For my Son: Aiden

My son, Aiden, was born in May of 1999 and passed that same day due to complications from a heart defect known as Tetrology of Fallot.  The reason I’m sharing this with you is because a friend of mine asked advice on helping a young person who was feeling suicidal. It may seem odd to share the story of a child’s death to help someone cope with life, but this isn’t the story of my son, it’s mine.

My wife and I had only been married four years when our son died. It had been a whirlwind of emotion. At one point we were given hope from the staff at John’s Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, feeling that it all may be able to be repaired in surgery. They couldn’t account for his underdeveloped lungs though and he was unable to survive.

With my wife in her post-partum room and my family helping her as much as possible with the decision we had made to let him pass, I walked the corridor down to take him from life support. My eyes still get misty when I think of this. It is, without a doubt, the single hardest thing I have ever had to do. I watched & helped a bit as they took him from life support. I wrapped him quickly but carefully and carried his quickly graying body from NICU to our room so my wife could love her son before he passed. I was operating on a different level, none of my concerns mattered, only my son and my wife. He passed in our arms with our tears upon his head.

I took my cold, grey and motionless son back to the NICU and kissed his head. I whispered my words into his ears last. I took my moment with him in the hallway outside the NICU.

That moment both destroyed and saved my life. It was a four year downward spiral which cumulated when my wife left me and took our children. We had moved to Texas after Aiden and conceived another child, Connor. My wife didn’t want our children too far apart in age as she and her brothers were. She felt they would be closer in relationship if they were close in age. I think she was right. We started to drift apart. My wife and I and we didn’t even realize it. Being from a broken home, a family was the most important thing to me. I truly lived up to my astrological set, being a Cancer. When I lost my son I became over-protective, micro-managing and extremely controlling. I began to manufacture a perfect life and a perfect family and I came down hard on my wife or kids when they didn’t meet my expectations. My wife had her own problems and the distance between us resulted in her living a double life with me. The person I thought was agreeing with me and how I was thinking was just a sort of “yes man”. The rift grew, with me not knowing she didn’t agree and her unable to speak to me about how she actually felt.   I mistreated my sons in chasing this “ideal”, so did she in trying to manufacture her own separate “reality” but who can say such things to parents when they’re grieving?

The end came when I was abusive to my family. I had let this fear force me inwards and I was lost inside myself. My moment of clarity came when I was lying on my couch; everything started to fade away and soon everything was black and I was floating in nothing. I had the realization that this was eternity and that all I had for company was me. I was an asshole and I didn’t like myself one bit. As I realized that my body faded away as well and all I was left with was my consciousness. It was the perspective of me and it was ALL about me and only me. I realized that was a large part of my problem. I had been asking my family to lie down and sacrifice their own wants and desires for my own. I wasn’t being fair and I knew it. I looked inside myself and I could point out all those moments where I knew what I was doing wasn’t fair but looked away. I saw myself, my inner cooperation side making excuses to myself for being a dick. I chose not to look away anymore. I chose to be good.

Eventually this reality took hold and I became a different person. I had self-confidence because I had stopped letting myself down. I had given myself reason to have confidence in me. Self-respect, self-love, self-assuredness comes from choosing to be the best you; from facing the fear and standing tall.

I openly admit now my transgressions of the past. I would want that were I in their shoes. I don’t spend my time trying to “make it up” to them because that’s not possible and any reasonable person would really only want the change to happen not a big song and dance.

Again, I’m writing this today because a friend of mine shared with me someone asking her for help and feeling suicidal. To that person:

You have no idea now how beautiful you are & will become. Give yourself time, all things change. In the darkest of my sorrow I felt there was no hope… but then I wasn’t strong enough to go looking either.

The sun doesn’t shine in your window all day, every day. There will be days that you have to find the resolve to wait until tomorrow, to find the strength to walk through the rain. You have it within you, right now, to be absolutely amazing. Amazing people have down times, they cry and they get hurt too…. It’s the perspective of them which keeps them going. You have the opportunity now to let the failings of your family lock you down by a) believing in them or b) rebelling against them… either way you’re still attached to it. Choose c) Be the best me I can be according to what I believe and stand for it.

We’re all living the perspective of me. Some of us simply cannot see any other way; I know I used to be locked into that cave. Have faith that we can all break free from it. Your parents, your kids, your family may be locked in a perspective which affords no other view… show them love; share with them you. Your life is yours and it is legendary… don’t make it the story of someone who did nothing for a very long time then passed away safely. Live your life.

Be a good person, be humble, what will, be will be.

Namaste