24. TELL THE STORY, OVER AND OVER AGAIN IF YOU FEEL THE NEED

• The “story” relates the circumstances surrounding the death of the child, reviewing the relationship you had with the child, describing the aspects of the personality of the child who died, and sharing memories, good and bad. (HEALING A PARENT’S GRIEVING HEART: 100 PRACTICAL IDEAS AFTER YOUR CHILD DIES; Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD; 2005)

Funny, just today I was remembering a night Joseph, his sister, and I had gone out to dinner at a place called Steak and Ale. It may have been Christmas Eve. We had been served our dinners and the waiter was serving our drinks. Maybe he was new at his job, because he took a glass from the inside of the tray and as he lay it down on the table, the tray tipped forward, a soda glass fell, and the liquid poured right into Joseph’s dish. His sister and I held our breath. Joseph very calmly said, “I was eating that.” His steak had been perfectly prepared. The waiter apologized, removed the dish and brought him another. I don’t remember if it was cooked as well as the first. My daughter and I have talked about this incident. She recalls holding her breath in anticipation of his reaction.

Joseph could be intense. At that age, though, I don’t think he had the strong reactions he did when he was younger. I used to describe him, as a young child, as wearing his nerves on the outside of his body. When he was happy, he would jump up and down flapping his arms. When he was upset, he would wail uncontrollably.

I remember taking him for blood work. We had to hold him down in the chair, while he screamed, “Why are you trying to rip my arm off?!”

Once, while in line at a cash register in J C Penney, maybe I grabbed his arm a little too tightly, or he thought so anyway. He yelled, “Why do you hurt me every day?!”

Another time, we were at the pediatrician’s office. After checking out at the front desk, I turned around and Joseph was gone! I panicked, looking around frantically. I found him outside, kneeling on all fours in the snow by our minivan, leaning down, eating the snow. He was fine. He must have walked out the door as someone else came in or left. Nobody noticed???!!!

My older daughter once told me that a teacher, who Joseph later had for second grade, loved to watch him waddle down the hallway like a penguin, and hoped he would one day be in her class. (My daughter, eleven years his senior, was friends with this teacher’s daughters.) She really got him, this teacher. He would quickly finish his work; and, she would get him to help others who were having difficulty with the classroom’s computers. One night we attended a science fair at the school. The teacher was manning a table with tangrams. She saw us coming and said, “Joseph can do this!” with a smile. When I ran into one of her daughters at a town event in a park recently, I told her to tell her mom how much I appreciated how she was with him. (I have probably done this multiple times over the years. I still think of her fondly.)