Death Plus A Week

It’s been a week almost, since Blake left us. That’s still very real and painful. Keller, you don’t even
understand it fully yet. It hurts to know that, but it provides tremendous comfort knowing that you’re incapable of this pain right now. Like last Tuesday, I cut this morning short, for the same reason – I had
to poop. It happens. Shit happens. All the time. We cannot avoid it. The only way through it is to do it.
Everything else provides false escape. Drugs, alcohol, whatever, they’re mere tools for shutting off a part of you that you can’t escape from. When they’re gone, it’s still there. None of it works permanently. This day last week is playing over and over in my head. It was such a lazy Tuesday, worrying about scheduling patients, getting reimbursements, updating reports, developing plans for the new office. Nothing monumental. Your nanny called, I thought someone was crank calling me, I don’t know why her number wasn’t stored in my phone, it was before. I just heard heavy breathing. Then my name. And she said it. Racing over there, I kept thinking, this doesn’t happen to me, to us, it, life always works out for us. We’re the lucky ones. I opened the door as I’ve done hundreds of times before and she was patting you on the back and bouncing you on her knee like she does after you’ve eaten. For a moment, a fleeting moment, relief, and it was gone when she handed you to me. I tried, Blake. I remembered what to do. I went through it. I gave you your last breaths. I made your heart beat. I tried to give you life. Again. I wasn’t as lucky this time. You weren’t as lucky this time. None of us were lucky this time. They told me you were gone. Keller, you were so brave, so scared, so confused. You laid on your mat, eyes wide awake, not moving. I let you see me cry. I swore I’d never do that. You hugged me, offering a comfort you don’t know, you held me, I helplessly cried and waited for mommy. It’s hard to summarize the worst day of your life into a single paragraph. But, this was not. This was the single worst moment of my life. That morning, your mommy and I got you two ready to go, I was lucky enough to drop you both off. Say goodbye. Say I love you. And left for work like any other day. A normal day.

One day Keller, you’ll grow up and maybe have kids of your own. You’ll be beyond frustrated, tired, confused, concerned, guilty, a gauntlet of emotions will rush over you as a new father. I know, I struggled with you and your brother after your births. I’m not the comforting kind. I get frustrated. I don’t like crying when I can’t console. The crying will go on for what seems like hours, days, weeks. You won’t know what to do. I want you to remember, when you think you’re just too tired to handle it anymore, those cries, they mean your baby is alive. He’s breathing. He’s healthy, maybe. Those cries pale in comparison to the silence. I hope we don’t turn out to be those helicopter parents that force you to miss out on things because of our own anxiety. Our own fears. Our own inability to let go. I want you to do great things. Change the world. Be you. Just be you. You can only learn by living. I can only let you do that by letting go. I wish I was a better dad to your brother. Like I try to be with you, but the truth is, I wasn’t as good with you either when you were his age. I couldn’t handle the screams. I went through the steps. Nothing. I couldn’t console you enough, and handed you to mommy every time. Right around two months, you changed. You grew up. You were and are everything I hoped you’d become. Your brother was at that stage too, he had just started. Sitting with the two of you the Sunday before this past Tuesday is an image, a memory, that’s permanently in my brain. I wish we had more. You and I will. If anything, anything at all that’s good in this, I want to be a better dad, friend, husband, person, for you, your mom, everyone that’s helping us, for me. It hurts knowing I could have been better then. It will hurt more if I can’t be better now. Getting through this isn’t easy. Getting through this is the only thing we can do. Everything seems so trivial, outside of you and your mom. This shall pass, but this scar over our hearts leaves us changed in the way we see it. I hope it’s for the best.