew you had been hugged when he let go! He loved me, was respectful to me, and I was very proud of my son. I saw the tears rolling down his cheeks as each of his daughters were born, and he looked into their eyes for the first time when they were just minutes old. I watched him carry them, as tiny babies in his great big hands, learn to change their diapers, feed them, and deal with the joys, demands and responsibilities of fatherhood. Then, in the blink of an eye, I was holding back my tears, and wiping them from the grief stricken faces of those two baby girls. Holding tightly to their shaky little hands as they looked at their Daddy in his casket, touched his face and kissed him for the last time. On November 15, 2004 at 1:45 pm the center of my world crashed and disappeared from my life forever. As a Registered Nurse for over 20 years , I know first hand that there are things much worse than death. I am thankful that my son was killed on impact, and was not left brain damaged beyond recovery, paralyzed for life, or lingering for days hooked to machines that would in the end, require me to make the decision about his life. My heart goes out to the mothers that have had to deal with those types of situations regarding their children. Counting my blessings is how I survive and continue to function and live with the loss of my child. I gave birth to a healthy baby, watched an energetic, rowdy little boy grow into a curious, intelligent teenager, and later become a gentle, loving man and devoted father. I had my child for twenty five wonderful years. There are women that desperately want children that cant have their own, and mothers that never see their babies leave the hospital, or only have their children for a few years, watching them die little by little with cancers and other equally devastating diseases. I do not know how these women survive, they must be some of the strongest people on earth. The death of your child, no matter how it comes about, is the worst fear, and most devastating and unimaginable ache of a mothers heart. Learning to live again afterwards is just as or maybe even a little more difficult. You think that you will never be able to smile or laugh again, or watch someone else hold and hug their child. I especially hated going by the school when the kids were outside.. I would take routes around on out of the way roads to keep from driving by a school full of kids. One day I was in a hurry, not thinking too clearly again, as usual for those days, and found myself driving by the junior high school around lunch time. Waiting nervously at the stop sign, I glanced across the play ground and saw a group of boys playing basketball. Right in the middle there was this little red head dribbling for all he was worth and coming in for a perfect two point layup. I felt a big lump come in my throat, and my heart did a couple of hard flip flops against my chest wall, then the tears started coming.. but more than the tears was the flood of memories that washed into my brain like a giant tidal wave. Happy memories, joyful memories, days and years of wonderful blessed, thank you God memories!! Driving on a bit later I noticed I was smiling, even laughing a little to myself, thinking about the day Mikale swooshed a three pointer from the center line, the last two seconds of a basketball tournament game, bringing his team in first place. I could still picture his face as he looked up at me in the bleachers.. grinning, while his coach, and the whole team rallied around him. I gave him our thumbs up signal, he grinned bigger, stuck one of his big ole thumbs up, and gave me a wink, as he got in line to join the rest of the guys shaking hands with the other team. I thought about the hollowed out egg shell that his girl friend had for homemaking class that represented a baby for lessons in parenting and child care. She cut up some red yarn and pasted it on the top of the egg for hair and drew blue eyes and a big smile on it. We had to go out and get a strawberry carton to use as a car seat so little Blane Mikale would be safe. I had to laugh out loud, remembering them carrying that egg around for a week trying keep it from getting cracked, and having to ask someone to baby sit it if they wanted to go somewhere. In the days following, my mind couldnt be still for all the memories that were racing around in my head. I started writing them down, savoring each one, and remembering every little detail. It was almost like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or winning the lottery the day after you lost your job. With each memory I rekindled I felt a little piece of my shattered heart come back from the deep abyss, and the dark shadows that had tortured my every waking moment, and haunted my dreams each night were giving way to a new light and peace in my soul. I drove by the school again several more times, hoping to catch a glimpse of that little red headed boy again, and I did, a couple of times, and he even looked up once and waved at me, like he knew it was him I was driving there to see. Now days when I see a group of kids somewhere I can smile and feel happy , or if I happen to see some mother at the grocery store carrying a cute little red headed baby it brings the the warmest joy to my heart. Memories are a far cry from actually being able to hold, hug, or hear your childs voice, but they are what I have left of my son, and they will be with with me the rest of my life. The memories of my sons life are the most precious and important things I possess. My grand daughters will not have these memories of their own, Siara was just seven years old and Savana was five when he died. He will not be at their ball games or school functions, he will not be there to watch them graduate, or walk them down to get married, anywhere else in between or ever. What they will have is other peoples memories, and a few pictures of the man they called Daddy. He was not a perfect person, as none of us are, and I am not trying to make him some kind of saint in death, but I hope I can capture some of those memories and preserve them in my writing for his daughters. I still think about that little red headed boy on the school play ground that day, and his nameless face is at the top of my prayer list. I pray to God to always keep him safe, let him grow up strong and happy, to give his mother many many years with him, lots of love, heart felt joy, and a life time of something much more precious than any amount of gold... MEMORIES !!
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 19:20:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015