It just never seems to be easy.

There is a 1997 Camaro sitting in our driveway. It’s been there for several years now. It doesn’t run.

This was Richard’s car.

I bought it for him from the cousin of a coworker of mine while Richard was still in high school. It looks pretty good and he was rather proud of it. It only has a V-6 engine so I felt safe he wouldn’t be in too many races with it.

The deal was I’d pay half the cost and he’d pay for half. I bought it and he didn’t have to make good on his half until he finished school. He did give me $1000 he had saved, so he had some skin in the deal.

He never was all that mechanical. Never showed much interest in turning wrenches.

The car overheated on him. Several times I think. In the end the head gaskets blew, and the AAA tow truck delivered it to the spot in the driveway where it still sits today.

Replacing the head gaskets is a high dollar repair – unless you do it yourself. Richard had no interest in doing it himself. Not having a garage to work in made it a no-go for me too.

But Richard said he wanted to fix it someday. So the car stayed in the drive.

Recently we had some repair work done to the electric range in our kitchen. The repair tech was a chatty sort. As he was leaving, he mentioned the Camaro. He used to have several like it. I told him about the condition of ours and asked if he wanted to buy it. I gave him a pretty low price. He seemed excited about it.

We talked about it for awhile longer and he said he wanted it. He hoped to come back that next weekend with a trailer to haul it away.

That’s the last I heard from him. That was about 2 months ago.

We had a yard sale this past weekend.  I thought it would be a good idea to add the car to the items for sale.

We were talking about posting ads for some of the big items on Craigslist. When the subject of the car came up Debbie laughed and said she’d never forget Richard’s response when he thought I was going to sell his car one time before.

I was home one morning and heard a knock on the front door.

The man on my front porch said, ” I was wondering if the Camaro is for sale.”

“I don’t know. It’s my son’s. He’s away at school. Leave your number and I’ll ask him about it. I’ll call you if he wants to get rid of it.”

Well he was home a few days later and Debbie gave him the phone number and the news about the man wanting to buy his broke down car.

He grabbed a piece of paper and a Sharpie. He wrote, “NOT FOR SALE” on the page in big black letters, stormed out of the house and taped his sign to the inside of the windshield and locked the doors.

He told his mom he was going to get that car fixed someday.

As I listened to the story and remembered the event I felt a wave of guilt sweep over me. I had almost sold Richard Camaro.

Now I try to be logical about things.

I don’t really care much about that car. I didn’t like driving it. It’s too low to the ground for my aging bones and from the driver’s seat the windshield seems like it stretches out for 10 feet in front of the car.

I don’t want to do the work on it myself. It costs way more than the car’s worth to have it done by someone else.

If you remove the emotions from the decision, the choice is clear. Sell the car. Get it out of the driveway. I don’t want it, and Richard won’t be getting it fixed.

But there’s no way to remove the emotions.

It was Richard’s car and he wanted to keep it. And that makes the pile of junk in the drive have a lot of emotional baggage.

So now the Camaro is no longer for sale.

Why does this stuff have to be so hard?

We’ve made it through our first year as grieving parents. I thought I’d post a few observations.

• Even after a year I still can’t believe this is real. I’m still waiting to wake up and the nightmare to end.
• I’ve only seen Richard in one dream. I would have expected to see him many times over the span of a year. But there has been just the one time. That one time was the most intense dream I’ve ever had. Maybe because I think about him all the time when I’m awake my brain needs a break and refuses to dream about him too.
• We’ve been told the second year is harder than the first. Is that possible? Not looking forward to that.
• I’ve heard a lot of bereaved parents talk about the comfort they get visiting their child’s grave. I don’t feel comfort there. I feel sadness. But I still go because… that’s my kid.
• Having a dead kid makes you do strange stuff. Like planting strawberries at your child’s grave.
• When you’re in a room full of grieving parents the power of the sorrow is so strong it’s like a force field that just grabs you. You can physically feel it’s power.
• Finding a proper image to begin each of these blog posts is often a pain. I may go image free.
• When I talk to Richard at the cemetery, my most frequent statement is, “I just can’t believe we – you and I – let this happen to you. This just shouldn’t have happened kid.” He’s probably tired of hearing it by now.
• Bereaved parent support groups really like butterfly images.
• Early on I sometime had the feeling – a sense – that Richard was nearby. I don’t get that feeling anymore.
• Having your child die is nothing like having your mother die, even though I miss them both a lot.
• My clothes are much tighter now than a year ago. I guess grief is fattening.
• I know there are videos in our house of Richard growing up. I haven’t found the courage to dig them out and watch them. I may never have that much courage.
• Most of Richard’s stuff is still here.  I’d like to get rid of the the U of L stuff but Debbie won’t let me.

