Here I Am

The question right there at the scene of the accident was, "What have I done?"
By the time her body was prepared and she was lying on that satin pillow, it was, "How did we get here?"
After the shock wore off, it was dully, stolidly, "What is the point?"  My heart was put right into that dark hole in the ground with her.  Let me die.
So much anger followed...anger at the driver, at the paramedics, at the people whose children still lived.  Most of all, there was anger at myself.  And so often, searing hot rage at the people who refused to let me give up, who refused to let me get down in a dark hole in the ground right beside her, in the plot now set aside for my body...that someday, she will never have be there alone, in the dark, again.

Grudgingly, over the last year, I've admitted that continuing to live is the right thing to do.  I seldom entertain thoughts of suicide anymore.  My lens has finally widened enough from the trauma to see Jake in my world- my responsibility to him, but also the joy he brings me every single day.  One thing about losing a child...you no longer take for granted the magic of watching your child breathe and move.  I won't squander that magic.  I won't.

"Let me die."  is basically what I said over and over again for the first three years after Cory's death, sometimes lightly, sometimes bitterly, and all too often with a dangerously flat and practical tone.  It seemed so obviously to be the only way out.  It was not that I was weak or a coward or did not love my family and friends; it was that I could not see a future out of the immense pain that enveloped me every day, and I was tired, so tired.

Here are the people who refused to let me hurt myself, who refused to let me give up, who saw value in me when I no longer saw it in myself, who shook sense into me, who sat uncomfortable, but steady, while I sobbed, screamed, and ranted:  Mom, Dad, Angie, Anna, Nicole, Kim, Bud.  Still others:  Tammy, Roz, Jessica, Susan, Tim, even Jake.

It has been a living hell figuring out how to stay alive without her here.  it has been damn near impossible to manage the guilt that I still cannot fully shake.  But if I had died when I wanted to some two days after her death or any time since then, I wouldn't know the person Jake is today.  I wouldn't be here, standing eye to eye with an incredibly kind, compassionate, smart, funny, and decent young man.  I would not know him.  And that would be another tragedy, one that I actually could have avoided.  Just as I at one time couldn't imagine every living without my Cory Girl, I don't want to imagine not knowing my boy.

Jake and I may not share all the same interests and we can't wear matching outfits (the one time I tried, he gave me the look and I went to go change), but make no mistake, he is my boy.  I am shaping him every day, listening to all the things that are important to him both big and small, asking him his opinion all the time, challenging his thinking, teaching him anything worthwhile I can think to pass along, in hopes that he will grow up to be a good man, a kind man...a good husband and an even better father.

As long as you're alive, Jacob Norman Mansfield, here I am.