Reminders of Him

In a perfect world . . . their son would still be alive.
I wonder what I’ll see in their eyes when they find me at their front
door. Will it be shock? Hatred?
How much does Grace despise me?
I try to put myself in Grace’s shoes sometimes.
I try to imagine the hatred she holds for me—what it must feel like
from her perspective. Sometimes I lie in bed and close my eyes and try to
justify all the reasons this woman is keeping me from knowing my daughter
so that I don’t hate her back.
I think, Kenna—imagine you’re Grace.
Imagine you have a son.
A beautiful young man that you love more than life, more than any
afterlife. And he’s handsome, and he’s accomplished. But most importantly,
he’s kind. Everyone tells you this. Other parents wish their children could
be more like your son. You smile because you’re proud of him.
You’re so proud of him, even when he brings home his new girlfriend,
the one you heard moaning too loud in the middle of the night. The
girlfriend you saw looking around the room while everyone else was
praying over dinner. The girlfriend you caught smoking at eleven at night
on your back patio, but you didn’t say anything; you just hoped your perfect
son would outgrow her soon.
Imagine you get a phone call from your son’s roommate, asking if you
know where he is. He was supposed to show up for work early that day, but
for whatever reason he didn’t show.

---

Imagine your worry, because your son shows. He always shows.
Imagine he doesn’t answer his cell phone when you call to see why he
didn’t show.
Imagine you start to panic as the hours stretch on. Normally, you can
feel him, but you can’t feel him today; you feel full of fear and empty of
pride.
Imagine you start to make phone calls. You call his college, you call
his employer, you’d even call the girlfriend you don’t much care for, if only
you knew her number.
Imagine you hear a car door slam, and you breathe a sigh of relief,
only to fall to the floor when you see the police at your door.
Imagine hearing things like “I’m sorry,” and “accident,” and “car
wreck,” and “didn’t make it.”
Imagine yourself not dying in that moment.
Imagine being forced to go on, to live through that awful night, to
wake up the next day, to be asked to identify his body.
His lifeless body.
A body you created, breathed life into, grew inside of you, taught to
walk and talk and run and be kind to others.
Imagine touching his cold, cold face, your tears falling onto the plastic
bag he’s tucked into, your scream stuck in your throat, silent like the
screams you’ve had in nightmares.
And yet you still live. Somehow.
Somehow you go on without the life you made. You grieve. You’re
too weak to even plan his funeral. You keep wondering why your perfect
son, your kind son, would be so reckless.
You are so devastated, but your heart keeps beating, over and over,
reminding you of all the heartbeats your son will never feel.
Imagine it gets even worse.
Imagine that.
Imagine when you think you’re at rock bottom, you’re introduced to a
whole new cliff you get to fall off when you’re told your son wasn’t even
driving the car that was going way too fast on the gravel.
Imagine being told the wreck was her fault. The girl who smoked the
cigarette and didn’t close her eyes during dinner prayer and moaned too
loud in your quiet house.

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Imagine being told she was careless and so unkind with the life you
grew.
Imagine being told she left him there. “Fled,” they said.
Imagine being told they found her the next day, in her bed, hungover,
covered in mud and gravel and your kind son’s blood.
Imagine being told your perfect son had a perfect pulse and might
have lived a perfect life if only he could have had that wreck with a perfect
girl.
Imagine finding out it didn’t have to be this way.
He wasn’t even dead. Six hours they estimated he had lived. Several
feet he had crawled, searching for you. Needing your help. Bleeding.
Dying.
For hours.
Imagine finding out that the girl who moaned too loud and smoked the
cigarette on your patio at eleven o’clock at night could have saved him.
One phone call she didn’t make.
Three numbers she never dialed.
Five years she served for his life, like you didn’t raise him for
eighteen, watch him flourish on his own for four, and maybe could have
gotten fifty more years with him had she not cut them short.
Imagine having to go on after that.
Now imagine that girl . . . the one you hoped your son would grow out
of . . . imagine after all the pain she’s caused you, she decides to show back
up in your life.
Imagine she has the nerve to knock on your door.
Imagine she smiles in your face.
Asks about her daughter.
Expects to be a part of the tiny little beautiful life your son
miraculously left behind.
Just imagine it. Imagine having to look into the eyes of the girl who
left your son to crawl several feet during his death while she took a nap in
her bed.
Imagine what you would say to her after all this time.
Imagine all the ways you could hurt her back.