by Shey Stahl
It brought a surge of emotion over me as the dock rocked with a subtle wind. For twenty-five years we’d experienced more than most could ever conceive of enduring, but this woman in my arms had been through it with me. Cancer, death, plane crashes…retaliation…
Losing our Jack was by far the hardest.
My arms tightened around her, deep sobs racking inside the two of us. Words weren’t necessary. We both knew the impact this was going to have on everyone.
It was right then that I was reminded of my thoughts when my team plane crashed nine years ago. I compared my thoughts to a reciprocating engine. It was similar to now. In an engine, there were moving pieces inside that engine, systems that keep it running, belts moving, oil flowing and spark. You could take one out of the equation and the engine failed. You depend on those systems to keep everything moving.
Axel
PLANNING THE FUNERAL for him wasn’t easy. It took us two days of being completely broken and in utter shock before we were able to look at everything Alley, Emma and Arie had arranged.
I couldn’t get Lily to leave Jack’s bedroom and I couldn’t go in there.
I wasn’t sure I ever could again.
The day of the funeral, we had to tell the boys. Thankfully Jacen was too young to understand. But that made me sad, too. He’d never realize what a beautiful older brother he had. Jonah understood something was wrong, but he was four, how could he understand this?
“Daddy, something’s happened to Jack. I can’t find him. Everybody’s crying.”
I felt helpless. There was absolutely nothing I could say to them. I couldn’t even comfort myself, what made me think I could comfort them?
Jack and Jonah were very close. They did everything together and now what?
When I didn’t answer, he asked again.
“Daddy…where’s Jack?” Jonah would ask. “Where is he? I looked for him and I can’t find him.”
I kneeled down to his level and took his hands in mine. “Jack had to go to Heaven. God’s with him now.”
His brow scrunched, reminding me of Jack. “I don’t get to see him anymore?”
I shook my head. “Not for a while. When we go to Heaven, he’ll be waiting for us.”
“Oh, okay.” And that was it. He didn’t ask anything else. He seemed okay with the fact that he was up there and safe.
I wish I had that same serenity, but I didn’t.
I took comfort in knowing that to them, this pain wouldn’t last forever. They had childhood innocence and no reality of what death meant.
I wasn’t so lucky.
I didn’t want to plan a funeral. I didn’t want there to be one, because to me, that was final. It was one thing seeing him in that hospital bed, knowing, damn well, he was gone.
It was another seeing the tiny coffin he was laid into.
We were getting ready for the final viewing, just Lily and I, when I saw Tommy limping around, on crutches. The look on Tommy’s face said a lot. I’d seen him mad a few times, angry even, drunk a lot and happy, usually every day.
Sad…that wasn’t something I saw all that often. And crying…never saw that.
But then again, it wasn’t like someone as special as Jack was taken from us everyday.
Tommy came up and hugged me, and then tearfully choked out, “I’ve traveled with this family for over thirty years. You’re my family. I’ve watched you grow up. I’ve looked after you. I looked after Jack. And I couldn’t get to him in time.”
“I know.” Was all I said and then walked away. I knew it wasn’t his fault, but I couldn’t say anything else. I didn’t have the words.
WE WEREN’T GOING to have an open casket. It just wasn’t something we wanted. Not that he didn’t look okay after they cleaned him up, because he did. He looked like our sweet angel boy, but it was too hard on everyone. And with Jonah and Jacen being there, we didn’t want them seeing him like that. Sure, he’d just appear to be sleeping, but it wasn’t a question we were ready to answer when they might ask, ‘Why won’t he wake up?’
Once I saw Jack again, I kept thinking he was just sleeping and that I would wake up from this nightmare.
Lily said a few words to him, kissed his face and then stepped back, leaving me the opportunity to say something to him. I didn’t in the hospital and I knew I needed to right now.
Only I couldn’t. Just like wanting to comfort Tommy, words just wouldn’t form for me.
When they went to close the casket that was when I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
NO! I silently screamed, refusing to believe this was real.
My chest constricted in a tight sharp pain that twisted and burst through my entire body all at once. A sheen of sweat broke out as I tried to take a deep breath but the air in my lungs expelled so quickly I couldn’t get that breath back. It was as if I was trying to give it to him.
This would be the last time I saw his sweet face. I knew then the greatest sorrow I would ever feel was this moment. Having to say goodbye to my son, stare at his face and know that was the very last time I would see it.
Leaning down over him, I kissed his forehead. “Race on, little man, race on,” I said to him, whispering words he would want to hear. My body shook uncontrollably. I had a hard time keeping from falling to my knees in front of the too small casket, before a boy taken too soon.
NATURALLY, EVERYONE WANTED to pay their respects to him, and us. But what I didn’t understand was what they would say to us. People I’d only seen once or twice in my life thought they knew what we were going through.
I didn’t want to hear sympathy. I didn’t want anyone even talking to me.
One person even said to us, “Everything happens for a reason.”
I thought Lily was going to claw the woman’s eyes out.
And then I wanted to when she went onto say, “Hold those babies tight and show them all the love you would have given him.”
What? Was she for fucking real?
