Cloaked Triggers

Linda and I watched In the Valley of Elah the other night. The film follows a father named Hank (played by Tommy Lee Jones) who learns his son is AWOL after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq.  It isn't long before we learn that his son has been murdered and the movie's plot centers on Hank's efforts to learn who perpetrated the crime.  In the course of the action we learn that Hank and his wife also lost their only other child, another son ten years prior in a military helicopter crash.

Watching the film, one can't help but feel tremendous sympathy for Hank and his wife, played by Susan Sarandon.  Two sons, both dead.   Watching a fictionalized portrayal of this kind of parental loss isn't easy.  You likely know parents who struggle with child illness and death.  Sadly, it may be you.  Death  - in whatever form it comes  - is something with which we all must eventually encounter.  But parents who've actually had to endure such tragedies must both cope with the reality of their situation and also figure out a way to live a life amongst those who haven't.  And for those of us who have lost a child, sometimes it's hard to know when those wounds, however long ago inflicted will be reopened.

Toward the end of In the Valley of Elah, when director Paul Haggis lays the sentimentality on pretty thick, feeling sadness rise in me, I glanced over at Linda and saw tears welling in her eyes.  Immediately, I knew that these were not tears for the characters in the movie.  They were tears for Leo.  After eight months of normal pregnancy and for no known cause, Leo was stillborn late last July.

So much has changed since then.  Our son Max is nearly two and half years old.  As parents well know, children of this age develop so rapidly that even a small amount of time can encompass monumental change.  Though a short amount of time may pass, it seems more has owing to the rapid rate of transformation.  Six months ago we lived in a city condo in Massachusetts.  We now live in the quiet country of Connecticut.  And while we've changed much in terms of our surroundings and circumstance when we think about Leo and linger in those thoughts for even a brief moment, all the same feelings come rushing, bull rushing back.  How can it be that Leo's not with us?  How can it be that this has happened to us?  This should not be!  And while Max is more than we could have ever of dreamed, by all rights we should have two sons.  We should have Max and Leo.

Moving to a new town, meeting new people.  They don't know us; they couldn't know our story.  They see us with Max and wonder where he gets his curls from (not from us but from his birth parents).  They ask if we have just the one child.  We answer yes because what else would we say to a new acquaintance?  But we can't say the words without thinking we should have two.  It's not that we want to immediately tell everyone we meet about our dear departed Leo (because, face it, that would just be plain weird), but in not doing so a significant part of our identity remains hidden. By not revealing this fundamental information it paradoxically highlights Leo's absence to us all the more.

Last fall, in Leo's honor, we planted a green mountain sugar maple tree on our family property -  The Farm as we call it.  We dug the hole and sprinkled some of Leo's ashes in amongst the the dirt and roots.  We staked the tree to keep it stable in the stiff breezes that blow across the open expanse.  During the cold and dark days of winter, I'd occasionally inspect Leo's tree to make sure it was fairing well.  In talking to Linda, I discovered that she, too, was doing the same.  Visiting Leo's tree, touching its trunk and caressing its branches is a way of communing with him.

Spring has finally sprung here in Connecticut and with the warmer weather I find myself outside at the Farm quite a bit more.  I have the opportunity to go to Leo's tree more and I do.  It brings me great comfort to see the new growth at the ends of the branches, the buds forming.  Soon the leaves will blossom.  I can't wait.  Yet even as I type this, the notion of the rebirth of Leo's tree fills me with mixd emotions.  I'm grateful for the symbolism embedded in nature's seasonal rebirth.  I am also more frequently aware that this tree which though it brings me so much serenity reminds me of the son that isn't in my arms.

Linda and I have undergone a tremendous amount of healing in the several months since Leo died.  Most hours of most days, you wouldn't, couldn't see the anguish that lies below the surface.  We can often have a normal conversation about Leo and get through it without the rush of emotion that used to be unpreventable.   But there are times when all of it comes at us with no warning.  Sometimes I wake up and feel the pendulant melancholy has returned, a sadness I owe and whose debt has come due.  Other times I feel right as rain, but then a scene in a darned Hollywood movie that, though the circumstances are vastly different, triggers familiar waves of sorrow.  I've never felt and earthquake, but understand that it can feel like the earth is undulating under foot.  This is how the grief sometimes feels.  One moment the ground beneath me is firm and then with little warning, it feels unstable, unpredictable, and I unsteady.

When I saw Linda weeping next to me on the couch and understood who the tears were for I didn't say anything.  I didn't know what to say.  Often there is nothing to say.  For a while we just sat there, adrift in our heartache.  Eventually Linda moved to get up, but I wasn't ready for her to leave the room.  I pulled her back down to the couch and we embraced each other for several minutes in silence.  I was trying to muster my strength to utter the only words that filled my head.  Each time I thought I was ready to speak, I couldn't bring them out.  I wanted to say the words without my voice cracking.  I wanted to say them in one breath.  I know not why, but it was important to me that I deliver them clearly, plainly.  I knew that they were the only words I'd be able to say that night.

"I miss him a lot."