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.