Today is Mathew's Birthday

May 12, 2009

Dear Mathew,

Today would have been your 32nd birthday and for days now I’ve been looking at the date on the calendar and thinking, “Mathew’s birthday is coming up. How should I spend that day? Should it be treated like any other work day or should I do something special that day?”

Over the years since you died I’ve thought those same thoughts and treated the day differently from year to year. Some years I take the day off work and visit the place where we buried your body. I know you are not there, but sometimes going to that place and sitting on the grass and looking at the American flag that waves in the distance and the beautiful mountain behind it makes me feel close to you. You loved those mountains. And as I read the verse Jodi had inscribed at the bottom of the head stone . . . “We Shared a Special Love.” . . . it makes me happy to remember how much you loved each other and how you hated the thought of going anywhere without her and even though you were so young you married her and took her to North Carolina and then to Texas. And as I sat there I would think of your beautiful children. Blue eyed Cody whom you adored and read to and played music for and rocked and fed and diapered and then little Mathew who was born after you died and how those first few years of his life,he looked so much like you did as a little boy-- so much so that I would often stare at him until it made him uncomfortable and he would look at me with your eyes and I could tell he was wondering why I stared at him that way.
I think about how you called me just a few days before you died, so excited to tell me about the names you were thinking of for your baby and how on that last night of your life I had left you a phone message with an idea I had for a name for your son. And I think about Nathan and wonder what would you have done about Nathan? How would you have dealt with that situation once it was there full on?
And then I come back to the day and the celebration and I remember all the crazy birthday cakes I made for you when you were a kid. One year I made you a Christmas tree cake and wrote Merry Birthday Matt on it and another year a school bus cake. No wonder you preferred cheese cake on your birthday.
Some years I’ve listened to the audio tape from your funeral so I could hear again the things that were said about you by family and friends and listen once again to Kelly and Heather and Chris and Stephanie singing some of your favorite songs or songs that reminded us of you and of our loss.
June 30, 2001, the night you died, I had been trying to reach you on the phone and the next day I called to see if you got my message and Josh answered. What was he telling me? That you were killed? and I recall the disbelief and the sudden grief-- It has been almost 8 years now and the disbelief and the grief are still fresh.
I think about the Marine escort who stayed with your body as they flew you home and how serious and respectful he was –such a hard job for such a young Marine. And I recall seeing your body at the mortuary and how I touched your hands, your long fingers, so much like mine, and your beautiful, thick hair. And then later, at the funeral, there you were in your dress uniform lying there so still and white gloved. And I remember all those Marines that flew in for your funeral—what an out pouring of support from the Marine Corps for someone who did not die in combat—It is still so touching and meaningful to me. All those Marines lining up to talk to me one by one and sharing a story about you or telling me what a good Marine you were, what a good friend you were. Are they trained to say those things to comfort the mother?
I think about how Wil had a terrible sun burn because I was too distracted and grief stricken to care for him and how people kept patting him on his sore, red back during the funeral. And Amanda, how I hurt for her that day. How I still hurt for her and sense how deep her grief is over your loss.

Today I read a passage in Carol Lynn Pearson’s book looking for inspiration to guide me this day. Carol Lynn had a daughter that died suddenly of a brain tumor.
The chapter is titled Death and Beyond and here is what she wrote:
A tiny rip in the curtain that covers mortality, just big enough for a synchronistic message to get through. Death. The huge and final mystery.
How I wished I could have a near-death experience without nearly dying. How I have envied those who have had their loved ones appear to them in a vision. How I yearn to believe everything I read from those who visit the other side for a moment and come back with thrilling tales of light and incomparable love.
The curtain is solid as I reach out and finger it, except for tiny rips just big enough for a synchronistic message to get through, sometimes a message about life that we call death.

I can name a few things that could be taken as synchronistic messages since you died. But I do wish there was something more to prove that you still are. Some days I believe with a belief so strong I could argue the point with those who tell me there is no life after death, but other days I doubt with a doubt nearly as strong.

I can still hear your voice in my head with the way you always began phone conversations with me . . . ”Hey Ma” ---

I have a recording of your voice when you left a message on the answering machine after you and Josh visited that January the year before the last time I saw you. You called to thank us for everything. I loved that visit. I loved that you brought your friend to our house to stay on that trip.

And I think of the voice message we got on our answering machine soon after you died. It just said “hey”, but it sounded so much like you that Ray called me in to the room to hear it. Was that a rip in the curtain or someone who sounded just like you calling our phone and leaving a message that said “hey” just like you used to say it and then hanging up?

So, today I sit in my office attempting to work as if it were any other work day and I find that’s not possible, so I stop and I light a candle for you and I write your name on my Reiki grid and in my heart I say a prayer that I hope you can hear and I wish for a rip in the curtain big enough for you to send me some kind of sign. A sign that you can hear me and hear what is in my heart and heal this hole that never heals because you are gone.

And now tears cloud my vision and I can’t see to type this anymore. But I want to continue writing. I want to write a tribute to you, to your life and put it somewhere to share. I want people to know that I had a son named Mathew and that I loved him and he made me proud. I want the world to know that he lived and then he died. That we all die and what happens after that nobody really knows for sure. Life after death can’t be proven, but sometimes we have to hold on to the belief that there is something more, because without that belief, how do we go on living with the loss of a child?

*footnote: I just got an email from a co-worker in another state who has no idea that today is Mathew’s birthday, but for some reason in almost the same instance that I wrote about wanting some kind of sign, he wrote that people were meeting today and enjoying birthday cake.