To The Last Time I Held Rainer

We were lucky. We knew exactly when he would die, and we would be there. We would hold him on our lap and the doctor sat with us and the nurse turned off all the machines and took out the ventilator tube. 

We were lucky because we got tell him everything we hoped he’d ever hear. Our voices were the last voices he heard. The lights were dim, and for the first time in his life, it was like being in just a room, a living room.

We were lucky because it’s rare to know when the person you love most in the whole world is going to die.

A girl, 4, wanders off while the family is camping. They are cleaning up after lunch and have all misunderstood who is watch Annie.

The high school kids are happy summer is finally here. This is the last summer before they all leave for college. They have the music up. They hit the train tracks too hard.

She said goodnight to her dad and took her book off the couch on the way to bed. Her dad has a massive heart attack that night.

She was spending the night away. Her mom shot herself while her dad was fixing her breakfast.

We were lucky.

But I didn’t get it. The distance--emotional, spiritual, logical--between my head and my heart was unbridgeable. We left the hospital, and I hate to say I felt relief, but I did. I actually thought that whatever that nightmare was, it was over. And now when can get on with our lives. Together.

I could not yet conceive that, even though he had just died, he wasn’t coming home. All the clothes we had would go unworn. We wouldn’t need the crib. The car seat. I couldn’t even think it, imagine it. Survive it. I told someone on the phone the night he died, “We should all be so lucky to die that way.” And I fully expected that in the morning, we would go back to the hospital and find him fine, wrapped in the standard nursery blanket. Like it was somehow a misunderstanding.

The next morning, when I start to get dressed and realize that there is nothing to get dressed for, I want to take it all back. I said I was relieved, but I wasn’t. I thought it was quiet, but I can’t stop hearing the sound of her turning off the machine. I want to undo my entire life that has led to this morning. I said we should all get to die like that. 

But we shouldn’t.