From the beginning, Dalton has had his papa wrapped around his finger.  To be quite honest, all of my children have.  I should have known Tommy would be one of the greatest grandparents ever when I saw Colton propped in the crook of his arm as he mowed his yard on July 4th, 1996.  Colton was barely over 24 hours old.  I remember scanning through my “What to Expect the First Year” book to see if that was too much for a new baby.  I never found anything to say it wasn’t good for a newborn, nor did I find any chapter that prepared me for the impact that a grandparent can have on their grandchild’s life.  To be quite honest, it wouldn’t have mattered.  I learned quickly that I was going to have to share my children with Tommy.  A lot.  And I loved it.

Prone to accidents early in his life, Dalton has kept all of us on our toes.  Not even a year old yet, Dalton fell out of my step-father’s van and broke his leg.  Tommy got there quickly to comfort his baby.  Stuck in little cast for several weeks, Tommy would take DD on “walk-a-bouts” in the neighborhood and around his house.  When Dalton was three years old, we took a vacation to my aunt’s house in Texas.  While walking along the seawall, DD slipped into the lake without a life jacket.  I had taken my eye off of him and never even saw the exact place he went under the surface.  We had nothing to go on except for the ripples in the water.  Somehow my step-mother had seen where Dalton fell in and she instinctively jumped in.  Seeing her grab his body out of the water and set him back up upon the land had taken my breath away and it made me feel fear like I had never experienced it before.  After making sure DD was going to be okay, he insisted we go into the house and call Papa.  I watched his little hand clutch the big phone and in broken speech Dalton told his papa, “Papa… papa… I fell in da yake, but I did not die.”  I prayed Tommy wouldn’t drive down to Texas and try to bring him back to Augusta after that.

Dalton’s mishaps didn’t stop there.  Around the age of 5, we were vacationing in Arkansas when his cousin accidentally poked him in the eye with the hot end of a stick while they were roasting marshmallows.  In severe pain and unable to see, Dalton screamed like heck as we drove to see an eye specialist on a Sunday.  The only reason we were able to get into this guy on a Sunday was because Tommy panicked and called in a favor with an out of town friend of Dr. Crum’s.  He recovered just fine.  At age 8, we were down at Grand Lake when Dalton was viciously attacked by a dog.  He was bit in the face multiple times.  He had to receive numerous stitches in his mouth and nose.  As he laid in the hospital room being stitched up, Colton and Keely watched him scream in pain as tears of their own flowed down their cheeks.  Naturally, Tommy and Peggy had to come to the lake to see if he was okay in person.

There were other little emergencies in Dalton’s accident-prone life, but you get the point.  His papa was always a phone call away and no distance was ever too far if he was needed.  Dalton and Tommy were inseparable for 13 years.  He spent so many nights as papa’s house that he had his own bed right beside Tommy and Peggy’s bed.  Their satellite tv was full of his recordings and they “knew better” than to delete a single episode because Dalton would know.  He had his place on the sofa.  He rode in the front seat of papa’s jeep as Peggy took the backseat, “respectfully.”  Dalton made their grocery bill triple the amount it should be for a retired couple.  He left his toys, cards, notebooks, and anything else in specific spots at their house and he would make sure papa didn’t let Peggy move them until he returned.  It disgusted me at times.  He reminded me of this little prince that sat upon a throne at his grandparents house and his papa was his little servant.  All he had to do was walk in, plop down on the sofa, fling his shoes wherever they would land, change the channel from Fox News to Family Guy, and watch as Tommy would start serving him his Eggo waffles and bacon.  After awhile, Dalton would venture out in their neighborhood and hang out with his friends and rarely tell anyone his whereabouts.  Like a stray dog, he would meander back into their house hours later and tell Tommy to drive him home.  Naturally, they would stop at McDonald’s and DD would have his second dinner.  That would be roundabout 9pm.  9 times out of 10, Dalton would walk in my house holding his sack of food and his shoes as his “peasant” papa would follow him clasping his Dr. Pepper and backpack.  After papa left, Dalton would be sure to wait until I was totally relaxed and ready for bed and then tell me he needed help with his homework.

From the beginning to the end, Tommy has been there for Dalton.  He cried as DD cried when he had to leave him at pre-school.  Promising to buy him treats and toys, Tommy would bribe Dalton through every bump in the road.  It drove me nuts.  The Tuesday before he died, DD asked his papa to not remind me that he had baseball practice because he was certain I had forgot.  Of course, Tommy did his bidding.  Part of me wonders if that was part of God’s plan – to allow him one more day with his grandpa.  I plan on asking God about that after I make it to Heaven.

I can still hear Tommy’s cries in the hospital after the ER doctor said there was nothing else he could do.  Through my own anguish, I watched that man’s heart rip in two.  Dalton was his baby, his grandson, his best friend.  DD’s papa loved all of his grandchildren equally, but there was something between those two that surpassed a typical grandfather/grandchild bond.  Tommy hasn’t been the same person since November 15, 2014 and I suspect part of him never will.  Sometimes I don’t recognize the look in his eyes.  Then I stare at my own eyes reflecting back in the mirror, and I understand that look completely.  It is grief.  And if you look hard enough at any of us, you will see it too.

