I leaned against the doorway of Dom’s room, my body hollow as a swamp reed yet heavy as stone. The only thing keeping my exhausted body upright was the solid wooden doorframe. Stinging tears etched fresh trails of day-old mascara down my face. My throat ached, a thick pulsing knot I couldn’t swallow. I looked at his empty bed, still rumpled from countless unmade mornings. Despite repeated bribes and threats, it was never completely made. On top of the carelessly thrown sheets lay his guitar and scattered pieces of lined music notepaper, his unfinished songs. Musical notes dotted across staves, while lyrics dribbled along the margins of the notepaper in search of their melody. A life-sized stuffed Disney Tramp dog and an earless brown teddy bear slumped in the corner by the closet, symbols of the childhood he seemed reluctant to surrender. The top of his dresser was so cluttered it was hard to pick out any one thing to focus on. A molehill of dirty clothes lay between the door and the bed. Dom’s room. Just a few days before, I was thinking I would fumigate it when he left for college. Now, the heavy musky odor of teen boyhood comforted me. I could have picked his room out of a lineup. It would have been a snap. It rarely changed even after he “cleaned up.”
The hospital has sent us home to sleep. Sleep eluded me. My thoughts raced from begging to bartering with God in frantic, weary circles. Please God, let him come home. Let him breathe again in this space. I’ll be a better parent. I’ll listen harder to everything he has to say. Please, please, oh God, please let my son live. Take me instead, trade me. He’s just beginning; he has so much to do and see. Let this just be one tiny mistake in his life, not the last big one.
Was it only yesterday that the nightmare began?
“Mrs. Chase?” the disembodied stranger’s voice questioned when I picked up the bedside phone about midnight.
“Yes?” I replied. My groggy voice sounded like a stranger.
“Mrs. Chase, is your husband with you?”
“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
My mind began to function, searching possibilities.
“Do you have someone with you?” the woman on the phone insisted.
“Yes. Yes.” I rolled over and poked the somnolent form of my husband.
He came awake. “Who’re you talking to?” he grumbled.
“Mrs. Chase, your son, Dominic, has been in a motorcycle accident. We would like you and your husband to come to emergency at Wesley Hospital as soon as possible.”
“Is he okay? Is he alive?”
With those words, Dave came fully awake. He rose quickly and pulled on his pants.
“It’s Dom,” he said, a note of inevitability in his voice.
I tried to get up with the phone still pressed to my ear. I wobbled; my weak knees struggled to support me.
“He’s in and out of consciousness and asks for you,” said the woman. “Please drive carefully, but come as soon as you can.”
I don’t recall the drive to the hospital through quiet night streets. Thank heaven Dave had his senses together. We went to bed knowing Dom was spending the night at his friend Mike’s house and would be home in the morning. Images of Dom growing up ran in a continuous loop in my mind. His two-year-old voice asserting his independence when I tried to help him get dressed. “No, Mommy. I do it all my by the self.”
The clock above the door of his hospital room was our enemy. The second hand swooped along yet seemed unable to move the minute hand that marched its slow clunk clunk way from spot to spot between the numbers. Hours were interminable. We didn’t take our eyes off Dom. His long-boned eighteen-year-old form lay unnaturally still under the hospital sheet. Dom. Our Dom, so bright, inquisitive, creative, full of cat-quick energy and always moving. His brown eyes openly laughed at the amusing incongruities of daily living. Now his life depended on a web of tubes going in and out of his body.
Dom opened his eyes only once in those hours I sat by his bed. They searched the ceiling blankly, and when they found my face, I saw a glimmer of light. Dom was still in there even though he drifted far, far away most of the time.
Three doctors agreed that he needed surgery as soon as possible to relieve pressure on his brain. Again, we waited in suspended time for him to come to the recovery room. After surgery, the medical staff insisted that Dave and I go home. Dom would be kept in a coma for twenty-four hours, and they would be unable to give any further prognosis until then. He was out of immediate danger.
Dom had wanted a motorcycle since he was ten. We told him that after graduation, when he was eighteen, he could buy his own provided he could pay for his insurance, gas and bike maintenance. He worked to save for his dream. Two months after his eighteenth birthday, he rewarded himself with a used Honda. He took safety classes and told us he was a better driver on a motorcycle than most people in cars because he had to be alert for more hazards in the roadway that cars just drove past.
“Relax, Mom. Remember what you always say. When it’s your turn to go to heaven, nothing will prevent it, and when it’s not your turn, you will rise from ashes of devastation.”
“I know, I know, Dom, but I can’t help thinking that a motorcycle could be tempting fate more than usual.”
“You know I have plans,” he said. “I’m not ready for a quick exit. I love the freedom I feel on my bike. I’ll be an old steady guy just like Dad someday. Dad’s always told me the worst thing would be to wake up when you’re sixty-five saying, if only I had… I don’t want to look back and wish I’d taken a few road trips on a motorcycle when I had the chance. Now is my time for that kind of adventure.”
His arguments succeeded in pushing aside my fears. He was a sensible kid with goals, good friends, and plans for his future. He and his best friend, Mike, took a few one-day road trips to test their skills. His immediate dream was to go down the west coast on a motorcycle with Mike before settling down to college in the fall. The trip was to start in two weeks. I stared at his empty room, praying for a miracle that he would be alive in two weeks.
Nurse Sandy called. Dom was beginning to come around. We left immediately.
At the hospital, we prepared for another day of unknowns while we silently willed Dom back into our world. Assured by his doctor that he was on the mend, but that it would be a long process.
Dom was smiling and more alert than the day before. His speech was a little slurred, his communication halting.
“Mom, do you have a blank paper?” He slowed his words to make them clear.
I searched my purse and came up with a little notebook I kept for reminder notes to myself.
“Will this do?”
“Yeah, do you have a pencil?”
Again, I searched my purse. No pencil but a pen.
“What do you want with these?” I asked. I knew he wasn’t capable of writing anything with both arms pinioned by needles and tubes.
“I want you to write down a poem.”
My breath caught in my throat. He was lying in pain and still wanted to write.
“Sure, Dom. I’m ready when you are. Are these lyrics to one of your songs?” Dave stood beside me with his hand on my shoulder as I wrote.
Dom closed his eyes and began. His words came at a measured but steady pace, words that must have lingered in his mind until he was able to let them go.
“I am here
I have always been
I will endure
When my body leaves this earthly plane
Remember my love, my soul remains.
To guide and comfort, until together again.”
He paused and took several long breaths.
“Life is but a spark in time
An ember ignited to shine
In hearts that are forever mine
Eternity may claim me
My…”
There was another long pause.
“I’m not finished,” he said very quietly, closing his eyes. “I’ll catch you on the other side.”
Suddenly buzzers and bells jangled a cacophony. Two nurses rushed into the room.
“What happened? What’s going on?” Both Dave and I panicked.
A third nurse came in, asked us to leave, and pushed us toward the door.
“We’ll call you back in when we have him stabilized.” I could hear the stress in her tone.
We’re planning Dom’s funeral, a green burial. He would love that. I am still in shock. It’s not real. But it is. I sat in his room for hours after we got back home yesterday. Dave wandered in and out, mostly staying downstairs listening to music that Dom loved. I cannot imagine changing anything in this room. I want to believe he will be back in a few days, pick up his guitar and finish his song. Our lives will never … what? Be the same? Of course not. He was here. He told us he will always be here. I hold his teddy bear, the one he slept with since he was an infant. Teddy knows.
I apologize for the formatting of this story. As many times as I tried I couldn’t get the paragraphs and the spaces between paragraphs to format correctly.
wonkagranny 