Melissa Dalton-Bradford - On Loss and Living Onward: Collected Voices for the Grieving and Those Who Would Mourn with Them

Early Harvest

Midsummer. Eventide. Live waters.

You: broad-backed bundle of golden sheaves

hewn down,

washed,

rushed

headlong through deaths threshing current.

You: pre-ripe, holy harvest

wrested from these, your people;

gathered to those, your people

who attend from iridescent pastures.

You: Firstborn son,

First fruits of my womb,

Firstling of our flock,

First raised of our labors...

Enfolded now in the arms of the

First raised from the dead,

First lover of the flock,

First fruits of the tomb,

Firstborn Son...

O, Son!

Sweet, sacrificial fruit of my flesh,

Preserved in spirit

Til that first morn when you, our first reborn,

Shoot forth

Mid spring.Mid song.

For Parker Fairbourne Bradford, February 20, 1989July 21, 2007

Oh, that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!

That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:

And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:

Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold.

Job 19:2327

Introduction

It was a Wednesday when Parker and I stood together under midsummer heat in a parking lot in front of his first college apartment. Just a week earlier, this firstborn of ours had begun a program called Freshman Academy and was already so settled and at ease, so optimistic and brimming with contentment, he was radiant. With characteristic gusto, he bounded around his apartment complex, introducing me to a bunch of his new friends, giving me the rundown of every class and professor, and raving about how great everything was. He said he had been learning at turbo speed, and now felt he had made the right choice to come to this school for one semester before leaving in the winter to serve as a missionary for our church. He was, as he announced confidently, exactly where he should be.

Although I tried to act nonchalant and give him space, I was all awriggle inside as I took in every square inch of my son and his new surroundings. Heart churning with maternal pride at such a son and friend, I remember inhaling slowly, gratefully. Weve launched our eldest , I thought. Look at him. Beautiful boy .

Okay, Mom, forget food, chocolate, money, whatever, hed said, shrugging, hands hooked loosely on the edge of his jean pockets. Next package, just send lots more family pictures, all right?

Pictures? Im on it.

Reluctantly feeling my way into having him start a life apart from us, I was secretly tickled to know my grown son just wanted more of us . Flattered, actually, that family trumped a crate of Butterfingers.

Hey, when you guys come again, bring everyone with their swimsuits, kay?

He had already sent daily emails, a couple with pictures of the canals and swimming holes to which the locals had directed the newly arrived students, places they went after class to keep cool and have fun. For Parker, whod spent the first half of his life on a small, closely patrolled island in Norway and the second half of his life in the heart of Paris, this rural world of southeastern Idaho with its unmarked, open irrigation canals and meandering rivers was more than a novelty to him. It was downright exotic. Hed never seen the likes of this before.

Swimming suits? Youre serious? I chuckled, knowing he was completely serious. All right, just promise youll take care of yourself andhere came the thing mothers feel, and it went right to my spine, tightening it like a rope of twisting metal cablesdont take any risks. Please stay safe.

Before I could finish speaking, he was shaking his head, one eyebrow cocked.

Risks ? Come on . The standards at this school are like... he held his hand to gesture above his six-foot-two height,... like way up here .

I tried to lighten up and laughed with him.

No, but Parker, I added, planting my palm flat on his chest. Risks with you . Im talking physical safety. Its Mom talking. Dont take any risks.

Tilting his head, he squinted, released a barely audible puff of air through his lips and waved off my concern. Though confident and energetic, he had no history of dangerous behavior, and we both knew that. No extreme sports. No pranks. He had never gotten as much as a parking ticket. In fact, he didnt have a drivers license yet. Having spent his adolescence in Paris, the closest thing to a license he had was his subway pass, which hed used to effortlessly navigate the city hed called home. Risky was jumping onto a public bus without a stamped ticket. And that, well, he had done.

Still, for some reason I did not understand, I could not uncoil that constricting metal cable that now felt cold in my back.

No, really, honey. Im just say And for a fraction of a second I let myself lean into the words. You mean everything to me.

So much for nonchalance.

He squirmed out from under my smooshy blanket of protection and we hugged firmly, kissed each other on the cheek, and said our see yas and love yous.

Those were our parting words. I have replayed the conversation at least a thousand times in my head.

I planned on seeing him again in just three days, so this was no heart-wrenching good-bye. I was now focused on getting out of the late afternoon heat, into air conditioning, and back on the road to Utah Valleya five-hour drive south. Parker, I could tell, was focused on getting back to his friends. There had been talk about a water activity that night or the next.

Slipping into the drivers seat, I wasted no time switching the air to full blast. How hilarious would that be, I thoughtsome makeshift irrigation canal beach party with the mom, the dad, the three younger siblings, Parker, his band of new college buddies, an inflatable volleyball, and a chorus line of oblivious cows chomping alfalfa in the background. I caught my own reflection smiling back at me as I glanced in the rearview mirror for a parting look at my boy.

Over my shoulder, casually, accompanied by some banal stream of consciousness about sweat or seat belts, captured in a mirrored rendition and through smoked glass, I saw him. It is a peculiar, fleeting, but endlessly-repeated film clip which has worn its frames into my memory: daylight saturates the royal blue of his T-shirt, the edges of his shoulder blades move beneath the taut stretch of fabric, the arms swing easily, those busy, mitt-like hands tap a happy, trilling little beat on his thigh. All that anticipatory energy under all that movementthe hops down some steps, the back that appears to me suddenly so broad, so capable, and the heartbreaking promise of it all. And that blue color changing as it passes from full daylight into the shadows of a doorway.

Before I turned from the parking lot to the street, I looked back to catch a glimpse of him again. But he had already ducked into his apartment and was gone from view.

I drove away.

The next night, in an ICU at the Port Neuf Regional Medical center in Pocatello, Idaho, I saw those same shoulders again. They were just as ample and perfectly formed, but they lay as motionless as stone. There was no blue T-shirt, nor any shirt for that matter. His body was stripped naked and draped from the waist down with a white sheet and laid facedown on a gurney to drain fluid from his lungs while they contracted and expanded with the ventilator. Like a toppled Greek statue of polished, gray-veined marble, my exuberant man-child lay in a deep coma. Life support shooshed in-and-out its feeble tide. A nurse avoided making eye contact with me, but told me, as she busied herself with the machinery snaking in and out of my childs body, that I had a gorgeous hero son. She told me that he had repeatedly tried to save a drowning fellow student, that the two had been sucked into and pinned underwater in one of those darned hidden undercurrents under a small bridge in one of those darned irrigation canals, and that the fellow student had survived.