Being a parent is tough but rewarding.  We want to discipline our kids and teach them to become responsible adults.  Grandparents don’t play by the same set of rules.  They spoil them and return them.  Before the accident, I scoffed at the idea and was often reduced to simply shaking my head and sighing at Dalton’s papa.  Today I feel nothing but gratitude.  A grandparent’s role is different from a parent’s role and that’s how it should be.  How blessed my kids have been to be so loved by their grandparents.  After all, isn’t love what it’s all about anyway?

“What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance.  They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humor, comfort, lessons in life.  And, most importantly, cookies.”  – Rudolph Giuliani

Usually when I write a blog I have thought about what I want to say days in advance.  Tonight is oddly different.  I am a jumbled mess of emotions and can’t really understand why.  It is not just me.  Troy and Keely seem to be experiencing the same thing.  Maybe it was seeing everyone’s back to school pictures on Facebook.  Maybe it was the 9th month anniversary of the accident.  Or maybe it is because I just want him back.

A small white cross stands in the field where Dalton had his accident.  I deliberately walk by it everyday because it is easier for me to visit that site than it is the cemetery.  I hate the cemetery.  I hate him being in the ground.  My faith tells me it is just a place where his physical parts remain, but the mother in me wants to shield it with my own body every time it rains.  Visiting it is a debilitating experience for me and it takes hours to recover.  So I choose to visit the cross on our property instead.  However, in the last few days I haven’t been able to walk by without seeing him laying there.  As I had arrived there that November day, I remember thinking the paramedics were making him lay still because that’s what they do when they think someone has a broken bone or something.  I had no idea at the time that my child had been cut out of a seatbelt to free him from the Polaris Ranger so he could take one final deep breath and close his eyes forever.

Last week I watched my daughter as she was posing for her senior pictures.  She looked so grown up.  I felt proud to be her mom.  Though she is pretty to me on the outside, the best part of her can’t be seen with a camera.  Keely is strong and full of integrity.  Her dedication to her brother seems to intensify with time instead of dissipating.  She is always coming up with ways to honor his memory.  For her senior pictures, we took DD’s baseball memorabilia to the Collegiate baseball field and set it up as a back drop.  He couldn’t wait to play on that field, yet he never got to pitch one single game.  Keely positioned Dalton’s cleats upon the pitcher’s mound, placed his cap upon her head, and flashed her beautiful smile for the photographer.  I knew what that smile concealed.  Behind that radiant grin was a mixture of pain, love, and pride.  She has walked the path no sibling should ever have to walk, yet she has done it with a grandeur of dignity.

I started following the blogs of other mothers suffering from the loss of a child.  What I found in several made me uneasy.  Many of these blogs felt so hopeless in their current lives and angry with God.  Others are in a deep depression and see no light at the end of the tunnel.  I told myself to stop reading them.  I don’t want that to be me.  One of the most important things I have learned about grief is that you have to be active in experiencing it.  A person has to fight the urge to succumb to the despair.  There is no way to keep a little of the darkness from creeping in time to time, but I snap out of it easier these days.  I don’t know if that is good or bad.  I just know it is part of the bereaved mother survivor skills I have acquired.  At the same time, I find I have to be active in hope.  It is more than just optimism.  I am working on trusting in God’s plan and not my own.  I won’t understand why Dalton died until I get to heaven myself and it is all revealed.  I know that day will come, but I don’t want it to come any sooner than when God is ready for me.

In the bible, Jeremiah is so consumed by his own pain in Lamentations 3:19-26.  His devastation can be heard in the passage where he says, “The thought of my pain and my homelessness is bitter poison.  I think of it constantly and my spirit is depressed.”  He is hurting and slipping into despair.  Except in the next verse, Jeremiah appears to have a change in his thinking process.  He says, “Yet hope returns when I remember this one thing:  The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise.  The Lord is all I have, so in him I put my hope.”

• Though I am feeling a multitude of emotions tonight, one idea is always on the forefront of my mind:  You don’t know God is all you need until God is all you’ve got.  I pray none of you ever have to face the loss of a child.  And If there was any advice I could give other parents with young children,  it would be to allow your children to experience Christ.  It is the most important thing you will ever do for them.  You too!  It is never too late to know Jesus.  He is always waiting on you.

This weekend I had the opportunity to watch my nephew, Brady, play in the MAYB national basketball tournament in El Dorado. He will be in the 4th grade this fall.  Seeing Brady and his teammates play brought back a lot of memories of watching Dalton on the court.  To rub salt in the wound, there was a boy in the division that looked very similar to DD when he was that age.  Same build.  Same run.  Same style of play.  The hair was identical right down to the cowlick on the left side of his head.  Troy and I found ourselves mesmerized.  For a little while, I let my mind drift and I pretended I was watching him play again.  It is an invigorating and sickening feeling at the same time.

