Imagination

It has been two years. Two years. When I opened my eyes this morning, I thought, "I love you more than I ever have." Evan's life on earth stopped at 22 years, but somehow my love for him increases as it would have if he were alive. This is an unexpected reality of living after Evan.

I've made it two years. Two years. In the beginning, I wondered how I would feel at six months and if I could even make it that far. For 22 years, I had only been away from him for at most three months. I remember in middle school he left for a week on a school trip. One of his teachers reamed me out because she had been so fed up with his constant, over-the-top behavior. My response was not pretty because for that week I felt like a void had sucked spontaneous joy and unbounded energy out of our lives. The house was too quiet. That was my reference point for life without Evan's physical presence.

In the beginning, the prospect of decades without Evan seemed impossible. I still felt that way last summer when it was approaching one year. While visiting South Africa early last summer, I met an 83-year-old woman whose brother had been a revolutionary and locked up on Robben Island and whose husband had been a boxer named Lucky. Both fascinating men, but it was her story that helped me to hold on. She was a volunteer at the exhibit South Africa in the Making in Durban, and our conversation about life and history was so easy. As we were chatting, I mentioned to her that I missed my son who had died almost a year before. That's when she told me she had lost her only two children, daughters. Both died at around the same age as Evan. That young adult age when you are on the edge of promise.

I couldn't believe that I was sitting with this engaging, kind, intelligent, healthy octogenarian who had lost both of her children. She was doing what I wanted to do. Live. Keep living. Fully live. Live long. So I told her that living seems like a difficult task and asked how did she keep on going. She told me two things. One strategy I am holding on to and the other I've had to release. She said she had no choice, but to keep moving. Her husband, weakened from his career as a boxer, didn't fare well after the loss of the children. She had to work and live and be or both of them would have floundered, then an entire family would have been gone. In caring for her husband and herself, she had a reason to keep going that developed into a reason to keep living.

My daughter was my reason. In the first year, I poured everything I could into loving her. Granted, I was incredibly fragile, but I made sure to block out large chunks of time every day that were dedicated to nurturing her. I listened to more middle school drama stories than I think I would have before and I tried my best to keep our relationship open and listen to her feelings. So maybe my instinct to mother more was helping to save my live and put me on the path of a full life.

My new elderly friend's second strategy sounded great when she told me. I said, "How have you been able to make it so long without your daughters? It hurts so much. I want to be an elder like you. How do you manage this pain?" She told me that sometimes she pretends her daughters are just living abroad like the children of some of her friends. They are alive elsewhere. She just doesn't get to be with them. Now, she was not saying that she believed they were alive and living in New Zealand. She imagines.

I entered the first few months of the second year without Evan with that strategy in my tool belt. I didn't tell anyone though. Well, no one except my mother who didn't say it intially, but ultimately shared her opinion that pretending can't possibly work out well in the long run.

So when I met someone new and they asked how many children do you have? I simply said, "Two." I didn't say, "Two, one is a middle schooler, the other is in heaven." Or "Two, one daughter and one son who passed away." I just said, "Two." I was at a holiday party and a couple I had just met started sharing funny stories about their daughter which reminded me of funny stories about Evan so I shared and we laughed in that way parents do when we find our common bond in parenting. Only they didn't know that I had been living in a parent's worst nightmare. And for a moment I wasn't in a nightmare because pretending he was still with us felt like he was still with us. For temporary relief from the pain, this imagination thing worked.

But really, for me anyway, chatting with strangers about a son who they think is alive, but I know is dead only served to numb the physical pain and block the emotional pain. The damage was still there, but the healing and the lessons were being blocked. My hope had been to return to South Africa this summer. My new friend had told me that if she was alive, I should find her. I hope she is still well and living. If I could, I'd ask her more questions and tell her more of my story.

I still feel robbed of witnessing his wedding, his fathering, his building a life. But my love for Evan seems to go deeper and deeper. Maybe it's the lessons I'm learning about how to live by reflecting honestly on how he lived. Despite his very human struggles, he was the freest person I knew. Maybe I misunderstood my friend's way of using imagination to deal with the pain. Or maybe not. Anyway, it has been two years and I've made it. Today I smile and I cry.