Chapter 1
The road to recovery for my family has been a constant and never-ending journey. This does not mean that we walk around with downtrodden faces for the rest of our lives. Sure, we still have moments when we break down and weep for our loss, but we also still work, play, smile and laugh. The funny thing about life is that just because we see an end to it, does not mean our lives nor the lives of the world end. You smile fondly at the good memories and do what you must through the rest when they pop into your head for a visit. And when the wounds are still fresh, you do what you must to not destroy yourself or those around you. If either my wife or myself had taken in a single drink of something harder than Mountain Dew, we may still be drinking away our days, robbing those who we care about and who care about us of the time we all have left. That is something very important, we do not get to know when the time is up. Which leads me into this tale.
As I told you in part one, my wife had a positive pregnancy test just before we went through our personal Hell. While we had been planning for our son’s wake and cremation, my tardiness on rent caught up. I received a phone call from my landlord. He was demanding his back rent, which is fair enough, can’t have people stealing shelter. However, two things went against this situation. First of all, my wife is very emotionally close to the surface when it comes to being angry. The second factor that was a sign of nothing good was that he called while we sat in the car. Not bad in itself, right? However, we were at the funeral home, smoking a cigarette to steady our nerves as we picked out an urn for our baby on a shelf. I had my phone on speaker, and naturally my wife heard as my landlord decided to chest up at me when I didn’t have the money. She hung up on him and he left me a voicemail. “Get out by New Years. If you want to talk, then call me when the bitch isn’t around.” We couldn’t help but laugh for a second before we started to scramble and panic for a new place to rent.
Fast forward a bit, missing the move and everyone talking to their families for the first time in almost a year. We had driven around town constantly because we simply could not remain in one place. It was like running from the reality of what had happened. We were smoking several packs a day for over a week. I had returned to working, which I was running delivery. I was horrible at it and my demons haunted me every day. For a couple of weeks, I would nearly break into tears while driving in the silence. One day, I came home, and my wife told me about her breakdown.
“I started yelling at God today. He’s a big boy with big shoulders. He can handle it, and he had better not let me die or else I’ll show him who he is fucking with. I told him you took my son. You owe me two.” she took a drag of her smoke, “He does. God, I hate hearing people say he just needed another angel. Angels are angels, people don’t become angels.”
“I know,” I responded absently.
“And another thing,” She started, “I fucking hate it when people ‘I’m sorry,’ when they find out. What the fuck are you sorry for? Did you kill him? Did you have anything to do with it? No? Then don’t be fucking sorry.” tears welled up as she turned to me and asked, “Why him?”
“I’ll take someone simply ‘that sucks’ to me instead,” I replied, “And I honestly don’t know, but I want to find out.”
We had a lot of these conversations and still occasionally have them. But as they say, when it rains, you get shit on too.
One day, I walked into the kitchen and see her son with his head in the freezer, hugging a bottle of tequila rose we had, and had stayed away from. “What are you doing?”
“It’s so hot in here.”
“Actually, it’s rather chilly. Maybe you just need a drink.”
“Can I drink this?”
“No, you are like nine years old. Just make some Kool-Aid.”
“I made two pitchers today, but I’m just so thirsty and hot.”
While my top-notch parenting instincts dismissed it, my wife, as soon as she saw his behavior and how he looked became concerned. “I think something is wrong.” she had said as we talked between exhaling little clouds outside. “I’m taking him to the E.R.” she announced.
To make a long story short, he had developed type one diabetes. This was a challenge in itself since he and my wife were scared of needles and blood made my wife queasy. While they were in the state’s biggest city, I was either at work, trying to fight and losing to my demons while being haunted by my last memory of my son, or I was at home indulging in everything that I should have stayed away from. My loyalty was faulty even in times like these. I hope nobody knows what it is like to lie awake with the most traumatic memories of your life playing before your open eyes. I hope nobody knows what it’s like for your own perversion to keep you from trying to sleep. My wife discovered I was still sick in the head and disloyal very quickly.
After several months, when school was let out, I was working and received a call from my wife as she took her son to GameStop. She bought that kid one of the best first-person shooters ever. My wife and I played it way more than he did. It was a regular staple of our daily lives. We would play that or Minecraft every night. As the pregnancy progressed, we found out that God listens. She was pregnant with two boys. For the sake of privacy, they won’t be named. This time, the pregnancy progressed without too much issue other than paranoia. Apnea monitors would be essential.
For those of you who are not familiar with “Apnea Monitors,” they are devices which hook to leads that are strapped to a baby’s chest to monitor the movement of the chest, and their heart rate. If anything goes too fast or slow, an alarm will sound. This ended up making us jump to our feet and rush wherever they were whenever the microwave or coffee pot beeped. Funny in hindsight, but terrible at the time. The thought of us running like somebody was going to die just because a plate of leftovers was warmed up still makes me grin here…