Due to some games going into overtime, the schedule was running a bit behind by Saturday afternoon.  Brady’s team sat patiently watching the heated game being played before their own.  I stood at one end of the court watching it while talking to my dad and grandpa.  Standing near us was presumably a father of one of the little boys on the court.  He had been pacing and screaming at his son’s 3rd grade team the whole first half.  His face was so red I wondered if his blood vessels had burst.  Halftime came and he motioned angrily for his kid to come over to him.  I watched as this grown man standing about 15 feet from me yelled inches away from the face of an 8 year old boy telling him he needed to learn what it meant to rebound.  The father’s hand motions were all over the place, poking the boy in the chest more than once.  The young boys face looked as though he had borne witness to his father’s tirade many times before.  The yelling went on for another couple seconds and then the father twisted him around abruptly and pushed him back towards the coach’s huddle.  I never stopped watching the boy’s dejected face.  Finally, when he saw his dad was no longer watching, he wiped away the tears that streaked down his flushed face in a hurry.  It made me feel desolate for the boy but fortunate that we weren’t that type of parent.  Don’t misunderstand, we are far from perfect.  But we never, ever did that to our kids.  Fear shouldn’t drive a child athlete to succeed.  It comes from within.  It is an inner strength that he or she must find on their own. Discipline has its place and time, but not like that.  I remember a baseball game that Dalton’s team needed to win badly.  After a series of very questionable calls, our fans started to get upset.  Several vocal ones were kicked out of the ballpark, my husband being one of them.  Troy had been angry that the ump was throwing all of the fans out of the ballpark for saying ANYTHING.  The coach decided to put Dalton on the mound to close the game.  I still remember DD’s face as he watched his dad leave.  He told his teammates before coming out of the dugout, “No one throws out my dad.”  Under pressure and knowing it was all on him to strike three batters out, he did just that. Before my very eyes, I saw that day what kind of determination it takes a kid to want to succeed.  I am not saying that I think anything less of the screaming parent.  I am just so thankful I wasn’t.  Most likely that parent hasn’t any idea what a parent like me would trade to get to simply look into the eyes of her son again.  Just once.

I will say that the tragedy of losing my son has made me keenly aware of what a bizarre world we live in.  We give courage awards to people who have decided to play God with their bodies.  I, myself, happen to think courage awards should go to people like my grandfather who made 124 combat missions in WWII in 1944-45 while serving in the United States Air Corps.  But what do I know?  He only put his life on the line flying over the dangerous 530 mile stretch of the Himalayan Mountains day after day in order to protect this little thing we call freedom.  But I guess trading in your track cleats for a new set of breasts trumps things like that today.  Or how about all the public outrage of the killing of the lion, Cecil?  I don’t like how the lion was killed in any way, shape, or form.  But where is the outrage over the selling of body parts of aborted babies by a company that has been accused of doing this for decades?  There is now proof for everyone to see this disgusting business, and yet the public outcry is grossly overshadowed by the lion lovers of the world.  News headlines like these make me confused.  You have to wonder if God sees all this and ever thinks maybe He should have reconsidered that whole “free will” gift we all received in the creation of the world.

Vince Lombardi once said, “The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the great things that endure.  These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.”  Man, I love that.  Let me be the first to second that perspective.

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.

Keely and I were walking back to our hotel room Thursday morning when we spotted the sign by the pool.  It featured all of the day’s highlighted events for the resort’s guests.  Hot yoga had been on the beach earlier that morning at 8:30.  Tie dye shirts would take place by the pool at 11:30.  I scanned the rest of the events to the last thing on the list.  There was going to be a basketball shootout at 5:00pm.  I couldn’t wait to tell Dalton.  He was going to be so pumped.  Keely and I hurried up the three flights of stairs to room 381.  I fumbled in my bag for the room key and scanned it over the lock.  I turned the key and flung open the door.  I walked past the living room and frantically searched the bedroom for Dalton.  I scanned the whole place, even the balcony.  Walking back into the bedroom, I sat down on the bed and remembered he was dead.

This is not the first time it has happened.  About a month ago on a Sunday evening, I was out watering my flowers on the porch.  The dogs were sleeping lazily in the warm sun.  The sound of Troy’s yelling and crying from the kitchen startled me out of a trance.  I dropped the hose and ran over to the sliding glass door.  Never letting him know I was watching him, I stood stunned and confused.  Suddenly it occurred to me why he was crying.  Dalton was not here.  I had been believing all weekend that DD had been at Papa’s house.  Don’t ask me why.  I took off from the porch and started running, dogs following me on my heels.  I stopped somewhere north of my house and slumped down on the gravel road.  With two dogs nudging me to see what was wrong, I stayed and cried until I couldn’t cry any longer.  Later I would walk back to the house, finish watering my flowers, and never mention any word of this to anyone out of embarrassment.  Those two days were the longest I had hallucinated that Dalton was still here.  They had been two wonderful days.

