Oh God

Commissioning Week at the Naval Academy has ended and not once would Zatha visit Hans’s grave with us. She finds it a too-painful-to-bear experience, knowing that Hans’s body is decomposing six feet below where his temporary marker and gifts from visitors stand. She tells us that it’s just an empty shell of his body, that Hans isn’t really there. I believe visiting his grave makes her question whether she will actually see Hans again in heaven. If we are just biological beings with no spirit or soul then visiting his grave is a cold reminder that, indeed, she may never laugh with him or see him again. It eats away at her faith and hope and her quest for finding signs from Hans or God that his spirit is living on.

I believe that our spirits are real, that energy does not disappear but that it changes or moves. I believe the energy from our years of collected thoughts and feelings and experiences and memories are still there somewhere even when our biological body stops allowing it to show in our earthly world. Just like a person with Alzheimer’s or ALS doesn’t lose their soul or spirit and thoughts or memories, it is all just locked behind a physical body that doesn’t work properly. It is only with current technology that we learn from people like Stephen Hawking that this is true. We are so unique, so complex that I don’t think our souls or spirits are recycled or reincarnated. We are the only ones of us who will ever be us. And surely we live on somehow.

So I then wonder as I visit Hans’s grave, does his spirit visit and does he hear me only when I am in certain areas, like there at his grave? Or when we call his name or invoke a memory? Or is Hans’s spirit ever present, even when we are using the bathroom or are naked in the shower? Is he there every time I drive, which seems to be when I cry the most, when I am alone with all my memories of him, or drive past reminders of him? Is he there when I cry as I see a young man marrying his sweetheart, thinking I’ll never get to see Hans do that? Or when I see a young family on the beach and think of how cool and beautiful Hans’s kids would have been, but know that I’ll never get to enjoy any of his kids because there will never be any? Or when I think of his cute little curved pinkies and his perfectly hairy arms and his gorgeous head of hair? Or of the way he made us all laugh with his funny little quips and his dry, witty humor? Or when I cry watching surfers ride a wave thinking of how beautifully Hans could ride any wave on any board? Or when I remember how we would have boisterous and challenging arguments over the importance of learning history? Or when I cry as I realize again and again that I’ll never get to film him getting big airs or flying down a mountain on his longboard? Or of how he would always hug and kiss us all without embarrassment and tell us every single time we left each other or hung up the phone, “I love you”?

ARE THEY REALLY SIGNS?

There have been what one might call signs that Hans is with us. As Zatha went to visit Hans’s grave with his friends the first night they were able to after his funeral, they came over the walking bridge over College Creek and there, in the dark, they saw washed up on the beach by the end of the walkway an old, waterlogged, barnacle-covered longboard (barnacles only grow in warmer water so it had been in there quite a while). What are the chances of that? Alexis took a “memorial” run down the beach where she would run beside Hans as he kitesurfed up the island and returned to find a blister on her foot in the perfect shape of a heart (I have a picture of it). And there are other signs. They are the positive things we look for in a world of negatives.

I anticipated and was warned by fellow grieving friends that people might say hurtful things. I’m not mad at them. I’ve said hurtful things myself to people, which of course I sincerely regret, and for which I hope I am eventually forgiven. Three people, each of them men, have told me Hans was either “stupid” or “being stupid,” possibly inferring that he deserved to die. Does anyone “deserve” to die? Are we all being stupid by climbing into that car every day knowing that cars kill over 26,000 people in the U.S. every year? Are we stupid by eating bacon and ice cream and drinking martinis because the consumption of which are part of the causes of heart disease, the number one killer in America? Are we stupid for putting on skis and engaging in a sport that kills approximately 40 people per year in America alone, not to mention the possible catastrophic injuries it can inflict? Do we all “deserve” to die?

Hans wasn’t being stupid nor was he stupid. Hans was living life. If I were to be stranded on a deserted island with only one person I would want it to be Hans (sorry Eric). Hans could figure anything out, could build about anything, and would be the one person I know who could keep us alive and get us off that island with his innate and very patient resourcefulness (Eric is a very close second, and I would want Zatha to be President of that island). He was an exceptional young man, and those who doubt that either never really knew him or are just jealous (how many times did your parents tell you that about yourself when you were in high school, and how many times were they right?). And Hans took exceptional risks. There are many times Eric and I would look over at each other as we watched Hans lead-climb a cliff, or surf a hurricane (during one he broke two surfboards) and think, “Oh my gosh, he’s going to get himself killed one day.” Was Hans being stupid? No. He was living life and he was living it without fear of dying.

But I am sad. So sad. I just ache with sadness. I am not depressed, just sad. We enjoy hearing people mention Hans or tell us they are sorry for his death or that they are thinking of us. It doesn’t make us any sadder to talk about him because we are already as sad as we can be. Of course we don’t need the subject of his death to monopolize every conversation, but don’t be afraid when we bring him up, or share a memory about him. Zatha is especially hurt when seeing someone for the first time since his death and they don’t even mention his dying or express any sympathy. Someone asked me if I have bad days. And as I said that every day is Mother’s Day, every day is a bad day because my baby boy is dead. I do find joy and happiness in other things however. Like Zatha graduating, or calling with good news, and smiling at us, or people being nice to each other and having fun, or my piano students finally playing well that song they wanted to learn, or Eric leaving me sweet cards under my pillow. I am not arrogant enough to believe that I am the only person in the world experiencing pain from death, but I do believe that a mother’s worst fear is that her dead child be forgotten.

My hope is that Hans not be forgotten. Zatha said last night that she feels like she has a gaping, empty hole in her soul from Hans’s death. I asked her if she could try to fill it with shiny things of which Hans would be proud: to be just a little more beastly, to learn something new, to learn something more intently or intensely, or even just continue to be a little brighter, wittier, joyful, adventuresome, and thankful for those things we still have. I pray to God all day, er’day, that He help her find joy in the world and that He continue to offer her the hope of reuniting with her brother in heaven.