We’ve completed our “year of firsts.”

We had several days to remember.

Mother’s day was the anniversary of the last time we saw Richard. It was a tough day.

May 22nd was the last time anyone in the family talked to him. Debbie called him that Friday evening about his plans for the weekend. She was checking to see if he would be home for our family celebration of his cousin Hannah’s graduation from college. He had to work.

I’m sure he died on May 23rd. No one saw him or heard from him from that day on. I’m certain that as he began to wake up that morning he went into siezures. He never knew what was happening. At least I hope he didn’t.

May 28th last year we got that awful call from the coronor. And we had to tell Sarah her little brother was dead – on her birthday.

So we had a lot of days to remember.

Like there would be any way we could ever forget.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. A hard day for all bereaved moms.

It was Debbie’s first Mother’s Day with Richard gone. It came with all the pain of no longer having him there to tell her “Happy Mother’s Day”, of not getting another goofy card from her kid and from just knowing he is gone.

But it is also a tough day for both of us because on Mother’s Day one year ago, we saw Richard for the last time.

He worked on Saturday night, as a waiter at Logan’s Steak House. He drove to our house after he got off work, arriving in the early morning hours, so he could visit his mom on Mother’s Day.  He went to church with us and got to stay for just a short time after, as he had to work that afternoon.

We told him goodbye and watched him leave for Lexington. That was the very last time we laid eyes on him. We never saw Richard again.

So we knew it would be a stressful day.

How did we handle it?

We decided to run away – sort of.

Debbie still has a hard time making it through church without tears. She remembers seeing Richard at mass every week, usually standing in the back  and getting “volunteered” to help the ushers. The sermons on Mother’s Day often revolve around motherhood type themes. There is also a recognition of the moms at the service, usually they are asked to stand and all us non-moms clap for them. We knew this would be an emotional land mine for her.

So we didn’t go to church Sunday. Sorry God – please forgive us.

We went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. But we didn’t go to our local Cracker Barrel in Shelbyville. We drove to Louisville to eat.

After returning home and changing clothes we went to Kroger and bought some stuff for supper and some flowers – tulips – to take to the cemetery.

We put tulips at my mom’s grave and at Richard’s.

We also cleaned the bird poop off Richard’s headstone and did a few plantings at his grave.

The plan was to go home, fix dinner on the grill and watch some movies together.

We just wanted to stay away from everyone and spent the day together.

That was the plan.

Then I got a call from my dad. He said the tomato plants were already too tall and I needed to come over and get them before the rain came in tonight.  My dad is the tomato plant supplier for all of our family.

So I went to the farm and got tomato plants. I brought them home.

Debbie and I then spent a good portion of the remaining day light planting tomatoes. We put in 25 plants.

Then we fixed our ribeye’s on the grill.

It was a nice day in a sad sort of way.

Back in my college days I liked to play tennis. Never was very good at it, in fact my girl friend at the time used to beat me every time we played.

I feel like I’m back at playing tennis. But this time I’m the ball.

I’ll be depressed and in the dumps. Then – Boink – I’m on the other side of the net and thinking I might survive. Then – Whack! – back over the net I fly, into dispare again.

The shots to the feel better side of the net seem to be the nice slow easy soft ball shots. The kind that bring the other player to the net to just smash the hell out of the ball, hitting it back at you before you can get set.

After a period of being in the dumps, I had been finally starting to get some hope again.

Then my cousin’s husband posted a link to the video below on his Facebook.

This video shows a Tiawanese kid singing the Dolly Parton song “I Will Always Love You”. That haunting verse hit me. The song isn’t about a lost child. But that thought of always loving someone even when they are no longer in your life made me think of Richard.

