What happened to your son? It’s a fair question. The “what” of a tragic “Event” is always morbidly fascinating to the Listener, but retelling the story somehow leaves me cannibalized. Mere words only compartmentalize the pain, make it palatable and unbearably Normal …for the Listener. And in the end, the Story I tell is not mine (it’s a diluted version of The Truth because The Truth is too awful to report; it makes others squirm. And lets face it, no one knows why “bad things happen to good people” or what exactly God’s “Plan” is when a child is taken first).
What happened to my son is simply this: he was spirited away and now I’m free falling over a cliff. The End. Only it isn’t The End. The End is Never Ending.
Somehow life continues like some kind of apology. So sorry for your loss but….got to go. Traffic jams, dockets, legal briefs, deadlines, clients, crimes. Time. It keeps passing. Tidy closure is mere illusion. Learn from this experience, a judge echoes the response most Helpers give when their words are so inadequate. But he says it to my client, as if his crime is an experience. As if he can go away for years and learn what it means to be human again, to suffer, to feel– anger, regret, remorse, forgiveness.
I want to go away for life.