Our family just returned from a week long vacation.  It was the first real family vacation we have gone on since the accident.  We had beautiful weather, lovely accommodations, and premier flight arrangements.  Normally, this type of a vacation would have thrilled us in every way.  Except, we were incomplete.  Like an amputee missing an arm or a leg, we were missing our boy.  My friend Ashlie describes it as this huge ball of grief we carry with us everywhere we go now.  Some days it is bearable and some days it anchors you in the least expected time and place.  So there we were, hundreds of miles away from home, and we had this gaping hole in all of our hearts.  We would be in a restaurant and Troy would say, “Dalton would love this place.”  Walking out of a movie, we had to check out the arcade.  Colton would laugh and say, “Dalton would waste so much money in here.”  Often at dinner we would exchange conversation about how much we miss him and how much he would love the beaches and staring at girls in their bikinis.  Our sadness would turn hopeful as either Troy or myself would remind the kids how wonderful everything is in heaven.  Troy would tell them how much fun Dalton was probably having.  I would insist that he was here with us in spirit and that he wanted us to not to be sad.  Then at night I would sneak out to the balcony after Troy was asleep and the kids were watching tv, and I would scream into a beach towel.  I would repeat every reassuring word I had told the kids and pray I believed them too.

Last night we took family pictures on the beach.  Part of me dreaded it because the images of the five of us taking beach pictures in West Palm Beach in Florida last spring were still so vivid in my mind.  Like usual Dalton had been the center of the attention and wouldn’t be serious for pictures.  I had offered to bribe him to smile with his teeth and of course he didn’t.  He grumbled every time I told him to let Keely stand in the middle for pictures (he always believed he should be the center of everything unless we are talking about the middle of the backseat).  Remembering these entertaining thoughts about the pics in Florida, we went ahead with taking the new pictures.  Never forgetting anything, Keely brought a framed picture of DD from our last family pic at the beach.  Setting her camera timer to capture the perfect family pic, the four of us backed up and held the beautiful picture of our boy in the center… right where he deserved to be.  We all took turns holding DD while we took each others pictures.  For the first time in the vacation, the atmosphere was pure genuine happiness. We are no professionals, but we think they turned out perfect.  Standing there in that deep sand and listening to the waves from the Atlantic Ocean, picture taking felt right.  Looking at the pic we were holding of him brought me peace.  He truly is there with us in many ways.

I am getting better at being able to laugh at the comedic stuff Dalton used to do.  Signing a bill from the pool bar had me laughing like a lunatic. I remembered our family trip to Belize when hotshot Dalton figured how to get the attention of the waitress and order his favorite drink (a virgin frozen pina colada).  He loved signing his name on those bills and writing his room number down.  It wasn’t until we were checking out from that hotel in Belize that we looked over the bar bill.  Dalton had ordered around $75 over the four days he was at the pool, signing the little receipts with Dalton Palmer in his 7th grade handwriting .  Apparently he didn’t mind ordering for his newfound friends either.

There are many pages in the Bible about people having to face tribulations in their lives.  I always knew I wouldn’t be any exception to this. But this type of tribulation seems like it’s too big at times.  I have asked God over and over why it happened.  However, my faith continues to strengthen.  I understand the pain God had to have been in to allow the Jews to call for the cruxifiction of his Son.  And I understand the grief the Blessed Virgin Mother felt as her only Son was about to be handed over to Pilate and his cronies.  They had to watch the whole gruesome scene play out before their very eyes.  Yet,  Jesus won.

Being a beveaved mother, I often focus on my fear instead of focusing on God,  There are a couple verses in Isaiah that help me to remember to always keep my eyes on Him.
 
“Fear not… for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties… I am the Lord, Who says to you, Fear not; I will help you!”  (Isaiah 41:10,13)

There are very few things in this life that I crave.  I suppose various things have fallen into this category at some point or another:  ice cream from Freddy’s, coffee first thing in the morning, or even a trip to a new country.  Ever since November 15, 2014 I have craved nothing more than to see my son.  It is a longing that festers in the pit of my stomach.  Occasional triggers bring the craving to see Dalton to inconceivable levels.  I am powerless in these moments.  They come.  I suffer.  Then I do everything I can to turn towards God and replace my trust in His plan.

In the first week following the accident, Troy and I implored God to give us a sign that DD was okay.  I would rock back and forth on the couch and repeat a mantra of “Tell me he is okay, tell me he is okay, tell me he is okay.”  In the shower I would repeat the same thing.  It wasn’t a lack of faith.  I believe I was just searching for some sort of confirmation from Dalton himself.  It came on Day 4.  We have a double shower in our master bath.  Troy and I were both showering in silence, deep in our own thoughts.  Above the sound of the water humming in my ears, I heard his voice.  It was one word and one word only.  “Mom.”  It was monotone and steady as if he was trying to say “why would you ever doubt where I am?”  Right then I looked over at Troy and my eyes confirmed what my heart already knew.  He had heard the exact same thing and in the same tone.  Troy asked me if I heard that.  I said, “Did you just hear ‘Mom’?”  He nodded in disbelief.  Standing under steaming hot water, we both were covered head to toe in chills and tears.

