September 28

 On September 28, 1984, I was getting ready to go to work at Lansing Community College and putting on make-up in the half bath off the kitchen. I heard the music of the Platters tumbling down the backstairs of our two-storey home.

After bounding down the stairs two steps at a time, my son, Andrew, asked: “How did the Platters make their moves to that music?“ Since that was my musical era, I showed him, and we took a few steps together in the kitchen. Andrew gobbled down peanut butter toast and worried out loud about the results of his calculus exam waiting for him. I hugged his boy/man shoulders, told him I loved him, and whispered in his ear that his humanity was more than a calculus score. “I don’t want to go to LCC! ” he said. I defended my part-time employer as he walked backwards out to his car. “It isn’t such a bad place!” Andrew had high goals for himself but his buoyant life sometimes got in his way of achieving them.

He started his music career in second grade with Suzuki violin lessons  - the violin was his passion since he was five years old.  I don’t know why it took me two years to be convinced he was serious. Andrew stuck with the violin until eighth grade when the strings of the guitar urged him to switch instruments - first to acoustic and then electric. 

He collected LP albums - ACDC, Prince, Sting, Black Sabbath, The Suburbs, and even the Beatles, to name a few. But, his taste expanded to my collection from the 50s and 60s as well as classical. He was the official disc jockey for high school dances and his mixed tapes were distributed to his friends and friends of friends.  

The heated humidity turned to rain that subsided as I drove home at 5 in the afternoon and found an empty house.  A scribbled note was on the kitchen counter. “Home at 11:30. Lub U,  Annu” - a phrase he used lovingly reserved for only me - a reference to developing speech long ago.

The ornate oak door rang disturbing my nap on the couch.  It was Mr. Silsby who I knew by sight but didn’t know personally.  Lisa Silsby was in a big group of friends who were decorating the Senior float in their barn for the Homecoming Parade that night, and Andrew and Mike were headed there.

A bad accident had occurred on Everly Road about five miles from our house.  Andrew was a passenger in a Bronco and he was thrown through the windshield; the car rolled and landed on him.  It was bad, very bad. Did I understand that?  

When we arrived at the scene of the accident, everything was already cleared. We drove to the emergency entrance of Ingham Medical Center.  A doctor met us -  It’s bad, very bad.  Do you know what I mean?

 

Yes, yes, I did. Where is the chapel? “Lord, take him in your care,” I prayed. I simply wanted what was best for Andrew - not for me, or anyone else, only him. The inevitable was announced -  he was dead, brain was seen coming out his ear, an attack on his young heart took him. My husband was bent over and sobbing while I was numb and, like a robot, called my parents, the minister who had recently moved out East.  Someone had already called the house and Megan already knew, so I rushed to be with her. When I arrived, her friends had already rallied and filled the first floor with confused tears and words intending to be of comfort: “It will be alright” which it could never be.

As is often the case, I don't remember much between the day Andrew died and the day of his funeral. But, I do remember we received expressions of disbelief and grief in our living room for a week.

When Megan and I were left with each other, we were both broken and coping in different ways.  She fought terribly hard to seem normal with school and swimming. Megan rarely broke down in my presence but shared her desperate sadness with her friends, I’m told. She rebelled against therapy by not engaging with the therapist who specialized in teenagers in crisis. Her friends, plus her routine, seemed to save her.

Since I was working several part time jobs, I cried and wrote during the transition times in the car. I had to put my sadness somewhere because I felt no one could understand it.  Later I found a group of bereaved parents that formed in the East Lansing area - these people spoke the same language, and we understood each other. Writing and other parents who had lost children saved me. 

For a very long time I had crushing body pain. Since I couldn’t outrun it, I dragged the weight everywhere. Running was impossible, so I swam laps to soothe my aching body and battered soul. When someone offered, I accepted comfort, but because I lived in a small town, I felt as if I wore a shirt announcing, “I lost my son”, and that separated me from others. Except for attending Megan’s sporting events, I laid low.

My grief left me emotionally exposed. As time passed by an inch at a time, I forgave fate - the uneven county road, the car that was known to be unstable, the driver who escaped without a scratch.

Three years after this pivotal, life-altering day, I developed breast cancer, and the surgeon told me the lesion was directly on top of my heart. Indeed, it had been injured. But, there is nothing that can impale my heart again. And, if some other tragedy strikes, I know I will be broken, but I will survive.