Bittersweet

Bittersweet:  Producing or expressing a mixture of pain and pleasure

Bittersweet. That's a term I always assumed I understood. Bittersweet, though, must be lived to be fully appreciated; it requires a loss of innocence with the yearning to look back, and a fear of not being able to move forward. Bittersweet, to me, brings a whispered longing in my soul for who we were, and a raw, weeping regret that I didn't hold fast enough to what I had when I had it. That's the thing about bittersweet, though--you can never know how intensely good the best days are until they are no longer available to you.

I found this picture of Logan the other day. He was 11 years old. We were out in the woods, searching for a Christmas tree, a tradition we started when the kids were really little. We always ended up with some sort of Charlie Brown tree that had to be tied to the wall in order to stay standing. Finding the perfect tree took an entire Sunday afternoon, and, like all the girls in the bar getting prettier at closing time, all the trees in the forest started looking perfect as the boys got tired. You can see my husband and younger son in the distance, dragging the chosen tree home behind them.

When I see my little Logan here, I have a hard time not crawling into that picture and into the comfort of the past. I want to reach out and cup his face with my hands. I want to press my lips to his forehead and breathe in his scent. Just one more time, I think. I can't remember the last time I did that. I guess life is like that; we move to the next stage of it without realizing how many last times we've left in the mist. I miss this boy, and I  miss us.

I don't want Logan's life to be defined by his death. He was far too interesting a person for that. I have found that, when I celebrate who Logan was, I grieve less for what he didn't get the chance to become. I try to be honest about who he was, both the good and the bad, because he played life pretty straight. I don't want his memory to evolve into something his brothers do not recognize, or feel they have to live up to. I don't want to wrap myself so securely in the past that they end up feeling I loved Logan more than them, yet I need to remember. I do not want these two beautiful boys I still have with me to say that they buried me the day they buried Logan. It's a very fine line to walk, this celebrating, loving, remembering, and grieving honestly.

I hope that, with time, the bitter regrets can be harvested and blended with the good memories in the perfect sweet/tart balance that lingers long on my tongue and ever my mind.

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Things aren't supposed to happen this way

The State Patrol officer, who delivered the news about Logan, gave us a card with the name and number of the funeral home where he had been taken. I spoke to the undertaker at the local funeral home about 9 pm that night. When he answered his phone, I gave him my name. Then I said, "My son...Logan..." and that was all I could get to come out of my mouth. I sat at the end of the table, reaching for words beyond what my mind could grasp. Dead. Killed. Those just weren't words that belonged in the same sentence with Logan's name. They didn't belong in our house or on my lips. Those kind of words bleed hearts dry; those words wreck lives and relationships and families. Those words end dreams.

The gentleman on the other end of line, I believe his name was Shawn, said, "I got a call earlier this afternoon from the funeral home that has Logan now. I want to express how sorry I am for your loss. They called me thinking you might want us to handle the arrangements. I've waited up in case you would call yet tonight. I want you to know I will leave right now and bring him back to wherever you want him--whether it's with us or with another funeral home. Let's just get him as close to home as we can get him tonight." Then he said, "I understand that his injuries were extensive and that the funeral director there suggests a closed casket."  He expressed his sympathies again and I hung up the phone. I set my head on the table and wept. My husband and sons did the same. It was weeping without feeling. It was grief that cannot see or hear or feel. It was larger than the room in which we sat. We don't bury healthy children in this country. We don't bury beautiful, bright young men who got it pretty much right from the start. Our oldest son had just come back from his 3rd combat tour with the Marine Corps. He had seen enough loss. He wasn't supposed to come home and bury his little brother. He had left Death in Afghanistan. Our youngest son had a love/hate relationship with Logan. They were best friends and worst enemies. He wasn't supposed to bury his older brother, just when he'd gotten a chance to enjoy full access to the PS3 controller.

Keep your house in order

The month leading up to Logy's accident had been busy. My aunt and uncle sold their home on the lake and were preparing to auction off most of their belongings. Logy and I were making the 60-mile round trip every day for about a month to help them. In the process, I think they sent home with me more of their worldly goods than they sold! I stacked most of the things I'd accumulated in the living room, adding more and more each night when we got home. My house looked like it had been sadly neglected every single hour of the month prior...and it had.

Logan's 19th birthday would have been September 5th. It was Monday-Memorial Day 2011. We made a plan that I would bake his favorite German chocolate cake, pick up my mother-in-law, and drive down to the college to spend the day with him. His maternal grandmother knew it was Logan's time to fly free. His paternal grandmother really, really needed to see him in his college setting. She wanted to see his dorm room, the campus, the town. She wanted to bake him some chocolate chip cookies to remind him of her and to celebrate his birthday. Not many 19-year-olds, finally free from the restraints of home for the first time, would concede to celebrating the day with two old ladies, but Logan was the kind of kid who would have done just that. He'd have eaten the cake, walked with Grandma as she shuffled at a snail's pace around his college campus, sat quietly at the table and listened to his mom and grandma discuss grocery prices, then hugged us goodbye and, tucking the cookies under his arm, he'd have talked to himself as he walked back to his new life. When his friends asked him about it later, he'd probably have said his birthday was boring as hell, but he'd have been kind to us as we celebrated.