In the seven months to follow, I have craved another sign from Dalton to reassure us.  I know God doesn’t have a single thing to prove, yet the human side of me pleads with Him on a daily basis.  For whatever reason, God allowed Dalton to communicate to us days after his passing.  Though it was brief, we accepted the gift.  We needed something… anything… at that time in our grief and it was delivered to us in a single word.  The second present from God came yesterday.

The days leading up to Father’s Day and Dalton’s birthday have been agonizing for Troy.  All I have to do is listen for the sound of his crying to find him.  It could be in the bathroom, garage, or even in his car.  In times past when I would walk up to him, he would stop and wipe away the tears.  However, these tears are different.  He can’t stop the pain.  He can’t find something else to think about, nor can he focus on all the other blessings in his life.  He wants his son.  He doesn’t want to celebrate Father’s Day without all three of his children.  He doesn’t want DD to turn 14 tomorrow without him.  I have done my best to comfort him, but fall short.  The best I can do is turn that task over to God.  Oh boy, did our Lord provide!

I was sitting in the back of our boat yesterday while Troy was taking us on an afternoon stroll on Grand Lake.  Colton and his girlfriend, Carly, were at the front.  Without any warning that it was coming, I looked up and saw Dalton standing beside his dad while Troy drove the boat.  I noticed Troy had scooted over to the right as if to make room for his son.  Dalton’s right arm was around Troy and his left hand held a package of green (presumably dill pickle) sunflower seeds.  I was watching the way both of their hair blew with the wind and how similar the muscles in their backs looked.  Dalton didn’t appear in a completely solid form.  Instead he looked a bit fuzzy.  I wasn’t about to glance away.  My heart was begging him to turn around.  I needed to see his face.  At that moment, he did about a quarter turn with his face, looked at me, winked, and made his famous clicking sound.  After that, he turned back around and focused his attention on his dad.  Tears came.  Tears of sadness?  Tears of joy?  I had no idea.  Troy turned back to look at me sitting at the back of the boat and all of a sudden Dalton was gone as quickly as he came.  I noticed Troy had been crying too.

Last night I had just finished texting about the boat encounter to my friend Traci when I knew I had to tell Troy what I saw.  We were standing in our bathroom at the lakehouse when I told Troy that I needed to tell him something.  He could see the look on my face and knew it was about Dalton.  He stopped me.  He said he wanted to tell me something first.  I said to go ahead.  Through more tears, once again Troy spoke what my heart already knew.  He said that he felt Dalton beside him today as he was driving the boat.  He wasn’t sure how long he had been there, but he had never felt a presence so strong before.  I shared what I had witnessed from the back of the boat.  We both recalled how last year during a trip to the lake for Dalton’s birthday, Troy taught DD how to drive the Cobalt for the first and only time.  I just happened to be sitting behind them and snapped a picture of how beautiful the sight had been from my perspective – a father and his son sharing a once in a lifetime experience.

Tonight I want to thank Dalton from the bottom of my heart for giving his dad the greatest Father’s Day gift he had in his control to give.  But, more importantly, I give all glory to God for allowing us this moment.  It was brief, but we will take it.  As far as tomorrow goes, happy 14th birthday DD.  I love you to the moon and back.

“Welcome to Carrabba’s.  Have you dined with us before?”  The young waiter with the perfectly parted hair looked at me eagerly for a reply.  Instead of answering, my eyes drifted past his right shoulder to the last time I had dined there.  I imagined Troy, Dalton and I sitting and laughing.  We had just picked DD up from basketball practice and had decided to grab a bite to eat.  I remember Dalton had been wearing his blue and white basketball practice jersey that said Spartans.  His face had been pink from working hard at practice and his hair was sticking straight up with sweat.  I asked him what he wanted to eat that night and he had replied with “bread and dessert.”  After a brief argument with him about nutrition, the discussion ended in its typical fashion.  He was going to eat bread and dessert for dinner.  So as the waiter stared at me waiting patiently for my drink order, all I could do was bury my face in my hands.

Occasionally I play a dangerous game in my mind.  It is called the What If Game.  It starts with the day of the accident and works backwards. What if we had had a different doctor in the ER?  Might he or she have been more capable of resuscitating my son?  What if I had gotten to the scene faster?  Could he have heard my voice and fought harder to live? What if we had insisted that Dalton stay off the ranger that day after seeing how fast he was driving?  Would that have made us better parents?  What if we didn’t own all these ATV’s?  Had we not allowed a 13 year old boy to drive underage and inexperienced, would this accident have occurred at all?  If Dalton hadn’t been cut from the Augusta Middle School basketball team, would he have met Tyler and the other boys at Wichita Collegiate?  Would he have been in a different type of accident with a different friend?  And finally, what if my past sins created this tragedy?  Was God punishing me?

