A Mother Remembers

He was only 24 when he died, my firstborn son. He was handsome and strong, with a ready smile for everyone, and a direct look in his eyes for everyone he met that acknowledged their personhood, their uniqueness.

Labour Day 1998 was when the world as I once knew it changed. I didn’t know it had changed, as I lay asleep on September 6th at 3:00 a.m. I thought I heard the familiar steps of the Toronto Star Delivery person, but why would he be knocking on the door and calling my name? After the third Mrs. Incerto, I answered the door, saw the policeman and the first words I said were "he is dead, isn’t he".

I heard words like: car accident, coroner, Meaford Hospital and scribbled down this information. I woke my husband Ralph and my son Jason. I called my elderly parents who live across the street. My father seemed on the verge of collapse and my mother looked so small, so frail, and so helpless. It was she who looked after James from the time he was born, while I went to work. She was the second mother. We stood there stunned, the core of my family, my life, devastated beyond belief.

On January 22, 1974 the nurse wheeled me out to the car as I carried in my arms my firstborn. My mother wanted to hold him, but I held on tightly to him, not wanting to ever let him go. When he would fall asleep, I would lie beside him, as my face touched the softness of his downy head, and I could smell that unmistakable newborn baby smell.

So many memories. At the Christmas Nursery school celebration, he looked like the perfect little drummer boy. He had practiced and practiced at home pounding that little drum. His very first time on a soccer team, he scored so many goals, that the opposing coach kept asking who is that small curly-haired kid. Like all children, every day was an adventure, a new beginning, and I went along for the ride of his daily discoveries, and new found joys. I couldn’t wait to come from work and live in his world: his discovery of the big wheel bike and watching him ride it around and around; the Star Trek collection, the Stretch Armstrong, the Million Dollar Man; bike, toys, movies - all gloriously woven into a child’s life. Where did all those toys go, I wonder now?

And eventually, toys long forgotten, James purchased his first car, a used red Trans Am. On Saturdays he would polish and polish that car to a gleaming shine, as his friends would come by and chat with him. I’d look out the window, and notice how content he was there, at just that moment.

His life plays before me every day, like a movie reel. The memories are painful. The many, many pictures I took documenting our family’s life are too hard to look at for any length of time. Often I walk by the pictures I have on display of James and deliberately don’t look because it brings a stabbing pain to my heart. If I peer too closely into his eyes, or think too hard about him, it feels like I may explode. It’s a kind of protection, these little games I play with myself.

He drove the Trans Am to the cottage on the Labour Day weekend of September 6. Not wanting to abandon his car, when it got stuck in gravel, alongside a deep ditch on the country dirt, he was trying to push it, when it rolled on top of him and into the ditch.

It was an endless drive to the morgue. We were led to a room in the basement of the Meaford hospital. As I saw my little boy, my son, so cold and lifeless, I felt my soul, my heart, or whatever the spirit inside of us is, leave my body. It felt like a near death experience, an out of body feeling, as if I was an onlooker and not a participant. We all seemed so calm. Why did we all seem so calm? I had seen this scene many times on T.V. This is not us, it can’t be. If this were real, I should be fainting and screaming and surely any time now I will die too, my heart will just explode. But no, I put one foot in front of the other, walked out to do what needed to be done. The last thing we could do for James.

What is there to say when you lose a child? I once said to James "I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you or your brother, I love you both so much". His arms immediately went around me, and he said, "I know mom, I know". Who would have thought. …… Poems, words, symbols, candles, flowers, memorials. These are the landscape of my world now. In some way, we need to tell the world that our child is still a part of us, that time does not heal this grief. For friends and family, there is still that concept of time, the time of the seasons, the milestones that define who you are. Every day, every hour, every moment and second, I am aware of James, aware of his life, and aware of his death. As many people say, over and over and over again, the obvious truth that "life goes on". Yes, it does. It goes on. It goes on while we try to still be a part of this world. Shopping, family celebrations, movies, home renovations, appointments, weddings, engagements, and more importantly the nurturing of other children, husband, wife.

There is a catch 22 with being bereaved. If, with outward appearances, you look well: going to work, seeing a movie, visiting friends, even smiling or laughing, you are perceived to be doing fine, moving along. If, on the other hand, you have come to a standstill and many years later are still grieving hard, people stay away, because there is no venue in which they can interact with you.

But, as I have found, there are the kind souls, the friends, the wise and spiritual beings, who can look beyond the chatter and clatter of the cliches, who stay with you, no matter what you say or may do. Who always give you the benefit of the doubt and most of all simply show up, drop in, and gently take you out of yourself. They offer no solutions, no platitudes, no assumptions of the future in this world, or the next. They offer themselves, their presence and willingness to go to that dark place with you and hold your hand.

Writing this account is difficult and not writing and remembering is difficult. Whatever is inside us, the spirit the soul, or whatever you want to call it, has seasons of its own. Sometimes you can do what you never thought you could do, and other times you lie in bed crying, depressed, and just so so tired.

We endure, we do what we can.

Liliana Incerto

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