The day of the auction finally arrived. Saturday, September 3, 2011. My plan was to spend Sunday cleaning and re-organizing the house and baking that chocolate cake. But, God doesn't seem to care if your house is ready for a death in the family. The real disaster, for about 20 hours after I got the news about Logy, was that my house was not fit for company. I have come to see that, when the world falls down around you, when you have lost sight of your feet and the feel of the earth beneath you, God does what it takes to keep your mind from caving in on itself. I have heard stories of how detached and cold some people are when they receive the news that they've lost someone dear to them. It's especially shocking when it is the reaction of a mother. Mothers, as a general rule, invest everything they have--emotionally, physically, mentally--in their children. We expect mothers to collapse on the spot from the weight of such a loss. Sometimes God steps in, wrapping the mind carefully with the things it can still control, and little by little, allows reality to trickle down through the layers, in amounts large enough to allow the grief to begin, but small enough to keep sanity from escaping.

That night, my husband and I crawled into bed. It took every effort I had to breathe in and back out again. I had to concentrate to make it happen. It felt like an elephant had wedged its ass between my heart and my lungs. I whispered, "Do you think he knew that I loved him? Did I show it? Did I just say it? Did I boss and push and peck and point and correct, or did I show him what he was to me? Did I love him big enough?" We whispered our fears back and forth in the dark. Exhausted, my husband finally fell asleep. I kept pushing air in and out, around the elephant's ass, but sleep eluded me. I crawled out of bed and started cleaning my house. I finished at 5 am. It wasn't perfect, but it was mourner ready.

Here's a little background on my son. His name was Logan; he was the second of three brothers. Bright and quirky, he was an observer, a listener, a sage. His life's longest lasting dream was to attend college. On August 21st, 2011, we loaded his belongings into the old Ford Taurus he drove. He didn't want to take the car to school. He felt, instead, that I should simply drop him off. He loved to walk, the town was small, and he couldn't see the sense in paying for parking a car he really didn't need. He was practical, like that. I talked him into taking it anyway. I told him that, if he decided it was completely useless, he could always leave it home on his next visit. I was pushy, like that. Twelve days later, on September 3rd, 2011, two days shy of his 19th birthday, Logan drove that car through a stop sign at a rural intersection, was broadsided by a truck, and died at the scene of the accident. Due to the extent of his injuries, we never got to see him before he was buried. I dropped him off at college to begin living his dream, and I never saw his face again. He was here, then he was gone. It still doesn't seem real.

I was at my uncle's auction, bidding on a dresser, when I felt a tug on my arm. I turned around and there stood my husband. We are dairy farmers by trade, and he was wearing his dirty barn clothes; I could smell the farm on him, and it was out of place there. He had a look that made me think he was furious at me. He pulled me toward the door and I stumbled, trying to get my footing. My first thought was that he was upset that I had bought two dressers. He's not the kind of fellow who gets mad easy. Definitely not about two auction sale dressers. I said, "What are you doing?" He walked faster, forcing me to follow him. "What in the hell is the matter with you?!"

He dragged me out the door and turned to me and said, "Logan was in an accident. He didn't make it." I was still thinking about the dressers I had bought, but didn't really need. I stared at him. What I had thought was fury on his face was actually something I'd never seen before. I simply didn't recognize it.

"What are you talking about? Why are you here?"

"Logan was in an accident, Mom. He died. The State trooper came and told me." In an instant my vision narrowed, the outer edges of it filling with black sand. What lay before me was not the concrete on which I stood, but rather a huge black hole. I felt my feet tilting forward, pulled by a force heavier than me. The sand kept pouring around the frame of my sight, working ever closer to the middle, suffocating me with its weight. My husband grabbed me and hugged me. In that moment, I felt like I could do one of two things: I could free fall forward, into that great abyss, or I could start clawing for a hold that would at least keep me rooted until I figured out where in the hell my world had gone. Everything inside me told me to fall...except one small point of light that I could still see through that sand. I sat down on the concrete, and I don't remember much, other than, when I stood up again, there was a large crowd of people around us. I thought, dear God, my house is such a mess and these people will probably follow us home!

A year, two weeks, three days, ten hours.

I started this blog as a way to write myself through the grief of losing my son. Every time I'd come here to write, however, the words just turned to cold molasses in my brain. I would have thought the burning in my chest and eyes would have warmed them up again and helped them flow a little. No such luck. Here I am, one year, two weeks, three days, and 10 hours since my boy died, finally making an honest effort at it.

It's been quite a year. Anguishing in many ways. Peaceful in strange ways. A blessing in humbling ways. September 3rd, 2011 either changed me or revealed me. I'm very unsure which it is, or if it's both. When I look back to the person I was on September 2nd, 2011, I simply don't want to recognize myself. If grief has gifted me with anything, it is more passion, compassion, and humility. If it has taken anything from me, it is confidence, pride, and innocence.

People remark all the time "I'm so blessed". I see it every day on facebook. I used to say the same thing. I still do; only now I actually understand the depth of the blessings in my life. I realize that it is the very essence of death that makes the spirit of life so sweet. It is in looking back that I understand how rich I was. It is in looking back that I see how rich I am.