Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [75]
1997. I had once thought this year would make me sad for he would leave and go to college, and I would write him letters he would not care to read. In anticipation, I had been buying him silly cards whenever I saw them. They sit in a slot above the telephone. Several dozen cards—wordplay and foolishness—all to remind him his mother loved him. I should have buried them with him, for now I cannot throw them out or send them to someone else or look at them. No one warns the grieving that New Year’s will be hard. You expect Christmas. You expect birthdays and the anniversary of their death, but, as I wrote on New Year’s Eve, I did not expect this. I did not expect the evening’s celebration to press against me so. But it has. Why do I keep being surprised? I ought to learn but somehow I do not. There is this constant tugging. I want to get up, walk away from here, leave this life and all the sorrow it has brought, find somewhere else where maybe I can be someone who has not lost her son. I know it is useless, that the loss is not here around me. It is in me, in my every thought, in my empty arms, in my weary, beaten heart. And there is part of me that does not want to leave, does not want to go a place he has not been, see faces he did not see, wear clothes I had not owned when he died. He is, I sometimes think, only in those things that he touched, upon which he gazed, or that he simply knew. I do not want to see Montana; he is not there. I will not travel to Stockholm; he cannot see it, too. And I do not want this new year to come. It has, I know, but I do not want it. I do not want it. Everything was the same as last year. We did not go downtown together to First Night as we had in some years. We stayed home. Last year was home and football and finally Dick Clark. Wade came and went throughout the night, as was his way; between parties or for no reason whatever, he would come home for a bit. The headlights in the drive. His door slamming, maybe he would finish listening to a song before coming in. And then up the steps, two at a time. And he would come in the family room and try to sit just where his Dad was sitting. They’d pretend to fight, and I would make room next to me. Come sit with me, son, I have room here. And he would sit with me, press himself against me. And then as soon be off, returning in an hour or two to repeat the whole routine. That was last year. The year that is gone, is history, like he is. By midnight last year his father and I were in bed, watching the festivities unfold on television. Wade came in a few minutes after, crawled over me, and lay between us. Happy new year, son. That little kiss, the most one could hope for from a young man. Are you in for the night? Yeah, I’m home. Love you guys. And he crawled over me again. I could hear him bound up the back stairs. If I had known it was the last new year’s eve, would I have done anything differently? The edges of the night are a blur, where had he been? I would get that back. I would write that down, write everything, what he wore, what he ate. (Well, that was likely a cola and string cheese. But I would write it down nonetheless.) Write so many details that I could walk into it whenever I wanted, be there again. Once since he died, I have felt that same presence beside me, not the weight of him, but the warmth. In the stillness of night, have you felt something there? I think it was my memory on which he is sufficiently impressed that I can feel his warmth but I cannot quite get my mind around the rest. I want my mind to stop protecting my heart. I want to feel him all. If only I could feel his arms. Maybe if it were last year, I could feel him, feel the weight of him, his breath close against me, and his own smell. Maybe if the year would not change this time. But it changes. And he seems, by the simple changing of a