Funerals were strange. Surrounded by hundreds of people who wanted to comfort us and the last thing we wanted was comfort. I wanted the pain. At least with pain I felt something. So much of everything else felt numb that the pain was the only indicator I was still alive.
My grandma was there, tears flowing just like everyone else. It was hard to imagine at her age that she hadn’t seen everything this world had to offer, the good and the bad, when in reality, she hadn’t buried a child before.
She didn’t say anything to me. She hugged me, but no words were necessary. She knew that, and I appreciated the silence that morning.
A child’s death, no matter what the circumstances, was senseless.
Unfair.
Your life, and the lives of those who knew them, comes to an erupt halt.
Tears slipped down everyone’s faces, silently, and sometimes not so silently, mourning the loss. And just like it had for us, time stopped for them, too.
Maybe just for today, but it still stopped, and they thought, ‘those poor parents.’
I was that parent.
Yeah, it did feel senseless.
Unfair.
They say it was every parent’s worst nightmare. It was horrific. Something no one wanted to talk about, let alone face.
But for us, it was our reality and one we were going to face for the rest of our lives, whether we wanted to or not.
Thousands of memories of him with his hands in the dirt burned my mind. Memories of him with toy sprint cars lined up and racing while he was barely able to walk. It seemed early on he had an obsession with dirt. And now, we were about to bury him in that very dirt. Everything was a dull ache, my heart squeezing as the memories lingered around the edges of my mind, some more prominent, others more private, ones I had to focus to see. It was a vivid recollection of his life. I didn’t ask to see any of it, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop them. My blood rushed, my body shaking with the pounding of my heart at the unbidden memories. It was one after another of a happy boy, bright-eyed,
life-loving, giving us hope that maybe someday, soon, possibly, we might see a smile like that again. I looked down at Jonah holding my hand and then Jacen in Lily’s arms, his head resting on her chest as tears silently fell over her cheeks and into his blond hair. She looked at me, once, and then her gaze darted back to his grave, unable to hold my stare.
I watched everyone, unable to look at the grave. My parents had their heads bent forward, same as Lily’s parents, tears streaming down their faces.
I looked at Tommy, who was sitting in the wheel chair, his tears falling freely as well.
It seemed everyone was crying.
Everyone but me.
The minister was talking, giving hope to those in pain, but I heard nothing. My eyes were trained on Jack’s casket and the helmets lining it. Each one caught sunlight and reminded me of the cars under the lights at a track. My heart raced at the finality of this moment.
I couldn’t move. I wasn’t sure I was even breathing in those moments, clinging to a hope that I could, again, eventually. My father-in-law removed the helmets from the casket, since it wasn’t something I was going to be able to do.
Within a few minutes, laid deep within the earth, we placed his tiny casket in the dirt. Time stood still. The wind ceased as my breath expelled from my lungs in a heavy, shaking sigh. And then it was clear. This pain would forever be here. It would never going away completely. Perhaps in time, life would go on, but not this pain.
Axel
Pinched - When a race car on the inside squeezes an outside car to the outside wall. This will cause the outside car to slow down and follow.
I DIDN’T WANT TO SMILE anymore. I knew I had to, but when I did, I thought about how unfair it was that I would never see another one of Jack’s smiles. The one that reminded me of Lily. The one that could turn any bad day around.
How could we move on from it?
When I found Lily sitting near a tree directly after the funeral while guests filed from the cemetery to my parents’ house where we were having a celebration of his life, her eyes filled with tears. When she blinked, they spilled over her red cheeks and down to her heavy heart. I wanted to take away the pain. I was her husband. I should have been able to take this pain away from her.
Only…I caused it. I wasn’t watching him and he died.
“I should have never allowed it,” I said to myself, feeling the weight of that day all over again.
I buried my hands in the pockets of my black slacks and took a step closer to her, wondering at what point she was going to tell me to leave her alone.
My feet crunched over fallen leaves, dried and turning colors as the season changed. Only for us, time had stopped. Time didn’t matter, sounds ceased, everything around us was silent. Nothing mattered but the pain we felt, the pain that was suffocating us.
When Lily looked up at me, she started sobbing, almost hysterically, as if my face, my stare was her breaking point. Her desperate cries became louder, as if at that moment she realized this was real, and she was at our seven-year-old son’s funeral and we had just watched him lowered into the ground.
Her palms covered her face as she hunched forward and curled into herself, arms tightly wrapped around her shaking body.
Wanting to offer anything I could to her, my knees gave way beside her.
The moment I was down there with her, I felt her sorrow wash over me, adding to mine, crushing me.
She moved, her hands dropping from her face, moving along to leaves until they found my hands. Her finger drew mine inside of hers. I wanted to hold her, so I brought her to my chest letting her tears soak my white shirt and my suit jacket.
Her tear-stained cheeks pressed to my chest while her broken heart was held in my palms for that moment, giving what I could to my wife.
When I said through sickness and health, through triumph and tragedy, I meant every word. But I never imagined that it’d be like this.
My chest heaved with heavy breaths, gasping as I tried to control the racking sobs moving through me.
“I’m sorry, baby.” I cried into her hair, emptying every emotion I could into the words. “I’m so sorry.”
