speak softly….

That words fail, and it’s true.  My dad and I keep saying to one another, “I know, I know,” as if to confirm what we already have said to one another a million times over.  Friends say, “I don’t know what to say,” and feel inadequate.  (Don’t–you’re not.)  Others pile on words and then try to take half of them back.  If the situation were reversed, I’d be falling all over myself, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, trying to say the “right” thing.  What is there to say?  A boy lived, changed us all, and now is gone.

Something silence has taught me is that even in the painful quiet, thoughts form, ideas come together, a sense of purpose or design emerges.  Each late afternoon, around five or so, before or after that night’s meal arrives on my doorstep, I take myself to the “best seat in the house,” the rocking chair in Evan’s room.  I put a glass of wine on the windowframe, look out over the view, and just sit.  Sometimes I peek into Evan’s crib to see the things there–his two boppies, his dolly and chewie–but mostly I sit.  I sit and remember the last days, sure, but also those many years we had.  I bought a journal in Evan’s honor and sometimes I write in it, parsing out whatever comes.  That I feel lost, like yesterday, or scared, like the day before.  That everything has changed:  my sense of self, my purpose, my life.

But even those words aren’t always right, and even as the thoughts form I feel them slipping away.  Then night comes, and the next morning, and soon I do it all over again.  The pattern itself comforts me, the rolling tide of words, silence, words.

I found this nearly empty bag of Twizzlers in my daughter’s room after my parents left this weekend.  Several days earlier, I had myself bought a bag of favorite Red Bites, seeing as food wasn’t really happening for me, but candy would do the trick.  The day my folks arrived for Evan’s memorial service, my mother and sister took the Josie Girl out for a jaunt to Office Depot and the toy store.  My sister returned with Sour Patch Kids in hand, offering me some.  “No thanks,” I told her, “I already have some in my glove compartment.”  Candy all around.

And plants aplenty too.  So many friends have bought us living things:  this orchid you see above, several hydrangeas, mini rose bushes, two beautiful tropical plants, a calanchoe.  I have something of a brown thumb and have given away the two tropical plants since I know there is not a spot in my yard for them.  But everything else is going in the ground, including a gentle, shapely Japanese magnolia, which my neighbor has kindly offered to have her arborist take care of for me.  He will find the right spot and plant it with mulch once the summer heat passes.

Recently, a friend including the following words in her sympathy card to me.  I think of them often, have even posted them here before.  They come from the Raymond Carver poem, “Last Fragment,” and I hear Evan saying them to me nearly every day:

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Because among the small consolations, the candy, the food and the flowers, the large one is always there. If we know how to look for it, we will find it.

A phenomenal gift basket…

Dinner every night for two months from family, friends, internet followers…

And a big, beautiful freezer from my brother and sister in law in which to put all those dinners.

I’m overwhelmed, beyond grateful.  Yesterday when I told a good friend about all this outpouring of love and support, I said, “I had no idea.  I should have known, but I didn’t.  I wish I had seen it.”  And he said, “If you had looked up before you not have seen it.  It was there when you looked up and needed it most.”

Wise words, indeed.  Thank you, thank you.

I walk past my son’s room and tread lightly–he has always been a fitful sleeper–several nights in a row now, when darkness comes, and then I remember, stupidly, foolishily:  he is not within.  Last night I did not hear his tender snores as I walked past at four in the morning on my way to a long, cold drink of water.  I stepped carefully in habit, heard nothing, kept walking then.

Always, my son made noise:  piano playing that made the dog howl, musical toys day and night, CD’s on the player in his room. Together we kept the songs coming day and night.  Even at two in the morning sometimes he’d awaken and awake me.  Bouncing in his bed, yakking, laughing or telling himself some joke perhaps.

The last day of his life, my son fell strangely silent.  He did not tell me that he was in pain or discomfort.  Instead, he followed me around the house and said, “I muh mum mum,” asking for me but otherwise keeping to himself.  Asking for me but separate.  We shared this I guess, he and I, the ability to stay quiet with each other when it mattered.

I wish my son had spoken, that he had told me, “I need you, something is not right, I’m going now.”  Instead he sat, he swung, he reached up to me and I carefully placed him where I thought he belonged–in a swing, the carseat, his bed, a stroller.

These are the moments then, of an end.  They come to me afterwards, only when I think back and recognize them for what they are.  At the time, I simply thought he was going within.  I never knew he himself was telling me, in his own way, goodbye.

Friends are honoring Evan Kamida (and his family) by photographing flowers on swingsets. Evan loved to swing, and Vicki wrote a piece about Evan, swinging, motherhood, and lots of other things you can read for yourself in an essay for Literary Mama, called “The Mother at the Swings.”

Jennifergg writes about the tribute here. Another, “To Vicki Forman” here, and Christa’s here.

Post your photos to this flickr group. (You must join the group to add your own picture.)