I am struggling with the whole grief process.  What stage am I really in?  Acceptance?  Denial?  Much of it lately seems to center around guilt.  If I have too good of a day, I feel guilty because I must have forgotten I am in mourning.  If I have a terrible day, I feel guilty because I have lost my perspective.  It is arduous to have hope every second of the day and believe my son is in a better place.  Speaking of guilt, today I recalled attending a funeral for Colton’s friend nearly a year ago.  Hunter was another kid gone too soon.  The five of us had gone to the funeral and then off to a dinner that night.  We spoke of Hunter’s passing, but only briefly.  After dinner we carried on with our evening without ever taking the time to really think about how Hunter’s mother and father were coping.  Before I crawled into bed, I remember telling God how much I was thankful that my own children never suffered from a chronic illness.  Looking back, I feel ashamed.  What exactly was I saying?  Thanks, God, for taking someone else’s kid instead of mine?  After DD’s accident, did anyone thank God it was my son and not theirs?

We attended Mass this morning at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church in Grove, OK.  Directly in front of us sat a family with a boy around the age of ten with a serious special need.  He shouted outbursts all throughout church, sometimes becoming physical, and otherwise acted in a defiant nature towards his parents.  With the true face of an angel, I watched this beautiful mother rub the back of this boy and whisper in his ear.  She never looked frustrated at any point.  The father didn’t quite have the patience of the mother, yet he continued to stroke the hair of his son when whispering a correction.  Even the younger sister (who obviously has taken on the role of older sibling) would gently tap his hand when he would pick at the buttons on the church pew.  Contemplating this family, I was fascinated with how they seem to have embraced their situation.  It isn’t ideal.  Beginning a family, they probably didn’t imagine administering around the clock care to their child for what is most likely his lifetime.   They have been dealt a rough hand in life, but accepted it without feeling as though it were burdensome.  I pray I can find peace always in the hand I was dealt and understand the best is yet to come.  “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace.  In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”  (John 16:33)

Being a parent is one of the hardest yet most rewarding job a person can have.  Things often don’t go the way we plan.  For much of the pre-teen and teenage years, our children think we know nothing.  A couple years ago, I remember telling Dalton to brush his teeth on a Friday night and he looked at me like I was an idiot and he said, “Mom you know I don’t brush on the weekends.  Or over Christmas Break.  Or summer.”   Ask his friends.  They know this about him.  It used to gross all of us out so bad.  His lack of personal hygiene and repulsive eating habits made us all nauseous.  Somehow, he managed to maintain a lot of friends.  But that was just DD.  He has been unique like that from Day 1.  We babied him at times and let him get away with things Colton and Keely wouldn’t have ever gotten away with.  Many times he should have had his mouth washed out with soap and grounded for weeks.  Instead often I would laugh at his inappropriate jokes and his grounding would last about 2 hours.  I guess the way I look at it now is totally different.  I see a family who loved a boy for 13 years that was on loan to us from God.  We filled his life with love and opportunity.  And he responded as being all-boy, ornery and stubborn.  It is okay to allow your children to be their own person and make their own decisions.  Of course you are there for guidance.  Parents, do me a favor if you will.  Let your child order just bread and dessert one day.  It is okay.  Just promise me you will think of my boy.

We have windows that surround our indoor pool room on all four sides, plus skylights.  It is a beautiful sight to be inside and watching a rainstorm on a spring day or the moonlight on a clear, crisp night.  Our kids bedrooms are on the 2nd floor of the house and the hallway leading to their rooms can be seen from the pool room.  At the top of the stairs is a loft where Dalton spent much of his time playing video games and watching tv.  The rules were no food or drink were allowed up there.  Everyone seemed to be able to handle that rule fairly well except DD.  He always thought he was so clever sneaking his pop and snacks up there (as if I didn’t know).

About three weeks after the accident, I found myself sitting alone in the loft, rocking back and forth in his video game chair.  It didn’t take long for the emotions to take over.  I rocked and cried.  Somehow I ended up laying on my side on the floor staring under the entertainment center.  Looking back at me were about 15 sucker sticks and candy wrappers.  I turned my face to look under the sofa.  A single dirty sock and a box of half eaten chocolates were neatly stuffed under there as well.  Something made me pull open a side table drawer.  Four jumbo sacks of sunflower seeds, a half-eaten Kit Kat bar, and an empty can of pop were stuffed inside.  It was like little pieces of my son were scattered all around me.  I laid back down on the floor and cried harder, clutching the sunflower seed sacks like a crazy person.  Eventually, I sat up and what I saw next was more than I could bear.  Across the loft on the windows looking into the pool room were his handprints.  The sight took me by surprise.  It felt so intimate.  Like he was there.  Naturally, I walked over and placed my hands on top of his.  They were about a 1/2 an inch larger than my own.  Man, he had grown.  I thought about the hands that held my own crossing a street.  The hands that paint-balled the Virgin Mary statue in my landscaping.  The hands that pitched a no-hitter.  The hands that made those very prints one day as he saw me walking through the pool room, pushing his palms against the glass simply because he knew I hated handprints on my windows.  I thought about the hands that now held my own heart.

