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As the Sixth Year Approaches Back to The Expanded Sky |
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| by Alice Wisler | |||
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A stranger asked about you the other day. He saw the "Our Son, Loved and Remembered" bumper sticker. I told him — it always takes something from deep within me to tell your story. I'm not sure why he wanted to know. He thanked me when I finished. I still count the stars and wonder where you are among them. Your five-year-old sister questions where Heaven lies and although I have pondered for more years than she has lived, I still don't know. To think you know so much about God, and more about eternity than I do, baffles me. I fight to control my temper, to be kind to those who have no clue about disease and children and yearning and hardship, and you, you have it all together. My little four-year-old, a saint among the saints. Sitting next to Saint Peter and Saint Paul and me, still down here, struggling with how to get peanut butter out of the living room carpet. | |||
| More from Alice Wisler | |||
| I cling to this year,
not wanting it to end, because then it will be getting close to six years since you died. Six years since I held
your face... When they ask, "how long has it been?" I will have to adjust to the new answer — six years.
Some days I don't cry. But what triggers when I do, I often haven't a concrete idea. Why did I cry and want to continue at that meeting a few weeks ago? It was not a special day or your birthday or anniversary. Why is it hard to grow older and watch all around me grow and change, as you are left behind with no new pictures, no new Christmas toys? There is a large and lonely gap between your eldest sister Rachel and younger brother. That place was where you once filled at just two years younger than Rachel. Your younger brother and younger sister are older than you were at death, making the four-year-old memories of you now the baby of the family. Four — riding in the toy jeep, picking tomatoes from the garden, eating watermelon on the driveway, peeing in the bushes, asking me to make cinnamon toast for breakfast, and sailing down the playground slide. Forever four. And four is so small. I used to think it was big because you made it seem courageous and strong. You bravely sat while they checked your blood, your heart, and let the chemo wash through your veins. The pictures show me now that although you were wiser than your years, you were still only a tiny boy seated on my lap. Forever four. No more chapters written for you on this earth. Your book had barely begun and yet, even in its few pages, today there are still revelations about your life and death that leave me breathless. I'm glad for strangers who ask about you. Although telling your story always stings because of the reality that you are gone, it also soothes. It is a chance to proclaim that you lived, you lived, yes, you really did live. You had a favorite color and cereal. You delighted in making people laugh. That stranger who asked about you the other day thanked me. I found my voice and told him, "Thank you." |
Living Life from the Graveyard Is There Laughter After Death? Grief Meets the Answering Machine There is Nothing Wrong with You! Scared to Death of Dying and Denying Grief | ||
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As long as others ask, as long as I can feel your fingers curled inside my hand — even if only in the warmth of my memory — I think I can make it. I think I can wrestle and grapple with year six. How Small Four Is... How small four is... | |||
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