Whack – right back in the dumps.

Then later I was reading my email. Someone sent me a link to this video.

After watching this guy – with all his physical problems I felt guilty. If he can overcome all that and still live a happy productive life, surely I can manage to overcome this grieving and face life with a positive attitude.

And now I’m floating back over the net to the better side – waiting for that next smack.

It’s Easter Sunday.

Another big family gathering day.

Another check mark on our Year of Firsts check list. Our first Easter without Richard.

I really hate these Year of Firsts check off items. But I’m pretty sure I’ll hate the Year of Seconds, and the Year of Thirds and on and on etc., etc., just as much.

It was a really beautiful spring day.

We started with Easter Mass at our church. As always on Easter, it was crowded, as the twice-a-year church goer’s showed up in force.

Most of us were dressed up for the occasion. Easter was one of the twice-a-year-I’ll-wear-dress-clothes days for Richard.

My sister and her husband had their whole family with them. We sat behind them. We as in Debbie and me. Sarah is in Texas. And Richard isn’t here.

But Richard wouldn’t have sat with us anyway. He always stood in the back of church. Standing back there usually meant he would get volunteered to be an usher when one of the people assigned for that mass failed to show up – which happens most weeks. He would sometime complain about having to usher so often, but he always went back for more.

After church we went to the cemetery. We took some candy for Richard and my mom. Yeah, I know it’s pretty silly to toss candy out on the ground at somebody’s grave, but that’s what we did. We’ll do it again I’m sure.

Later in the afternoon we went to the farm for a family get-together. Lot’s of food, lot’s of dogs and cats, but mostly lot’s of loving family.

The cousins shared a few more of their Richard stories with us. Really enjoyed that.

It was a very nice day. But like everyday since that awful day, it was missing something, and we were missing someone.

I was going to use the picture below as the spotlight image at the beginning of this post, but my fabulous daughter beat me to the punch. But he looked so cute, I had to share it here too.

Richard showing off his Easter best, and his trademark smile.

My boss at work came into our break-room last night, where I was eating my supper.

He said, “You win the award.”

“What award?” I asked.

“The one for making the biggest part order in company history.”

He handed me a sheet of paper. It was a copy of an email sent to cancel the order.

I work in a factory in maintenance. We paint cars in my shop. One of my jobs is to rebuild paint pumps when they go bad. This involves taking them apart, cleaning them up, then putting them back together with new parts replacing any that were worn out.

One of the parts this particular pump needed is called a displacement rod. Costs $147.10 each.

Seems I ordered several million of them. OK, 5,133,600 to be exact.

I guess I made one of my frequent trips into la-la-land while I was at the computer ordering my part. That happens often. I’ll find myself staring off into space, lost in my thoughts, mostly always about Richard.

I don’t remember even typing a “1″ into the quantity field on the order screen. I really don’t remember putting millions in there.

The total came to $755,152,560 or so they tell me.

It’s a shame they caught my mistake. It would have been interesting to see what three quarters of a billion dollars worth of pump rods looked like.

Maybe they’d have given my one as a going away gift as they walked my out of the door.

A big question many of us must face after losing a child is when do I go back to work?

Most are probably like me – you need the money, so you have to go back as soon as your employer’s funeral leave has ended.

My employer gives us 5 days paid time off for the loss of a close family member, including one of our children. I took a week of vacation after this so we could take Sarah back to Texas.

At first I thought it would be better to get back to some form of “normal.” Keep busy. That sort of thing.

A coworker lost his step-daughter a few years back. He told me his wife was basically nonfunctional for three months after her death. He was able to get some medical leave for this time period.

I’m starting to think that would be a good plan.

I have a job that involves industrial equipment. I can be dangerous – to myself and others. I really had no business being in that position for a long time after I went back to work. I had absolutely no focus on the job.

I can now usually concentrate enough, for long enough to get tasks accomplished.

But I have to act like I’m not thinking about Richard all the time. And that’s exhausting.

By the end of the week I’m worn out. I’m glad the economy has slowed and we aren’t working any weekends.

So I’m wondering if it wouldn’t have been better to be off for several months early on. Maybe get past some of the stress.