I stayed upstairs that night tracing his fingerprints for a long time.  Before I started downstairs, I made sure everything was as he left it, down to the last sucker stick stuck to my carpet fibers.  Cleaning that stuff would have to come another day when I would have more strength.  At that point in my grief, I was still reminding myself when to breathe.  Feeling drained, I remember walking into a dark kitchen to find Troy sitting at our breakfast table with his head buried in his hands, sobbing loudly.  I hadn’t even noticed his crying over the sound of my own.  Looking at the sight of one another, we both knew how each other was feeling.  It was going to be another one of those nights.  Saying nothing, we followed one another into our bedroom and prepared ourselves for another sleepless night.

I thought about Dalton’s handprints today at Mass as Father was giving his homily on the Holy Trinity.  I’m not sure why.  I think it was because Father was explaining how Jesus appeared to the eleven disciples after His resurrection, revealing the nature of the triune God, and what they were expected to do next.  The disciples were told by Jesus to spread the gospel, observe the commandments, and to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Basically, Jesus said to “go make your mark.”  It occurred to me that my son had done that very thing in his short 13 years.  The proof was on the glass. Literally.

Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.  (1 Timothy 2:8)

I waited until about sunset on Mother’s Day to visit my son’s grave.  I had been strong all day for my two other children.  One lesson I have learned as a bereaved parent is that generally when you have several good days in a row, a horrible dark one is looming around the corner.  Mine came that night.  I dropped down slowly to my knees and kneeled in the damp dirt that encircled Dalton’s gravesite.  I sunk down beside the delicately arranged red, white and blue roses and wept for my baby.  I cried for the handmade Mother’s Day card he wouldn’t draw me in a hurry.  I cried because I didn’t get to hear him ask if we can leave church right after communion that Sunday.  And I cried because I didn’t have my boy to give me that awkward hug that a 13 year old boy gives his mom for Mother’s Day.  For the thousandth time, I begged God to bring him back.

I was able to move briskly through the 6th month mark since I was so busy with planning Colton’s graduation dinner.  The distraction was a blessing.  I had planned and planned for two weeks, being sure to think of every last detail possible.  Friday night I got into the shower and the tears I had kept neatly into place came with a horrible force.  I had needed the release.

Using Rubbermaid tubs, I packed up all of Dalton’s clothes today.  I hadn’t opened the drawers since the funeral home told me to pick out an outfit to bury him in.  Now my son’s things are tidily tucked into seven containers and labeled accordingly: shirts, pants, underwear, socks, belts, ties, and baseball clothes.  I felt sick to my stomach with each lid I snapped into place.  Inside those tubs are stories of my child.  His nice polo shirts and pleated pants for school, his faded t-shirts I begged him to stop wearing, his mismatched socks, the too small swim trunks he wore in Florida, the underwear he took from Colton’s drawer, and the baseball pants stained with red dirt from sliding into home plate.  Click, click.  Just like that they were closed and hauled off to our basement.  The only clothes that remain upstairs are the ones that were cut off of him the day of the accident.  I have not looked at them since the day they were given back to me.

Life hurts right now.  I feel like my pain is never going to end.  I don’t know how to act.  Do I talk about him?  It probably hurts worse to not talk about him, so I generally do.  I think it makes people uncomfortable at times, but I can’t help it.  If feels good to say his name.  It feels even better to hear someone else say his name.  Having his friends honor him means everything.  The Augusta Bulldogs won first place in the U-12 division of Dalton’s tournament and they each signed a ball for him and wore his t-shirt to school the next day.  One player, Austin Grey, even came over to our house after the tournament to give us his 1st place trophy he had earned.  Last week, 8th grade AMS girls, Erin Fitzpatrick, Bailey Pennycuff, Nataleigh Cantu, and Claire Hallmark presented our family with a special baton they made for Dalton after their relay race at the final track meet of the year.  Monday, the 8th grade class at WCS held a balloon release in Dalton’s memory.  One of Dalton’s best friend’s, Canon Nesmith, read a heartfelt tribute to DD before the launch.  All of this is appreciated more than I can say.

Tonight I ask for God’s comfort.  This is pain like no other.  I understand that many people have walked in my shoes, and many more will long after I am gone.  I ask for comfort for them as well.  I truly believe God heals the brokenhearted.  My love for Dalton spanned the course of 13+ years.  I highly doubt it if 6 months is sufficient to mend this broken heart of mine.

