Last week I was having lunch with a couple close friends and I found myself sharing a Dalton memory that had hit me earlier that morning.  Whether it is in our house or in the car, the kids are quite used to hearing me play my favorite tunes from the 80’s. From Whitney Houston to George Strait, they know that is my favorite decade of music.  So it was a morning sometime last year when I was watering my plants around the pool as Islands in the Stream was playing through the Sonos system in the house.  I knew Dalton could hear the music because he was upstairs in the loft and one of the speakers is located up there.  He always did have some crazy dance moves.  To show them off to me, he moved over to one of the windows that overlooked the pool so I could see him clearly.  He pressed both palms to the glass and started some weird hip gyrating motion.  I gave him a thumbs up sign and starting dancing with my watering can.  He smiled and disappeared from my sight.  I turned my attention back to the plants and laughed.  About 20 seconds later, the sound of the sliding glass door to the pool room opening startled me.  He always opened it at about 50 mph it seemed.  Often it would open so fast it would spring back closed on its own.  Anyway, this time he started walking towards me in slow, dramatic steps holding an invisible microphone.  Right on cue, he began belting out the chorus to the song he had been forced to listen to hundreds of times in his 13 years.

Islands in the stream

That is what we are

No one in between

How can we be wrong

Sail away with me

To another world

And we rely on each other, ah ha

From one lover to another, ah ha

Not your typical mother/son duet, but entertaining all the same.  Those kinds of moments are what I miss the most.  I could write for days and never be able to cover all of my Dalton stories.  Like the time he got in trouble in school a week before the accident.  His Actions and Values class was headed back to Collegiate from Interfaith Homeless Shelter after spending the afternoon there.  They were riding the bus with their teachers and a couple of parent volunteers I believe.  Apparently, as the bus pulled away from the shelter, Dalton and two of his friends thought it was a good idea to throw Cheetos out the bus window at people. After I was informed that he would be serving a detention because of  the incident,  I remember staring at him and asking him “WHO does that, Dalton?  Who throws FOOD at people outside a HOMELESS SHELTER?”   His reply had been very matter-of-fact.  “First of all, I was holding the Cheetos outside of the window and the wind blew them out of my hand.  The people who got hit were not homeless.  And I don’t have a real detention, Jenny.  Real detentions are in the morning.  Ms. Dokken says I just have to wash a car or something.”

I have just one more memory for tonight and then I’m done.  Most of his friends already know this story from Dalton’s rosary.  A bird had flown into the pool room.  I put Ben Madison on the job of trying to remove the bird.  Ben had tried his best, but the little bird had flown to the highest window sill, probably about 30 or 40 feet high, and was way out of reach.  I wasn’t too worried because I knew we would get the bird eventually.  I went along with my day.  Somehow Dalton found out about the visiting bird.  Evidently, Dalton devised a plan to remove the bird.  He had Colton drive him to Papa’s house where he retrieved his bb gun and bb’s.  According to Colton, Dalton loaded his gun and zeroed in on the bird still perched on the high window.  Without any hesitation, he started firing.  Not once.  Not twice.  But 26 times.  I got home later that day and saw the gun and bottle of bb’s on the picnic table.  I wondered what that was all about.  The bird was still flying around the pool room.  I opened the sliding glass door that leads out to the back patio and within 30 minutes the bird had flown out to safety.  It was several days before I discovered the window.  He had put 26 bb holes into the glass where that poor little bird had sat probably terrified.  I brought Dalton and stood him in front of the window and asked him what he was thinking.  Completely expressionless he looked at me and said, “I know, it’s crazy huh?  Each time I shot at it, I ALMOST got it.”  For punishment, I had him clean horse stalls with my mother.  Later my mom would tell me that while he was supposed to be cleaning he would just stand in the stalls with her and spit sunflower seeds.  I guess he showed up to clean with her on the first day and said, “Ree, I only have about 20 minutes to do this.  I have a whiffle ball game at 12:30.”

Talking about Dalton helps to heal me more than I can every say.  Just saying his name does wonders for me.  I want to thank you all for taking time out to read about my baby.  My support system is very strong because of all of you and you are appreciated.  Any time you leave me a comment or share my blog, it makes me feel really good.  My biggest fear is that my son will be forgotten.  I can’t let that happen.

Rose Kennedy once said, “It’s wrong for parents to bury their children.  It should be the other way around.”  How true that is.  But, she also said, “Life isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments.”  I like that.  Dalton had many moments just being him.  I couldn’t have imagined him any other way.