Introduction to Book and Opening Poem

This is the season of natural death.

Cold and dark.

Bare branches and frozen earth.

Wind and rain.

Do not give in to despair.

Know what the earth knows.

Watch for rebirth, the rain that passes,

and spring eternal.

Introduction

My first son died when he was just barely four years old. Within a few hours, he was gone. Just like that. In the morning the world was a safe place, by afternoon it was not. One day I had two sons, next day I had one. I had lived with only life and now I would have to live with life and death.

Woman have been birthing and burying their children for ever. This was not a dysfunctional thing. Harder still to accept, was that this was normal, an accident. I knew I would have to suck something out of myself to stay alive. I knew I had to access something primal, deep within my being just to keep going, something I told myself that mothers must have been doing since the beginning of time.

A few days after he died, I knew I would write this book. The first thing I wrote in my journal after the accident was, “Nothing bad has ever happened to me. I knew it had to. It has, oh God, it has. I have gone over the cliff in a car. I have lost my little boy. I can’t write anymore.” I knew I would have to tell the story one day, for him, I said. I hated and avoided this thought for years, as if somehow the book would make his death seem ok and I knew that could never be, so how could I write it? Now, almost twenty years later, I think a part of me used this idea of the book to sustain myself in the face of that tragedy and loss, to separate myself, to observe myself, as an attempt to heal myself. I thought I would write a book for him, now I see; it was for me and now for you.

There are so many things involved with the death of my son that I know it is something I will be struggling to understand the rest of my life; the finality of his death and disappearance, the huge hole it has left in my being, the horror story of the accident, the fact that something like that can even happen and the real life horror stories others have shared with me over the years about the death of their child, or loved one. How do we live with so much pain? How can we carry so much grief?

I wanted to die. Take me, I said. Then suicide was for the first time in my life a consideration, in fact, it was a cheery thought that if I can’t stand the pain I can put an end to it. I spent several weeks exploring this idea. Finally a strong thought came to me, and that was that I had to kill myself, that day, or shut up about it forever. I am not sure exactly what happened next but the thought of suicide disappeared.

Soon after that I saw a photo in the Seattle Times. There had been a huge earthquake in India and the photo showed a woman standing next to her eight children, who were all dead. They were lying on the ground in a row, laid out, youngest to oldest. I looked at that photo and could not even in my deepest grief imagine hers and I got up and began my long ascent back to the living.

The question was not the question of a brooding Hamlet, “To be or not to be,” anymore. The question was, since you obviously are, how are you going to be?

I don’t want to start my story with the accident, but with the winter before, when life was still intact, and I can almost remember how innocent we were and how sweet and simple life was.

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So, anyone on for Chapter 1 - "Never Drive at Night in Mexico"?

Tomorrow, same place. Chapter 1 is funny, I promise.

Thanks for listening, I really appreciate your positive responces!
Love,
me