Ascension

My dear friends lost their son this week. He was a year old. What follows is what happened when I found out. Fowler asked that I write something someday about this. I don’t know if this is what he had in mind. I hope it is.

Phone calls at 6:00 AM are rarely good. “Pray,” he said. “Pray, and ask others to pray.” So I did. I cast my prayers to heaven, called others to do the same, and then allowed the morning to slip away in chasing children, packing lunch, and kissing the family goodbye.

The ringing phone stopped my bicycle ride to work. “Teddy passed,” the voice said. Passed. A kind word for an unthinkable thing. I sat on the top tube of my bicycle and looked at my phone, that strange thing that can let pain jump miles.

Passed.

*** A story about Teddy. ***
 His mother was holding him. I swooped. Picked him up. Said, “Yoink!” and absconded. He looked at me, examined me, probed me for worthiness, and decided that I was missing something necessary. He leaned and pointed toward his mother.
 He stared me when he was returned to his mother’s arms. The stare was a challenge. Be good enough next time.
 *** End story. ***

The hospital was only a few miles away. They flew beneath the wheels of my bicycle. Vanished as I pedaled. I did not cry. I did not think. I did not feel. I rode.

I found the waiting room full of friends and family of Teddy’s parents. People I’ve known for years. They were crying, softly, the way one does in these situations, in the waiting for reason to return. I hugged them. Everyone in that room, one at a time. I was a serial hugger, as if I could hug away the pain, hug away the tears, hug the life back into the room.

I might as well have been fighting the wind. Grief filled the room, settled like a fog. We sat, obscured from each other by the insanity of it all.

***A story about Teddy. ***
 He was sitting on the floor of the room, roaming the way babies do. Rainier, a mountain of a dog, walked in and stared at Teddy. Teddy stared back. The dog licked him. The baby laughed, sat up, and applauded with his hands above his head.
 The dog is worthy, I thought. Good for him.
 *** End story. ***

People trickled in. A grandmother. Two. My wife. With each new person, the fog thickened. Tears renewed. I tried to make jokes. Not to remove the grief, but to clear the fog in the room. The fog would not be cleared.

“It’s okay to be quiet.” My wife is a wise woman.

Tom and Jessica walked into the room, and everything slipped out of focus. The fog solidified. Became tangible. How can silent sobbing sound so loud?

I offered Tom a banana. I’m sorry your son died. Would you like a banana? It sounds cruel in the retelling, crass. He laughed and ate the banana. The laugh was beautiful and sad and honest.

*** A story about Teddy. ***
 Teddy put one hand over his eye and looked at me with a smirk. He pulled the hand away and laughed. He did it again. Hand over eye. Hand off eye. Rolling laughter.
 Teddy played peek-a-boo on his terms.
 *** End story. ***

Time blurred, swirled, shifted. Dreams do that. Twist time. Put effect before cause, abandon narrative convention. Rhonda wondered if it were a dream. Wished for it to be so. We all mourned the unfulfilled wish.

We sat in Mandah’s living room. People spoke in whispers, like one does when sitting someplace holy. Maybe I was wrong about the fog. Maybe it wasn’t grief blinding us. Maybe it was smoke from a censer, cleansing the room, making it holy, fit to greave in.

The sun fell. I drove to the airport to collect Ken. I looked at the people coming and going, the disorganized hive. An awkward teenager came alive when she saw her grandmother. A young lady rolled a bicycle out of the terminal with a look of one going off to war. A chauffer held a sign, his too-short tie unable to pass the apex of his bulging belly.

Ken emerged from the swarm. We hugged. We walked. We drove.

He talked. Tried to fit an entire day’s worth of questions into an hour drive. I listened. Empathized. Sat silently and let the words fall behind us, slip into the dark, bounce along the pavement.

*** A story about Teddy. ***
 I stole him again. This time from his aunt. He began the judging process again, but I interrupted him. I whooshed him upward, allowed him to lose contact with my fingers at the top of the whoosh, let him feel weightless for a fraction of a second.
 He giggled. Stretched his arms upward. Asked to fly again.
 *** End story. ***

The sun set and rose, unaware or uncaring that we did not wish it to do so anymore. Fowler, Ken, and I stood on the deck, examined the dandelions and bumble bees. Spider webs caught the sun light as they swayed in the breeze.

“They’re praying inside…”

The darkness stung our eyes. Prayers drifted from the living room. Prayers and tears. Friends and family gathered round, sat on the couch, sat on the floor, stood, leaned… gathered. Hands were held. It’s a strange thing, prayers lifted up in grief and anger and love. A strange thing. A holy thing.

We railed against God. Implored Him. Tore our chests open and offered them as sacrifice. I sat silently, holding my wife’s hand.

“I am so mad at You right now. But I love You.” Amen.

*** A story about Teddy. ***
 In his aunt’s arms again. He leaned over. Looked at me. Pointed.
 I took him in my hands. He raised his. A silent request to fly. So I carried him upward. Suspended him in air for fractions of a second at a time. He celebrated his ascension.
 *** End story. ***

Teddy passed. And that fact is cruel and awful and unchangeable. But in his passing, I saw something beautiful. I saw friends and family gather together, mourn together as we lived together.

To repeat the words of a friend of mine, I am mad at God. But I love Him. I wish I had the faith of my son. Wish I had his simple, concrete belief. When I told him that Teddy died, he told me that Teddy was in heaven with Jesus. And that Uncle Tom and Aunt Jessica would see him there someday.

Dearest Teddy, I hope you’re flying up there. Free.