Mom is Just a Nickname

A trip to applebees may seem a frivolous way to remember a child’s death. It’s what we do every year on October First. We have a meal at Applebees. Who knows what we’ll do with ourselves if/when Applebees is no longer in business? Why do we eat at Applebees?

We eat there because on October 1st, 2002, the day he died, we were an hour from home when lunchtime rolled around. We’d just spent the morning at the Hospice House, saying our goodbyes to his little body. We were emotionally drained and unable to express the many feelings roiling under the surface. Topher’s parents were with us and Jillian was with us. We stopped at Applebees to eat because, although none of us were truly hungry, we knew we had to feed our bodies.

I think it was barely eleven in the morning. Toph ordered an alcoholic drink and the server tried to make a joke about how he was starting his drinking early in the day. Toph didn’t say a thing, but his dad quietly told her, “His son died today.” The server stuttered her apologies and from there she quietly and efficiently took care of us.

I guess going to Applebees is a way to pick at the scabs, to remember that day. I also remember Applebees was the last restaurant we took Sullivan to. In the month before he died, he had some real good days. One of those days we decided to take him out with us when we went to eat. He absolutely loved the balloons they had.

We did other odd things the day Sullivan died:
We went to a mall and bought candles. I bought a candle holder that resembles an autumn tree. It’s still packed right now, but I need to find it and unpack it before Monday. We were never allowed to burn candles when he was alive (because of the oxygen tank we kept on hand for emergencies, and then for the oxygen machine he was on at the end…oxygen is highly combustible) so to me, lighting a candle in his memory was just the right thing to do.

We went to a liquor store. We were in Indiana which has less taxes on liquor, as I recall. So we bought some there for the wake to come after the memorial service.

We went to a children’s clothes consignment store. I found a three piece suit for Sullivan’s body to wear. It was a light beige color with a white shirt. The shirt had a mandarin color, so it didn’t need a tie. My feeling was that he never wore truly formal clothes in his lifetime, why should he start in his coffin?

I went through the day as a bit of a zombie, but I didn’t know what I should be doing, how I should be acting, what I should be feeling. And somehow, life had to go on.

The day before the viewing, I pulled out his memory box, the cheap Rubbermaid box in which I’d gathered so many important items. I have a box for each of us in the family, to keep things that have been important in our journeys. As I knelt there on the floor of my kitchen, pulling out the newspaper from the day he was born, the birth announcement, his “going home from the hospital” outfit, his hospital bracelets, his first pair of AFO’s (leg splints), letters we’d written to him in hopes that one day he’d be able to read them for himself and realize what a miracle he was and how blessed we felt to know him…..As I pulled all of these out of this box, I started to cry. My first real cry since he died and it was of the soul deep, gut wrenching variety. Everyone else in the room looked helpless. My mom wanted to come to me, I could tell, to cushion me from the overwhelming grief that was tearing through my body. She couldn’t reach me. My husband got there first, and cried with me. But all I could do was say over and over, through the wracking sobs, “This wasn’t supposed to be for ME to go through! It was for HIM to see when he grew up! This was meant for him!” It’s a terrible thing…to realize a memory box would no longer be holding any new memories. To realize, the memories it holds are the only ones left.

I made a new, better memory box. Actually, I bought it. It’s an oak trunk, lined with cedar. A sort of hope chest. It looked out of place in my house for years, but it was important to me to have it. Inside it, the many things that were part of Sullivan’s life are carefully stored. The pajamas he died in, the sock monkey he loved, the baby toy he fought his cousin over just weeks before his death. There are more letters, blankets that were made for him, stuffed animals bought for him. So many THINGS; so many memories. So many things which are all I have left of Sullivan to love.

There are days my arms feel empty. I remember this feeling from when he was first hospitalized. For a month, I walked around that hospital with his baby blanket and a teddy bear in my arms. I slept with them. I didn’t set them aside, except when I was somehow touching him. You know what I do now? I sleep with that same teddy bear. Must be regressing….as a toddler, I had a teddy almost like this one. I know cuz my original teddy is sitting up on a shelf welcoming guests into my home. The blanket is gone, cremated with him. It seemed fitting to send his body to the fire, wrapped in the blanket that brought him home.

The blanket had brought him home again and again. Every time he was in the hospital, the blanket went with him. Sometimes it was just draped over a chair in the room, there for me to snuggle with through the long hours of being there for Sullivan. Sometimes, it was in the crib with him, wrapped around him as he slept. As soon as he woke, the blanket was thrown off! Even when he slept, he often couldn’t stand to have a blanket covering him. I can only guess that those little legs loved to move so much, a blanket felt like a trap, a hindrance to his energetic movements.

Now, five years since his death, it’s sometimes hard to remember it all. Life is so very different now. Boxes, blankets and bears are the keys to my memories.

In the morning, I wake up to her curled up on the pillow behind my head. She immediately notices I’m awake and pushes her head under my hand for attention. If I fall back asleep during the giving of these affections, she will attempt to lick my nose. She learned this unfortunate habit from my husband when she was a kitten. She’d try to wake him for attention by licking his face, but he was able to ignore her. Then she licked his nose, right up in his nostrils, and hey! He woke up! So, she does this trick with both of us now when she thinks it’s time for us to adore her.

