Micah's dad's
story..
; it's been a little over 7 months since my son's death
and as I think back now, I can remember some really sad times.
For example, I remember perfectly getting the telephone call at
work that hot summer day from the Albany, California police
officer. After identifying himself, he asked me a very peculiar
question, "Where are you?" he asked. I asked him if
he was asking me what my home address was. "No." he
said, "Where are you right now?" I told him where I
work and he said he would be there in a few minutes. I remember
thinking as I hung up the phone that he had to be bringing me
bad news. Police officers don't visit you in person with
good news. When he arrived at my work place, he explained how
there has serious accident at River Front Beach that afternoon,
that my 16 year old son, Micah, was part of the accident, and
that there was major impact on the young boy who was there
also. I recognized that he used the term 'major impact'
to let me know that my son likely had a very serious
injury.
After he escorted me to the hospital, and I got the really bad
news. "He didn't make it", the doctor told me, I
felt so strange. He didn't make it, how could that be? I
thought he was still in his bed that morning when I left. When
the doctor said those fateful words to me, I remember how
strange I felt. it just didn't compute. Micah had been a
living breathing soul some hours earlier and now he was gone? I
didn't really feel anger at the time, but I do remember
walking around the waiting room, pounding my left fist into my
right palm saying, "Nothing's right about this.
Nothing's right about this." In retrospect, those were
exactly the right words. Poor Micah, under the right conditions
he could have lived 60, maybe 70 years. Now the rest of his
life was forfeited.
When we got home, there was plenty of phone calls and person
visits. And I think that was a good thing- it helped keep my
mind off the bad news. I remember sitting out in the side yard
that afternoon and watching the garbage truck pick up garbage.
It didn't seem right, here were the garbage men picking up
and emptying the trash cans just like nothing had happened.
That whole first day of death was surreal. I didn't call
the funeral home, I waited on them to call me. I dreaded going
to the funeral home to pick out the casket and select the date
and time for the funeral service. I remember Micah's friend
Caleb had picked out and given me a bag with the clothes to
dress Micah in and how said it felt to hand those clothes to
the staff member at the funeral home. I was quite calm at the
visitation the night before the funeral service. In fact, I was
surprised at myself. I had expected to be upset and somewhat
emotional, but instead i was calm. I was able to have a
conversation with a good friend from the past that I hadn't
seen in a long time. We even laughed about some reminisces from
our past. Why didn't I show more sadness, more remorse? I
realized later that I must have been in emotional shock. It is
my impression that emotional shock is there to protect us, to
allow us "ease into" the new, unpleasant situation.
During the two weeks after my son's death, I puttered
around the house, took walks, and generally carried on like I
had before. I can remember exactly when the emotional shock
ended. I had been back to work about a week. It was 21 says
after my son's death and I was sitting at my desk when a
sadness came on me. I don't know how else to describe it. I
think I shed a few tears and somehow I understood that the
emotional shock was leaving me and that Micah really was gone
and I would never never see him again on earth. My sister gave
me the name and phone number of another bereaved father and
suggested that I call him. I did and he explained to me how his
daughter died in a tragic automobile accident. Then he said
something that really scared me. He told me that he thought the
second year after his daughters death was the hardest. He
said that he kept expected her to come home that first year,
but the second year he knew she wasn't coming home. I know
grieving is a long process but I thought everything was over
with in some reasonable time, a few months,
maybe?
As I look
back now just 7 months later, I've forgotten about some of
the really, hard, sad times. And that shows that time does, in
fact, provide some healing. What if God hadn't build us to
heal physically and emotionally. What if we had to feel exactly
the same intense feelings every day for the rest of our life
that we felt in the early stages? Could we stand it? But in
fact, it does get better and i think there are several things
we could do to help ourselves. As I think back over the
emotions that I felt in the first few weeks after this
accident, I recogonized I did feel sadness and guilt. The guilt
came about because i have been a fairly permissive parent and I
have to remind myself that on him my own son had corrected
serveral things in his life and was going down a better path.
Of course, that almost makes me realize that had it not been
for a simple, horrifying and unexpected error, his life
was about to improve.
I close
with a short poem I wrote about 4 months after my son's
death:
Death is such a final thing,
Or so the saying goes,
It has such a terminal ring,
and keeps us in the threos,
Of sadness beyond bounds,
But just remember this,
The memory of the person goes on,
As long as we refuse to forget.
----------It'sCaleb----------