The Summer of my Grief

I have a photo of myself, Stevie and his little brother Scotty, my three brothers and my sister, taken on the lawn of a local park in the town where my siblings and I grew up. At 12, I was the oldest, and as if in practice for motherhood, I'm cradling Scotty on my lap as he smiles up at me, mirroring my own big grin. Stevie, 9 or 10, brings up the rear, holding a baseball bat; he looks ready for a game. Stevie's parents were caring for us at our home at that time while our parents were traveling in Europe, and all was going well. Our shining faces in the photo were a testament to that.

But then all of us kids got sick with a virus. One night I was in the bathroom, bent over the toilet, feeling like I was obliterating part of myself as I expunged the poison of sickness. I wanted only to be alone in this purging, and when Stevie's mom came in, the picture of alarm and concern, I yelled at her to go away. The next day she said, her face still showing her hurt and puzzlement: "I was only trying to help you!" I didn't know how to explain my discomfort at throwing up in front of someone. If I could go back in time, I'd respond differently: "I know you were. Thank you, and I'm sorry I was rude."

Stevie was sicker than any of us. I kept vigil with him and his distraught mother, who spooned food in his mouth as he lay unconscious in bed. I asked, "How can he swallow if he's not awake?"

"It's automatic, " she replied. I felt her anxiety, her helplessness, and I was moved by the poignant softness and innocence in Stevie's heavy-lidded closed eyes, his open, unresisting mouth, his obedient swallowing. I was reminded of my own closed eyes and open, receptive mouth as I knelt at the altar, receiving the Holy Communion wafer. I felt the retreat of Stevie's spirit to a holy place, a place we could not go.

The night I learned he had passed, I became acquainted with grief; I threw myself on my bed, and I felt, like Alice in the dark hall of aloneness and confusion, that I was crying and swimming in a pool of tears.

The next day, a couple who were also close family friends, and who knew Stevie's parents, came by to offer their support. I saw them just outside my bedroom window and called out hello. My voice was probably weak, coming from the small, frightened, overwhelmed part of me, and when they didn't respond or turn around, I assumed, in my sensitivity, that they were ignoring me.
I went to Stevie's mother, confiding my hurt, and in the throes of her overwhelming loss and grief, she had the compassion and patience to reassure me: "No, they just didn't hear. They would not have ignored you."

Our parents came home, and we were happy to see them. Stevie's funeral was held shortly after. Neither I nor my siblings were invited; I guess it was assumed we had been privy to enough already. Afterward, my mother remarked, with distress and a bit of bewilderment, that she had "never heard a woman cry so" as Stevie's mother had at the sight of her son's lifeless body.

For a long time I felt guilt about Stevie's death, assuming he would not have died if his parents hadn't agreed to come and stay with us, thus exposing him to a virus. Only in the last couple of years have I realized that there had to be other factors that led to his death, besides a passing virus. What they were, I still don't know.

I would look at Stevie's mother sadly when when our families got together in the ensuing years, my unspoken feelings clamoring for a voice I could not give them. Only now can I write of of how Stevie's face pierced my heart as he hovered in the twilight zone between life and death, and of how, at the same time, I can still see his face beaming bright as the sun, as he ran and played with us in those happy summer days.