When I get up, she grunts at me to show her disappointment. She’ll often shadow me through my morning; she sits in the doorway of the bathroom while I do my morning business there, coming in only to rub against my legs as I sit on the toilet, or she’ll sit regally in the walkway between the kitchen and dining room observing my breakfast preparations from a distance.

She trots excitedly behind me when she sees me heading for the computer. I’ve never quite figured out why she loves to be near the computer, but I think it’s something she has learned from my husband. She sprawls beside my chair, chirping at me periodically to remind me that she’s there. I leaned down to pet her soft fur. Sometimes, she takes this attention willingly. In fact, sometimes she stands up to follow my hand as I remove it to type again. She shoves under my hand for more attention then. Other times, my caress is rejected with a swat or a bite or maybe a clawing from her hind legs. I never know how my attentions will be received at this hour.

Once the kids wake up, she usually disappears. She hides in her favorite corner of the computer room or in a hidden corner of my closet. Sometimes she lays on my bed, feeling secure that no little people will bother her there, since we don’t encourage the kids to play in our room. She’ll stay hidden for the better part of the day. I will often search her out, just to steal some cuddles from her. These stolen moments are sometimes greeted with enthusiasm and other times with disgruntlement. Guess it depends on how deeply she is asleep when I bug her.

When evening rolls around, she comes out to greet my husband. I’m persona non gratis then. She likes to make him think she cares only for him. She commandeers his computer desk, sprawled beside his keyboard and accepting his loving scratches on her head. If he takes the time to type, she demands his attention by laying her head on his hand making it difficult to type and impossible to manipulate the mouse. All attention at that time must be on her.

If dinner smells good to her, she may hover near the table or in the kitchen, hoping for handouts, but this is rare. She isn’t a slave to food, unless it happens to be luncheon meat. She’ll do just about anything to get that. She lets her kitty sister, Stjarna do the begging for their dinner. Stjarna, being the glutton for cat food, is happy to oblige.

Once the kids are in bed, we once more find Terpie laying in the way, tripping us as we walk. If we sit on the couch to chat, we find ourselves objects of scrutiny. She will saunter her way towards the couch, as if to ask for attention, but then she flops by my feet and sprawls on her back and watches me, upside down. If I lean to pet her, she will immediately claw at me, howling her objections. I always tell her not to lay belly up in front of me if she doesn’t want me to give her a belly rub. She never listens.

She’ll continue to follow us around for the rest of the evening. She never seems to want us to pet her then, but she trails in our wake. When we finally make our way to the bedroom for sleep, she is in the bed ahead of us, waiting for us. She insist on being snuggled then, but she’s very particular about it. Only one of us may pet her at a time. Some days she wants Toph’s love, other days mine. She’s a fickle feline. Before long, she’ll settle in for the night, once more curled up beside me. She’ll usually start the night towards my feet and at some point in the middle she moves to the pillow by my head.

As soon as I get to the bottom of the path, I take off my flip flops and feel my feet sink into the hot, dry sand. I lift my face to the sky, feeling the heat of the sun soaking into my skin. The waves are murmuring in my ears with a rhythym that matches my heartbeat. I can smell the salt of the ocean, can hear the seabirds bickering with one another, can feel the breeze blow like a lover against my skin.

I open my eyes to the bright sunlight, so bright it washes the colors out of the world. The ocean in the distance sparkles in the dazzling light, luring me closer. The waves on the shore cast their white nets onto the sand of the beach, pulling shells and scuttling sea birds deeper into the surf. There are puffy white clouds sitting on the horizon, like giants benignly overlooking the exploits of the waters.

Continuing my journey closer to the ocean, the scorching sands ooze between my toes, until I reach the high tide mark. There, I must pick my way through the dried seaweed and shells the ocean has left behind. Here the sand is firmer, still hot beneath my toes. The closer I get to the casting waves, the firmer and cooler the sand becomes. The shells are sometimes sharp beneath my toes. I look down at their sharp edges, rounded curves, and soft colors.

One shell catches my eye and I crouch down to look and to touch. It is softly curved on one side, with a gentle concave hollow in it’s center. In it’s tiny heart, a soft pink bursts forward, extending it’s blush to the outer reaches of the pearly shell. My fingers trace the pink from the center to the edges, feeling the smooth surface which has been warmed by the sun. I lift it from the sand and turn it over. Through the grit clinging to the outside of the shell, I can see the dark grey surface is rough. Some small sea creature has left it’s outer skeleton adhered to the outside of the shell. The outside of the shell is rough, dark, and dirty…seemingly nondescript and unnoticeable. The protected inner soul of the shell is smooth, luminescent, and blooming with a soft rose color. I return the shell to the sand and stand again.

The seagulls are wheeling and diving in the sky above me, filling the air with their wingbeats and cries. The tiny sandpipers and other scuttling birds continue to follow the waves, in and out, in their dance of hunger and satisfaction. They move further down the coast as I walk closer to the waves. Their long thin beaks peck at the sand, following the tiny sea creatures burrowing into the sand where the ocean meets the land. The tiny bubbles of their passing mark where they’ve been as easily as the hunting birds reveal their presence.