WE MISS YOU SO

Yesterday your dad and I were watching the last hole of the US Open being played at Congressional Country Club in Washington, DC. Your dad had been watching it all afternoon and had made us a drink and gone outside. The leader, Rory McIlroy, was ahead of his nearest competitor by eight strokes and your dad had lost interest. For some reason I wanted to see the finish. I called to your dad to come out to the den and watch with me. He said we know he is going to win. I said, “Yeah I know but let’s see it to the end”

Your Dad joined me and as Rory McIlroy played the 18^th hole the TV commentators started focusing on his Dad, as-it was Father’s Day. As Rory McIlroy sunk his final putt, he turned and found his Dad and said Happy Father’s Day as they embraced. Both your father and I started crying. 

We miss you so.

TALKING TO ANDREW

     So anyway, Andrew, as I was saying, maybe the relief I felt was real. 

     Maybe your death ended your suffering and gave me some physical relief as well. 

     In addition, it seemed I did not have to worry about you anymore. On the other hand, maybe I had just been waiting for the other shoe to drop and it finally did. Who knows?

      I would not wish this experience on anyone else. It was and is exactly horrible. 

Another thing I read somewhere, cannot remember exactly where right now, but it was the results of a study done in Russia. The idea was to try to determine the effect on the mother cat of an injury or the death of her kittens.

 The gist of the study was that the kittens were separated from their mothers and taken out on submarines to ensure total sensory isolation from their mother.

Then the kittens were killed at sea while the mother’s vital signs-- pulse respiration, blood pressure, etc. -- were monitored at home. 

The mothers demonstrated signs of distress when the kittens were killed even though there was no obvious way that the mothers could know of the kittens’ death.

This made sense to me. 

     Somehow, a mother is connected to a part of her offspring or them to her. The kittens’ pain and death is experienced by the mother cat as personal distress and  perhaps, vice-versa. Of course, I do not understand all this scientifically but somehow it does make sense

WE ARE ALL CONNECTED

 I just read an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about four year old twins conjoined at the head. 

They had a unique connection through a shared thalamus that actually allowed one of them to see things on the television that the other one was looking at even when her back was turned away from the TV. The twin looking at the TV received the stimulation through the eye itself and the other twin through a neural connection. 

The same was true of touches or sensation related to drinking liquids. The story resonated with me, I am not sure why. It may have to do with a feeling I have had all my life that we are all connected and constantly communicating with one another on an unconscious level. 

RELIEF FROM WHAT

     I do know I cried out to your father that I did not know it would be this hard when we knew you were missing but before we knew you were dead. 

     It was almost as if I knew it was coming and maybe wanted it to come, to get relief. Relief from what? 
     
The worst thing has happened, where is the relief? This is hard to talk about and harder yet to understand. 

      I think I may have been suffering with you. Not for you, but in some way the part of my biology--that was in you or you in me or both-- was actively suffering.  

GONE FOR A WHILE

     In speaking of not believing that you were gone, I do not know if that is true. 

     In some ways, you had been gone for a while. 

    This terrible freight train of emotion had been roaring in me for a long time.

      I now believe it was your impending death that some part of me and you were each aware of. 
    
    Who knows?  

CAN'T BELEIVE YOU ARE GONE

I was so glad I did buy you those shoes. 

At your funeral one of your work mates was talking to me about you and she said what a nice man you were, how you made everyone laugh with your rapping. 

She then related an incident of how you came into the office one day on cloud nine showing off your new shoes. 

She could not believe you were gone. Me neither.