Or maybe you never get past the stress.

Church can be a dangerous place for a grieving parent.

In his sermon Sunday, Father Bill mentioned some miracles. He started with several taken from the Bible, including the story of Christ raising a little dead girl back to life.

Father Bill then told us of a local family. One of the boy’s in the family was getting ready for major surgery and was afraid. But he never had the surgery. When the doctors took some pre-op pictures, the mass they were intending to remove was already gone.  It had just vanished.

And he told us about a local man with some form of cancer and in bad shape. But his illness had suddenly gone into total remission.

And while listening to this, I looked over at Paula in the choir. Her husband had cancer. I remember when a bunch of us placed our hands on him a prayed for his cure. And his cancer took his life. I wondered if Paula was thinking, “Where was my husband’s miracle?”

Richard was as loved and prayed for as anyone could be. From everything I knew about him and what others told me about him, he lived a good life. He had faith. Where was his miracle?

So many questions with no answers.

The following is from We Need Not Walk Alone, the national magazine of The Compassionate Friends.

The Father’s Grief

By David Pellegrin
TCF Honolulu, HI

At my second meeting of The Compassionate Friends about three years ago, one of the mothers said how nice it was to see a man attending, since “men grieve differently from women.”

Her remark was no doubt meant to help put me at ease. I hadn’t said a thing so far, and might have been intimidating in my silence. But it caught me off guard. What I was feeling after George’s death was so absolute, so awful, how could it possibly come with any “differences”? Would one grieve differently for an infant than for an adolescent? For a son than for a daughter? Surely, grief was absolute for both mothers and fathers.

Over time I came to acknowledge the differences the well-meaning mother had in mind:

• Neither I nor the other men who occasionally attended talked much; the women talked freely.
• I sensed I was better at compartmentalizing my grief than the mothers, better at keeping a lid on it socially and at work.
• My male friends seemed less comfortable talking about George, bringing up his name or even looking at his pictures than female friends.
• I came to see how intensely I felt I had let my son down as his protector, the father’s primary role.

Shortly after becoming editor of my chapter newsletter, I sent a copy to my friend Jack Knebel in California. Jack and his wife, Linda, had been involved with a Compassionate Friends chapter after the death of their daughter, Hollis. He replied, “It’s good to see that a man is taking an active role in the group.” Then he went on to write movingly about those male- female grieving differences. The rest of his letter,
which touched me deeply, follows:

. . . Several years after Hollis died, Linda and I were being trained by Compassionate Friends to be ‘buddies’ for newly bereaved parents. One of the exercises was to list all the unhelpful things that others had said in trying to comfort us, so that we wouldn’t make the same mistakes. The other trainees, all women, made long lists, and did it with enthusiasm. When the lists were read aloud, they nodded knowingly at every entry and eventually hooted and howled with derision at the worst (some of which were pretty bad). When it came my turn, I held up an empty page and said:

“People may have said such things to me. I just don’t recall.

“What I do remember is that people tried to tell me how sad they were for us. I remember being told how much they loved Hollis and how much they cared about us. I remember one of my partners hugging me in the halls of my very stiff and proper law firm. I remember men who had never told me anything more personal than their reactions to a Giants’ loss crying at our loss and their fears.

“You women are used to talking to each other about your emotions and about personal things. I wasn’t and my friends weren’t either. So the fact that we could do so was a great gift, and it wasn’t marred in the slightest by someone’s choice of words.”

Now, the shell has been broken and I find it easier to talk about my emotions, my hopes and fears, about those things that really are important. And that for me was one of Hollis’ greatest gifts.

I know that even after George’s death, he is a major part of your life. My guess is that you’re becoming more open to the gifts that he and those who care about you are able to give.

Yours, with compassion and friendship,
Jack

Another difference I notice about how men and women handle grief – women write poetry, men not so much. I’ve looked at a lot of memorial websites put up by other grieving parents. I’ve seen lot’s of poetry. And I think every poem was written by a woman. Newsletters from TCF and Hospice have published poems, all by grieving moms.

Why is that?

Well I’m not a poet, and I know it. So you’ll probably never see a poem written by me on here.

And that’s probably a good thing.