It’s been a year since I held Lorenzo. The most important hour of my life. Technically, it’s been a year and two days. In my heart, a lifetime. My heart didn’t break that day—it pulverized. It was difficult to breathe and the moments when I woke up again and again to our new reality were nearly as breathtaking; their repetition left an ache in my body. As my support group is helping me to understand: This was a personal, physical, and spiritual experience. This was a significant event. We can use things like art and music to move the feelings up and out of our bodies, where, for mothers like me, the entire story happened.
Our trip to California kept us busy and moving right on through those reminiscent May days. Last week, back in Santiago, back in late autumn, the exact time frame a year ago where we were receiving Lorenzo’s diagnosis and coming to our decision, it was all I could do to move my body down the street with Ruby and keep up with other essentials. I came to a near stand-still, much like those first days afterward. There was very little “accomplishment,” next to none checking of boxes. Things could just be, even if that meant still and quiet. I miss California as a quiet place. We had tastes of it, of course (in our moms’ backyards, parked at Ocean Beach with La Playa burritos), but expat living can change where you come from as much as it changes where you end up.
In the stillness, I thought hard about what I was going to do to honor Lorenzo on June 2nd. I’ve come a long way since then, but I am back inside that hour in an instant and I wanted to pay significant respects to our significant son. It’s not even on my radar to let go of his ashes, so that wasn’t on the table. In Santiago, where it’s largely just us, I knew it would be private, if not confined to things like the mind, like conversation, like the sway of a candle’s wick.
Rituals are important for our coping, but my group leader has also helped me see that these rituals can be done at different times and they can be as simple as that candle. So, when the day came, I let them be. I wrote a letter to Lorenzo, not for him or about him, but to him. I was grateful to spend the day with Ryan, and we took Ruby to the dog park because making her happy truly does help. Thanks to so many of you, I posted the 1,000th heart link in the chain for Lorenzo. I also opened the memory box the incredible nurses at Stanford made for us and went through it gingerly, as I do from time to time. It’s too private to share visually, but I will tell you that he was given a heart-shaped pillow and a small gown covered in colorful hearts. Can you believe that?
Finally, I tried to stay in the present, respecting what Lorenzo is now, today, in our minds and hearts, as much as he was a year and two days ago in my arms. There are other days to think about the future and what might transpire between now and the next June 2nd. Thank you again to everyone who remembered Lorenzo and told me they were thinking about him. That carries him into the present too, and I am so grateful for that. Thank you for reading this past year, for listening, for dealing with my emotions as I deal with them. I hope I haven’t tried your patience or over-tested your endurance because this won’t be the only year without Lorenzo. The seasons—their degrees, their leaves, their scents on the air—may repeat, but time is always taking us farther from certain significant events and towards others. The same hour passes, but holds something altogether different.