4:30pm 10/4/17
I was holding your left hand, seated by your side, because I refused to leave the room while they did their exams of you. Your long, gentle fingers were wrapped around mine. Calloused and a bit rough from years of playing guitars and banjos, working outdoors on equipment and learning to bend thick steel like it was a rubber band. I was very aware of the spanse of your palm like a catcher’s mitt and how much larger it was than mine. I don’t think I ever really noticed it before that day.
I stroked the skin of your hands thinking of all the extraordinary things they could do. The amount of skill, dexterity, strength, and tenderness that lived in them was phenomenal and I was baffled why all of this talent and greatness would be placed into one human being, only to be taken just past your 21st birthday.
As I sat listening to the machines buzz, click and whir while medical staff moved politely around me trying not to have to ask me to move, I barely heard their voices. I saw what they were doing, but I was entranced in you – In your life. I guess I always have been. I always had tunnel vision when it came to you. There was no one else as important, as worthy of every breath I had to give in this life.
I didn’t care what you did, just that you did what you loved and that you were passionate about it. I would have searched the ends of the earth to find you the best mentors no matter what you chose. You were so amazing to me. I needed to give you the absolute best pieces of myself that I had to share with anyone. You were my opus to leave in this world, not to be a mirror or a marker of MY existance, but the constant awareness that this human being who was born of me, was my responsibility, gift and joy to raise, inspire and motivate to being a man who could do great good in the world, no matter what he chose.
Someone who could be brave when others run, think clearly and quickly in the face of turmoil, move proverbial mountains, love deeply, care for others greatly, putting them first, and see each person for who they were, unjudged and accepted unless they proved otherwise. Someone who knew his strengths, but never used them against others. Someone who had compassion without end and a sense of humor that filled a room with joy. Someone who could give to the world around him all the best that a human being has to offer others.
Granted you made the task easy and for the most part the dance was effortless just by your nature, but I just felt so honored to have been the one who got to say you were my son.
How could this incredible human being be at his end?
And then I heard it. The only thing I heard clearly while my thoughts poured over our lives together, straining so desperately hard to remember every single wrinkle of the tapestry that was your journey with me – “Time of death; 4:30pm.”
It was like a sonic boom went off inside me. No. No no no no, take it back! Take it back!!! Jesus, please make him take it back! I’m still holding his hand, he’s right here, he’s not gone, he can’t be gone.
They said their apologies and condolences and quietly exited the room. The sound of the machines did not change, The clock ticked on the wall, and the rest of the room was silent. It was just the two of us, your hand still in mine and I remembered intricately how tiny it was the first time I touched it on July 11, 21 years before that, just three floors up from where I sat now.
At 4:40 your regular nurse walked in the room and without making much eye contact with me out of sympathy, she gently and compassionately asked if I knew what your choices were about being an organ donor.
WIthout hesitation my memory snapped back to your 16th birthday at the DMV and the clerk asking you if you wanted to be an organ donor. You looked at me and asked, “Do I?”
I remember laughing a bit and saying, “It’s your body, you make that decision for yourself, but I do think its the right thing to do.”
You said, “Basically it means if something happens to me and I die, someone else might get to live, right?”
I said, “Yep.”
You said, “Well that seems like an obvious choice. That IS the right thing to do,” and you checked, ‘yes,’ for being an organ donor.
I said to the nurse, “Yes, actually I know exactly what he thought about it. I was there.”
I was there. For the whole show, birth to death, I had a front row seat to the incredible, never dull, spectacular, spontaneous, epic, wild journey you made into your life with side-spliting laughter, love, passion, toughness, strength, courage and adventure.
By 6:30 your dad and I were back in the bad room, as we came to know it – the TICU’s private consulation broom closet with metal folding chairs and a 1960’s looking wall desk. It comfortably fit three adults who could share a thin sliced cucumber sandwich if the crusts were cut off.
It’s where we were taken every time they had to tell us something devastating. There we sat again, but this time with a LifeLink organ donor coordinator. He handed me a stack of forms and then kindly asked, “And what will Noah be giving today?”
It was the first time since 9:45pm on Monday, October 2nd, that I had smiled. There was something about it that just made me laugh, because it made me remember the meaning of your name and why it had been chosen for you. Noah – peace. The bringer of peace. For me, there was nothing greater and every minute I had to spend with you in those 21 years, that was how I felt when I was with you.
There was such relief and acceptance and assurity in that moment as I laughed through tears and answered, “Noah brings peace.”
I realized that even in his death he was doing it again, bringing peace to those people who now might have a second chance at life with their loved ones. To live their dreams, raise their children, love more, live longer and have more time.
It was a moment of serenity that even at the instance of my own greatest loss and devastation, there was still hope and Noah was still being Noah; unselfish, giving, loving, respectful and kind. Being the strength that was unmatched,undominated and with a grip that will never let go of the love he had and still has for all of us – friend, family, or stranger.
In the words of my son, “I gotcha.”
The photo was sent to me by one of my friends, ironically at exactly 4:30pm today, one year to the date of Noah’s passing. It embodies everything about Noah’s spirit and in knowing he truly knew how to live. Not just exist, but LIVE. Wide open, bold and free.
And for those who would say I am too open with my words and feelings regarding all of this (and I have heard that), it’s because I’m not the only one. I’m not the only mother who has to say goodbye to her child regardless of the age or circumstance by which they pass. If something that I write by being honest and transparent helps someone else not feel so alone, displaced, hollow, or left without meaning or hope – then I’m going to write it. I don’t care if its just one parent. I’m posting it.
~ Noah’s Ma
