Noah's Should-Have-Been 30th Birthday: What I Like to Think ...

Photo by Noah Langholz, 2012.

It’s been 8 years since Noah left us and still sometimes I can’t believe or accept it. The other day I stumbled into a grief surge while singing the old John Prine song “Angels from Montgomery.” Lines from the chorus seized in my throat and I could only croak: Just give me one thing that I can hold on to/To believe in this living is just a hard way to go. Was that how Noah felt in the last weeks or months of his life? How could this precious child have slipped through our grasp?

June 28 will be his should-have-been 30^th birthday. I can’t help dwelling in the fantasy of it: Noah appearing at our door, radiant and healthy in the prime of life. The dogs berserk at his arrival, him leaning down to rough them up. The family party we would have had in the backyard with his trademark birthday apple pie à la mode. The late-night after party he would have had with old friends from the old neighborhood, new friends we’d never met, crowded into the den to binge on wine and movies. His arm around a lover he could be himself with, no airs.

In my daydream, what happened on March 19, 2013, when he was 21 was an attempt, not a suicide. I like to think that after a scary time and setbacks in his early twenties, he would have come back to himself. I visualize him taking charge of his mental health without shame and continuing to reach out to others who were struggling. I like to think he would have quit smoking, started meditating, gone back to surfing and to backpacking with his dad.

I’m not sure he would have managed to graduate from his beloved Wesleyan. But he would have stayed in touch with far-flung college friends and visited his European friends and French host family. I imagine that after stints working on sailboats and teaching English and interning with a photographer he admired, he might have come home to Los Angeles to work in the movie industry. He would have been a quick learner, as always. By 30, maybe he would have landed a photography job with a production company and been helping friends on their independent film projects, still aspiring to be a filmmaker himself. Might he have been relieved to step into a new decade and leave behind the troubles of his twenties?

I have to believe that Noah and I would have reconciled. He would have hugged and teased me again and sat down for the occasional heart-to-heart. And he would have drawn ever closer to his older brother Ben, joining him on Himalayan treks and Burning Man installations (though Ben may not have been living overseas or making art the way he has without having lost his brother the way he did). As they moved further into adulthood, I would have so treasured times when I could cook and hike and watch films with both my beautiful boys.

It’s hard enough for parents to get used to the idea of a living child reaching the milestone of 30. When a child dies at 21, their should-have-been 30^th is all the more unsettling; we have no map for the intervening years. "He was still so young," says my husband, "he could have gone in so many different directions." All I can do is let the fantasy roll with wishes for Noah’s health and happiness--and with sorrow that I’ll never get to know and love his future self. 

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To my fellow survivors: What fantasies of your loved one come to mind as time passes since your loss? What future self do you imagine for them? I hope these thoughts of what might have been are comforting ways to stay connected.