Page 60 of To Save Him

 

FINISHING GABRIEL’S ROOM left me exhausted in any and every way imaginable.  Everything I touched held a memory and I had wound up keeping far too many things than I should have.  I knew this and still I did it.  But I called one of the thrift stores in town, one who contributed most of their profits to helping the homeless, and they promised to be at my address two days later to pick up the donations.  Brandon enlisted JR’s help and they moved the donation items to the floor of the garage (which was nothing more than a storage spot anyway).  The keeper items also went in that big dusty room, but they were placed on the metal shelves against one wall, above the Christmas decorations, next to other mementos I’d kept of all my offspring’s childhoods.

But that night in bed I realized something.  Yes, I continued to ache for my son, still felt unbearable guilt and loss, but I also noticed something else.  Unlike after his memorial service, where my grief was fresh and raw, I felt something akin to a weight being lifted.  I still had plenty to carry, but there was something…and maybe it was because I’d made our house a little lighter.  Yes, we had Gabriel’s memory, but it was almost as if we’d taken a grave out of our home.  There were still reminders of my son all over the house, but instead of bringing sadness, they reminded us of the joy when he was a physical part of our lives.  His room had merely been a reminder of our loss, a wound not allowed to heal.

I was, somehow, healthier for having cleared his room.

And I felt like I had Brandon to thank.  My way of showing gratitude to him was going to be by helping him, something I would have done anyway, without the return favor he’d already given me.  But this young man had suffered enough in his short life and I felt like, on some level, helping him was something my son would have wanted, too.  The gesture was also a way of honoring my son’s memory.  That Brandon and Gabriel had been like brothers told me all I needed to know, and I knew helping him was something I had to do.

He was already asleep, but I tightened my hug on him for a few moments, as if trying to communicate everything in my mind.  His return squeeze reassured me that he could sense my intentions, if not my thoughts.

Tomorrow would be a fresh day…maybe the first day of the rest of our lives.

 

* * *

 

I KNOW MOST people hate Mondays.  I get that.  To me, despising that particular day is an indication that we’re doing something we hate with our lives, because we’ve had a couple of days off, time to do whatever the hell we want, and then we’re having to return to lawful servitude so that we can continue to enjoy our few hours to ourselves in comfort.

But Mondays also signal something else—they’re like January, full of opportunities to create resolutions or begin something new.  Sundays might be the first day of the week, but for a lot of people, Mondays are the first day of the business week, the first day out of seven to get things done.  And Brandon and I had decided that Monday was the day we were going to focus on him.

On healing.  On finding solutions for his weary brain.

I had told him aboutThe Listthe week before and so we’d set him up one for himself that he could follow, no matter what his work schedule was like…and I modified mine so we could do our morning routine together.  A brisk walk, followed by coffee and meditation, something I’d dabbled in but never really succeeded at because I couldn’t quiet my mind enough to find that inner calm place—although, I suspected, yoga could help with that as well.  But then, after meditation, yes, we would do yoga.  He was also going to start keeping a journal like I did, except he would do that later in the day.  He wanted to use it to reflect back on the day’s events, examining his feelings and recording if anything in particular seemed to work.  We also decided no more processed food, so we’d shopped over the weekend, buying fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and the like, and put together a menu.

And we were going to cook together, except on nights when he had to work.

Oh, and one last touch…aromatherapy.  Much as I hated the scent of lavender, it supposedly had a calming effect on people, so we bought a few lavender plants from Brandon’s employer and planted them in both the front and back yards.  I couldn’t bear to have the essential oils or candles in the house and, perhaps, if I’d been more convinced that it could help Brandon, I might have done more on that front.  But I was hopeful that what we had planned already would help.

The sky was now light when I took my morning walks and, by the time I arrived back at the house, the sun would be shining brightly.  I knew I still had another month of the sun coming up earlier and earlier and—the best part—I no longer had to wear a jacket for my walks unless it was overcast or cooler than usual.  This was my favorite time of year to walk, because everything felt fresh and alive—and I knew that, even if the daily walks wouldn’t do wonders for Brandon’s state of mind, they certainly couldn’t hurt.

When we got back to the house, we decided to do meditation before coffee.  Because I hadn’t been successful at it previously and Brandon had never tried it, we’d done a lot of research and preparation for it.  We’d cleared one corner in my office and set a plain black square end table in that corner.  One small candle, white and unscented, sat on the table next to a lighter.  From all our reading, we knew that if we had a hard time finding a free and uncluttered state of mind, we could focus on the candle’s flame instead of the dark in our heads.

Our main goal was to find some kind of inner peace based on quieting our minds.  I couldn’t speak for Brandon, but I knew my mind often raced.  When I’d been in the fits of major depression, my brain would instead fixate on one idea and not let the damned thing go—which was just as dangerous as having a mind that wandered or flew off in several different directions.  I was hoping I could find focus from this exercise but that Brandon could find serenity.

Five minutes on days one and two, bumped up to ten for the rest of the week, and then we decided we’d debrief on Sunday and decide what worked and what didn’t—out of everything we’d tried.

He and I sat on the floor of my office after lighting the candle.  “We try to push everything out, right?”

“Yes.  And, if you have a hard time clearing your mind, that’s what your mantra’s for.”

He nodded.  “And it doesn’t matter what it is.”

I gave him a gentle smile.  When we’d chosen our mantras, he hadn’t wanted to share his with me.  I gathered that it had some highly personal meaning for him, and I chose to respect that.  I’d shared mine with him, though, because he was having a difficult time coming up with one in the first place.  If I got stuck or had a hard time meditating, I was going to repeat my mantra in my head over and over, slowly, rhythmically, until I could focus on simply being.  I hadn’t come up with mine on my own; instead, I’d done some research before finally coming up with one that spoke to me. My life starts now.

So I was actually looking forward to trying meditation once more.  The idea of Monday, of this whole week, of taking this healing journey with Brandon felt like renewal for myself as well, and I was embracing the opportunity.  I lit the candle and set the timer on my phone.  I gave Brandon a small smile and nod and then closed my eyes.  Like all our research had instructed us, I pulled in a deep slow breath through my nose and centered my focus on my forehead, imagining that was where my mind was—where itfeltlike it was (just as my soul and emotion seemed to emanate from my chest).  One slow breath in and one out.  Rhythmic.  Calming.  Did my mind wander?  Hell, yes.  In fact, I thought of Brandon most of the time, wondering and worrying if this was doing him any good, wondering if he was going to continue trying it.  I could tell that this practicewouldbe good for me, if I could let all thought go.

This was going to be harder than I thought.

And the timer went off.

I let out a long, slow breath and then forced my eyes open, feeling for the phone on the floor beside me.  I swiped it to turn off the timer and then looked over at Brandon.  He was intent on the flame, staring hard at it, but he certainly didn’t look at peace. Should I disturb him?  I didn’t know if I should maybe just let him naturally end his thoughts—but something told me I should help him.

As gently as I could, I touched his shoulder.  “Brandon?”  He was entranced, continuing to gaze at the flickering flame.  “Brandon?”

He blinked then and I felt my muscles relax.  He took several breaths before shifting his eyes from the candle to me.  “Wow.  That was kind of…intense.”

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