Another March 19 has arrived. Like clockwork, the star jasmine has burst into bloom, ushering in the season. I breathe in its dizzying scent. What am I to do with this reminder of how sweet the flowers were when my son Noah took his life 12 years ago?
I make a rare trip to the cemetery with my husband, Bryan. Noah’s gravestone looks ancient now amid the many shiny newer ones, whose end dates jump up at me: 2017, 2019, 2023. Why couldn’t he have lived those extra years? How much he could have learned, loved, created; how much more we could have enjoyed him. Why wasn’t he in the midst of a long life, like the old Russians with graves nearby?
Bryan
and I stand over the stone and catch Noah up on the news. The little blips of
our lives: the ski trip we just had with his brother, the 70th
anniversary of his grandparents, how his best friend cooked dinner for us—all places
he should have been. The Eaton wildfire that miraculously spared our house but destroyed
his childhood neighborhood, leaving a wasteland he wouldn’t believe. The larger
disasters swirling around our country and our world at this moment—also at a
scale he wouldn’t have thought possible. How Noah might have
helped us weather these storms.
I tell Noah about my new book of grief poems. For the first time, I read one of the poems aloud to him. It’s about how much I miss him and would gladly “go out to eat w you, anywhere./ Even yr favorite sopping lasts-all-day/chicken burrito at Lucky Boy. You/lucky so long, then not.” Maybe I'll come back to the grave one day and read him the whole book.
As is
customary, we stop to rinse our hands with flowing water before leaving the
cemetery. We’re getting back in the car when a tiny yellow finch alights on the
fountain, a welcome flash of life.
I told
myself a year or two ago that going forward, I would try to pay more attention
to Noah’s birthday than his death day. But March 19 is carved into my
consciousness. It tolls like a gong from my calendar: Beware. Take care. Leave
this day free. So Bryan and I will do what we often do to remember Noah: Start
the day at his favorite donut place. Bring a photo album to take on a walk at
one of his surf spots. Write his name on the beach.
Recently,
I heard the space-age sound of an incoming Skype call on the news and my mind
immediately flew to Noah at 17, calling us from his host family’s home in
France. How I missed him during his long senior year abroad; how I lived to
hear the telltale ping of his Skype call. How little I knew how deeply
depressed he was there after a break-up; might an intervention then have
prevented his crisis at 21? Had I known how short his life would be, might I
have pleaded with him to stay home?
I place
camelias from the yard on Noah’s grave, leave kisses in all the O’s engraved on
his stone.
To
my fellow survivors: How are you moving through your grief and days of
remembrance? What smells or sounds sparks memories of your loved one?
