Holding
I have contemplated the death of my child.
I wrote this in December 2012, just days after the Sandy Hook massacre. It’s not an easy read, but it remains all too relevant.
The background knowledge you need is that I’m the mother of a two-time cancer survivor. My second son Austin was diagnosed with a rare form of bilateral kidney cancer in 2007 when he was just ten months old and again at age 3.
So I have contemplated the death of my child.
My husband and I had that horrid conversation the other day, the one I imagine many parents of sick children have had this weekend. It’s a rather gut-wrenching thing to bring up, but it’s hard to avoid at times like this: Which do you think is worse, losing a child to something like cancer or losing a child to something like a school shooting?
My answer was quick and unequivocal: School shooting, no question. Now let me be very clear — there is no good way to lose a child. No good way. None of the options are remotely acceptable, remotely okay. But I have spent years envisioning what our last days and moments with Austin would be like and they’re actually pretty lovely. Not happy or good, mind you; nowhere near ideal. But they’d be filled with an overwhelming display of love. Every minute and every second would be spent holding and comforting, rocking and visiting, crying and remembering, singing and even laughing. And loving and loving and loving.
I’m not naive. I know it would be horrid. It would be painful and ugly and completely and utterly heartbreaking. But I would hold him. I would get as physically close as whatever machines or tubes he might be hooked to would allow, and I would wrap myself around him and hold him to the end, til he drew his last breath. And that would count for something.
These parents in Connecticut did not get that. When they went to bed on Friday night, their babies were still lying on the cold floor of their classrooms, covered in blood and marked with numbered tags (#22, #23 . . .), unmoved, untouched, part of a crime scene. Those mothers and fathers never got to touch their children again, never even got to see them again. Never, not even dead; the coroner said the parents were shown only photographs to spare them the agony of viewing the actual bodies in such a horrific state.
But I think I would want to see. I know that may not be wise, that there are professionals who make these recommendations for a reason and that it would be an unbearable image I’d never be able to shake from my mind. But so would the photo, right? I mean, is that truly any easier? Would the made-up image in my head be an easier? I would want to touch my child’s body one more time. Touch their hair, stroke their cheek, kiss their lips, even cold and lifeless. I would not know how to go on without that.
My husband’s not so sure. He thinks the years of pain and suffering that children who die of cancer have to endure might be worse than the single moment of fear. He’s right, if you’re thinking of the one who dies, if you’re thinking only of the victims. Those children on Friday did not suffer long.
But their parents will suffer forever.
And I choose holding.
