Tag: Milestones

Senior Night

I knew it was coming. Senior Night. A few months ago the schedule for the marching band season was released and there it was. It was supposed to be tonight but due to a miserable forecast for tonight it was moved to last night (thankfully!).  

This is one of those milestones  I had been dreading. Much like other milestones it is something that happens for his friends, but not for him. It is so hard to want to feel happy for those friends but at the same time sad and angry that he didn’t get a chance to be a senior.

So last night I knew they would mention him, but it was my choice whether or not I wanted to go on the field with the other seniors and their parents. I chose to sit in the stands. Before the game Mr. Nash gave Gabe’s dad and I the same flower given to the other seniors (hello, tears!) and we waited. After everyone was lined up they began and this is how Gabe was recognized:

Gabe Chester. . . .
Tonight we honor Gabe.  This would have been the start of his senior year, but Gabe was taken from us in his freshman year.  Gabe gave all of himself in everything he did and was a great friend to everyone he knew. Gabe was a member of the Marching Knights’ pit percussion section and was also involved in the Boy Scouts, theater production and loved to skateboard around Dayton.  He is truly missed.

It was sad and as perfect as anything can be in that situation. I was glad I didn’t go down onto the field. It would have been far more painful to stand there without my child in front of me as everyone else was recognized, their future plans announced along with their names.

This is the start of some very difficult things. Soon it will be graduation, and then his friends will go to college. Then the rest of life will continue on for them. Those things will be so painful. But as with everything else we will muddle through and somehow survive.

Today I placed his carnation on his headstone. So very different than the future I wanted for him, but I’m still thankful for those 15 years and the impact he made.

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Two and a half years

Time is a tricky thing. Sometimes it takes forever for time to move forward. Sometimes it just slips by so fast and you wonder where it has gone. For whatever reason, this 2 1/2 year milestone is hitting me hard. It’s been 2 1/2 years since Gabe got a great report from his cardiologist. Everything looked great on April 7. His EKG showed no changes beyond his normal (not typical normal, but his normal). His heart was “very photogenic” that day, the tech said as she looked at his heart. He was watching “Big Hero 6” on the TV while they scanned him, a movie where the older brother dies. Ouch. Little did I know that the next day the older brother in our home would die.

It’s been 2 1/2 years and it STILL doesn’t make sense. My heart still won’t accept it. I have so many moments where it still feels like it just happened. Like he was JUST here. Like it was 2 1/2 months ago, not years.

I know sometimes it probably seems like I’m wallowing in my grief, but I think this is completely normal- if anything can be normal after burying a child. I’m not wallowing. The problem is that even though it seems to the world like it’s been 2 1/2 years, in my brain it feels like it just happened. Because he was JUST here.

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Missed Milestones

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Driving. It’s something Gabe never got to do. Well, not legally anyway. He drove on someones private property, and he pulled the car from the back to the front to park it once, but that is the extent of it. On his 15th birthday (which ended up being just 19 days before he died) he went to the DMV website and started taking practice tests. He often talked about what kind of car he would get, and how he would modify it. He was completely unrealistic in what he would have actually been able to get, but he liked to dream big. He was SO excited at the prospect of driving.

Gabe driving was not something that his dad and I were too excited about. He was reckless-always. Reckless on his bike, on his skateboard, in his actions.

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I imagine he would not have been the most careful driver. Gabe had a hard time thinking things through. He had ADHD, sensory processing dysfunction, and difficulties with planning. Driving would have been an extremely challenging task. But he was very thrilled about it.

Driving has been on my mind lately because Gabe’s middle brother will soon be learning to drive. Milestones like that are hard to navigate. It is wonderful to see him grow up, to see who he’s becoming, and help him figure out life. It is also so difficult though because my oldest didn’t make it this far. Since 19 days after he turned 15, my middle son has lived longer than his older brother. That is a very difficult reality. And I’ll feel it again when the youngest surpasses that age.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. This year should look very different. The rest of our lives should look very different. Sometimes I think people feel like parents grieve too long, but I know I will never stop grieving. I can’t. Because when a child dies you lose the FUTURE. You still have A future, but not the one that should have played out. I know, many things alter the future and we have to shift and reassess, change and rewrite things. But the death of a child is a completely different thing. I can’t just rewrite things, because my brain always sees the picture of life as it should be- with my oldest son who is now 17 pulling up to the front of our house in a beat up old car, and telling us that he got another ticket. Because that is exactly how it would be.

 

 

Time

When a child dies there is an initial shock. It is a huge shock and time seems to stand still. The beginning is purely about survival. I think that shock is the only way parents can survive the death of their child. If we felt all the sadness at once we would never make it.

As time goes by the shock slowly eases up, in layers, and the sadness really hits.  And it is like that horrible sadness hits over and over. The sadness comes from those little reminders around the house like their things, their seat at the table, their bedroom, and their pictures. Then as more layers of shock wear off you start to realize:

Life goes on as usual for everyone else

My world and my surviving sons world has been broken. But everyone else’s world keeps going. It feels so wrong! It feels like the entire world should stop when such a huge part of mine died. Yes others are sad too, yes they miss him, but it’s not in the same way. It’s not the same when it was your child, living in your home. It’s not the same for anyone else. That makes this journey the hardest.

As time goes by and more shock wears off a bit you start to realize things- his friends are driving and he should be too. His friends are getting jobs and he should be too. His friends are heading into their senior year, thinking about college. They are planning their lives but he is not. We, as his parents see every bit of that. Each milestone his friends reach is one he will never reach. And that is extremely painful to see. I’m so happy for those friends and their families as they do these things, but there is also a brutal unfairness that is excruciating.

I think this is why the death of a child alters the parents and siblings so much. Because it changes the future. It changes the way the future should be, the way we thought it would go. I don’t think our brains and hearts will ever fully understand that. This child should be here and he is not. That just doesn’t make sense.