I have been working for about a week on my landscaping and gardening.  Upon completion, I brought Troy into the backyard to show him everything I had been doing.  For years, I have thought about ripping up the old ground covering, planting flowers in the pots, putting in a garden, adding solar accent lights, and buying new patio furniture.  I was so proud of how well it turned out. I asked Troy to help me move the unused doghouse that always sat by the backdoor.  We lifted it up and carried it to the dog run by the garage.  We sat it down and heard the clinking sound of the baseball bats hitting one another from inside the doghouse.  Looking down, we noticed them at the same time.  Five bats.  One by one, I watched Troy pick them up and he told me which bat Dalton used at each level of the game.  There was his t-ball bat, his machine pitch bat, two kid pitch bats, and his wiffle ball bat.  Turning them over and over, I listened to my husband tell me all about buying each one and the little achievements DD made while using each.  By the time he got to the wiffle bat, we were both sobbing.  We stood out in the backyard for a little longer and cried together.  Troy went back into the house and I remained on the patio gazing at my yard.  Suddenly, I hated everything I saw.  It all made me sick.  The new mulch, the freshly planted rose bushes, the pristine garden with its recently tilled ground, the blooming hibiscus trees staring back at me from the pots, and the neatly installed solar lights all repulsed me.  Nothing about this backyard looked like a 13 year old boy lived there.  Gone were his muddy shoes by the patio door, his wiffle balls in the grass, and the sunflower seed shells I used to yell at him for spitting on my back porch.  The whole scene looked too much like a Home & Garden  magazine from Lowe’s instead of the yard of a family with a young boy.  I stayed outside and cried and cried and cried.

Lately, we are all a mess.  Colton doesn’t talk about Dalton much.  Sometimes that hurts.  Yet I know he is grieving.  Keely goes daily to visit her brother at the cemetery.  Yesterday she discovered that, with all the rain, the dirt had caved in about 2 feet on the grave.  The sight traumatized her.  My mother-in-law and brother-in-law spent the day today re-arranging the decorations.  I know I should be thinking about a headstone.  I just can’t.  It seems too final.  We are about to hit the six month mark without him, yet I can’t even begin to think about seeing his name in cement.  The thought makes me hurt too bad. It is a true physical pain to imagine it.

This weekend is Dalton’s memorial baseball tournament.  I love and despise the idea.  He should be playing instead of having his name on a t-shirt.  That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful because I truly am.  I just wish the situation were different.  Watching his team play without him will be excruciating.  I believe God allows people in heaven the opportunity to watch certain things that would bring them joy.  Therefore, I expect my son to be in the stands this weekend.  He was the biggest trash-talker on the field, which makes me assume someone in heaven is having to listen to him run his mouth about the Cubs winning their division.  I would expect nothing less.

It is almost Mother’s Day.  I embrace and dread the day.  My first Mother’s Day without my boy is weighing on me hard.  I want to hold him so bad it breaks my heart.  He is everywhere I look and everywhere I don’t.  I crave hearing his voice one more time, but then again, I ask myself if would it ever be enough?  I know the answer to that question.  It would never be enough.  I want him.  The real him, not an allusion.  In moments of weakness, I find myself trying to bargain with God to have him back.  I would happily barter to have my imperfect, funny, ornery son back in my arms.  In just six months, I find it getting more difficult to visualize the flecks of color in his eyes and the scratchy sound of his adolescent voice.  Then I look at a photograph and I recall each detail down to the lines of his hands and freckle on his back.  The reality of it all is enough to bring me to my knees over and over.

In his book, A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis writes “For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs.  Round and round.  Everything repeats.  Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?  But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?  How often – will it be for always? – how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, ‘I never realized my loss till this moment?’  The same leg is cut off time after time.”

Tonight I feel very much like I am going in a circle of sadness.  My loss is staring me straight in the face.  Perhaps it is the work of the devil. He just chips and chips at me trying  to get me to be angry with God.  That’s not going to happen.  My  faith is in Jesus Christ and His resurrection.  For a Christian, everything centers around the resurrection because we know that at his second coming, Christ will raise all those who are asleep in Him on the last day.  He has promised an everlasting life and a resurrected body to his followers.  It’s like when Lewis writes, “I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.”  I feel that way about Dalton.  I want the real him here with me, not just something that makes me recall him.  That right there is also why nothing other than the Catholic Church will ever suffice for communion to me.  We get to have the real, consecrated body and blood as we celebrate the Eucharist at every Mass.  It is in that moment at church that I feel the closet to Dalton that I can ever be while still living in this world.  I can’t explain it totally, but I can say it gives me chills and an awareness that he is near.

So, DD, please keep watch over the U-14 Cubs and all the boys playing in your tournament.  We ask God to keep everyone safe and accident-free.  We also ask that you give all these great baseball players a special blessing as they play in the First Annual Dalton Palmer Memorial Tournament.  God, if you could throw in some sunny weather, that would be cool too!