When she heard my voice, the crack in it, she cried harder, clenching her white knuckled hands into my shirt. My stare caught the shine of her ring that glistened in the sun, a reminder, a memory of a promise I gave. A promise I meant.
It was easy to believe we could make it, but I wasn’t so sure at times.
They say losing a child is the hardest tragedy you could ever face.
I believed that.
Though there were hundreds of people around, everyone seemed to give us the moment alone. Hayden and Casten played with Jonah, and Lily’s parents held Jacen close to them.
I was thankful for the moment with Lily. Other than the moments in the hospital and the brief encounters at the house, we hadn’t been alone, hadn’t had a moment for me to be there for her.
Lily climbed up my body and sat on my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck, fingertips gripping me in a silent plea, her face buried against my cheek. As I held her sadness in my arms, I wondered if I could ever make this better. Would I ever be able to take this pain away?
Her tears wet my skin as her frame shuddered in my hands. I buried my face in her skin, inhaling her sweet scent.
God, did I want to take this pain away from her.
A warm breeze picked up, moving the branches of the tree we were under. The leaves moved, a few finally letting go and falling around us. I shifted, just an inch as I breathed in, my arms winding around her a little tighter when her sobs became hysterical. I wasn’t sure how long she was going to allow me to comfort her, but I’d take anything she’d give right then.
Everyone grieved differently, felt its effects differently. I was in shock, denial that it even happened. Lily, she was the same, but anger was present. She hated that it happened, despised that her baby was taken from her. She was mad at me, blamed me, maybe even hated.
But in the aftermath of the funeral as a warm breeze blew over us, she let me hold her like a husband should.
And it was exactly what our destroyed hearts needed.
My grandpa once said, ‘There are moments that test you, some bring you to your knees.’
This one brought us to our knees.
Within two minutes, Lily pulled away. I didn’t want her to, but she drew back, her hands on my chest pushing me away. Her face was beat red, eyes puffy holding anger with a never-fading flow of tears. She brought a tissue to her right eye, and then the left before standing.
She said nothing, turned, and left me on my knees.
AFTER THE FUNERAL, we went back to my parents’ house where hundreds of people gathered. Just like the last few days, no one left our side, proving to us we had our families to fall back on in this time of need.
“We should think of something for the boys to do,” my mom said to Lily and me when we were outside, watching Jonah and Jacen with Gray. They sensed the sadness and stared at the heavy faces everyone wore with curiosity. What I wouldn’t give to have a child’s innocence right now. “We can’t forget about them today.”
It was just an acknowledgement that we needed to keep the boys busy. That was all my mom was saying, but Lily didn’t take it that way.
“Do you think I don’t care enough about them? Is that it? Are you going to tell me to be thankful I have two left, too? Like one is replaceable?”
“No.” Mom seemed shocked by Lily’s tone, unsure how to answer. Mom was taken back and turned away, but then she looked at her again. “You’re right. I’m not trying to understand your pain. I’m trying to help you get through it. I’ve lost people in my life, Lily. That’s all I was saying. I don’t know what it feels like to lose a child and I’m sorry that you do. I do know what it’s like to watch my first grandson being buried. Everyone feels pain right now. In no way am I trying to say that ours is worse.”
“You’ve never lost a child! You don’t understand. You have
no idea what it feels like, Sway.”
I couldn’t stand back any longer when I saw my mom’s eyes fill with tears. “Come on, that’s enough, Lil. She was only trying to comfort you.”
“Comfort me?” She threw her arms up in the air. “Fuck comforting me.”
Bystanders gawked at the outburst. Hayden and Arie took the kids inside and I stared at my wife, knowing she had every right to feel what she was feeling.
I understood she wanted to blame me, and my family, but it wasn’t fair. This was an accident and she seemed to be quickly forgetting that.
“Lily…” I reached for her hand, only to have her rip it away and walk away.
Shaking my head, I tried reaching for her again, but she took off inside the house, slamming the bathroom door behind her. Mom went the other way, followed closely by Dad.
I didn’t want to face anyone at that point and took off up the road to my parents’ private lake, which was across the street, with a six-pack of beer I found on the counter. An hour later, Casten found me when I was on the dock, his face solemn, eyes red-rimmed. I knew the guilt Casten was carrying around with him. He was supposed to be watching Jack.
“Stay by Uncle Casten, buddy.”
It wasn’t his fault, but he felt as if it was and there was nothing I could say that would make it any easier. I couldn’t make it easier on my wife, so I certainly couldn’t do that for my brother.
He came up and hugged me. Didn’t say anything, just hugged me.
And right then, it was exactly what I needed from my brother. No words. Nobody trying to ease the unbearable pain. No, “I’m so sorry for your loss.” Or worse, “He’s in a better place.”
I didn’t want sympathy.
A hug was what I needed.
Such a simple gesture. No words were necessary. Being present was.
I let him hug me and when he pulled away, he was crying and I was shaking like I was crying, only the tears wouldn’t come.
I was mad at myself that I wasn’t crying with tears. What kind of father didn’t cry at his kid’s funeral?
