Found in Reflection
It has been well established that the death of a child is the most heart-wrenching tragedy that any parent could possibly suffer. Assuming the parent is self-respecting and of sound mind and body. Perhaps an even greater tragedy is that there are parents out there who don’t come even remotely close to meeting the requirements of this definition. The ability to procreate should not be recognized as a licence for parenting. When a child dies it’s a catastrophic loss that is so unimaginable that it is recognized universally as an unwritten law. Unfortunately, it is a law that cannot be enforced by mere mortals and when a child dies due to parental negligence then it’s almost to be expected.
“No parent should be expected to outlive their child.”
This sentiment is intended to be conciliatory in nature and is quite often accompanied by a sincere hug. Usually the person passing that little nugget along has never experienced something as horrific as this. They have absolutely no idea of the depths of despair that the grieving parent has been tasked with having to endure. How could they possibly know? Yet they still feel the need to inform you of something that you’ve already been painfully made aware of.
There’s a newly discovered knowledge that you become privy to as a result of their well-intentioned, yet ill conceived, attempts to console your sorrow. I can assure you that, at that very moment in time, that is the most vulnerable you are ever going to be. And yet it is right smack dab in the midst of this devastation where this knowledge reveals itself to you, crashing down around you with the resounding fury of a lightning bolt. It is very simple. That is the message: It is very simple.
We, as a collective species, are very simple. I believe we have been misled by the renowned scholars, whose very status has been assured by default. That’s because most of their fellow humans are too lazy and self absorbed to even consider thinking about something other than the mundane. The scholars insist that we are superior to the other species because we possess a conscience and, therefore, the ability to rationalize and express our thoughts with emotions. I suggest that feeling emotion is very personal and introspective while outwardly expressing your emotion is just another form of behavioural conditioning. Pavlov showed us that even dogs are capable of that.
You can’t just feel something because that’s what other people are expecting of you. All you can do is consider the information as it is made available to you and react accordingly. Whatever it is that you may happen to be feeling, it is still advisable to look both ways before you cross the road. Devastated or elated, the world will continue to turn regardless. You must not allow yourself to become all-consumed unless you are prepared for the repercussions. There have been many people who have been forever lost, never able to return from the jaws of grief.
People have a morbid fascination with tragedy and they need to know all the details surrounding these unfortunate circumstances. I suppose there’s a TMZ reporter hidden somewhere in all of us. Surprisingly, I was not that shocked when I heard about my daughter’s death. It was almost like I’d been expecting it. I was unusually calm given the situation and now, looking back in retrospect, perhaps I was in actual shock. Similar to the epiphany, I’d never lost a child before and it was a most uncommon experience.
It was September 2020 and both Crystal and myself had already been sharing the covid lockdown experience together at the same address since March. I lived in the basement apartment and she resided upstairs with her 11 year old son, who had just recently gone to live with his father across town. Disciplinary issues were cited as the reason and who might’ve been at the source of the issues remains indeterminate still.
Crystal never seemed to be fully confident in herself and she would retreat if anybody were to offer her advice or assistance. I don’t know if it was guilt or a shame but she always tried to keep her personal feelings somewhat secretive. I was an old school father and I still believed in spanking children. In fact, I will proudly admit that I still do to this day. Crystal was a teacher’s administrative assistant and she was of the opposite new age opinion.
Cognizant of the fact that she was a 32 year old adult, I kept mostly to myself downstairs in my apartment. I definitely didn’t think Crystal was the most effective parent but I also understood that perhaps my own shortcomings could be attributed to this. I still don’t know whether it was from the guilt of being a failed father or a maturity that told me I should mind my own business and keep my opinions to myself. Either way, I did everything in my power to avoid possible confrontations.
For the longest time I struggled with the notion that there may have been something that I may have overlooked, a possible action or maybe just words. Anything that might have prevented this terrible event from ever having occurred. Perhaps addressing the issue head on was precisely what I should have done. We shall never know. Certainly spanking was no longer a viable option at her age.
Like so many other people, Crystal was not able to adapt to the altered landscape that the pandemic had created. I was 57 years old then and nature had made it abundantly clear to me that I was going to have to find a suitable replacement for work in which to occupy my time. Getting drunk in the morning hours and binge watching Netflix was not going to cut it. So I began to write a novel.
There was no guarantee that there would be a job available to me at the end of this pandemic, or even if the pandemic would actually end. We were literally sailing in uncharted waters and I thought it best to keep my mind active. It definitely seemed to work out for me but Crystal had no such luck.
She was mentally deteriorating right before our eyes. It got to the point that she was literally buying into the anti-vax theories that had begun to explode online.
This created a great deal of tension within our tight family bubble as both Melissa and myself tried to reason with her. Melissa was seven months pregnant with Appollina at the time and also had a mentally handicapped teenage boy that required substantial attention. Seeing as nobody in our circle was a medical expert, we thought it best to err on the side of caution when it came to the vaccine. Melissa and Dave made the painful, yet prudent decision to restrict Crystal from entering their home if she refused to get vaccinated. I also took great strides in avoiding contact with my own daughter as paranoia was running rampant at the time. Crystal continued with her descent into madness and would not listen to reason.
It was at 5:00 a.m. on one particular morning when I was rudely awakened by Crystal. She was yelling out angrily from the living room that is located literally just above my bed. Suffice to say, I was pissed off and I stomped upstairs to let her know that much.
In my day, if you were displeased with your government or a particular social issue, we would take our message to the streets in the form of a protest. That would be a particularly bad idea these days, considering that we’d been urged to stay indoors and there was a legal curfew being enforced. Crystal was a millennial and their modus operandi was taking to the internet. I would’ve probably admired her chutzpah for addressing her issues so vigorously in a combative face to face manner. It’s not like she was some nameless troll hiding behind an avatar, that’s for sure. She was vociferously blasting someone on her laptop screen for disagreeing with her crazy anti-vax theories. The problem for me was not just the fact that I happened to think she was completely bonkers but that it was also 5 in the morning.
“Jesus Christ, Crystal!” I yelled at her, “I’m trying to sleep right below you here. It’s five o’clock in the fuckin’ morning!”
She ignored me completely and continued to argue with whomever was on the other end of her face-time rant.
“Fuck this!” I snapped at her, “I’m moving out of here as soon as I can.”
I trudged back downstairs to my apartment and quickly got changed into my clothes. I threw a six pack into a bag and then I stormed out of the house, intent on heading over to Melissa’s place which was just a 15 minute walk away. Dave and her were out of town and I knew she wouldn’t mind.
That was the very last time that I saw my daughter alive. We talked on the phone later that afternoon and we both tried to reconcile our differences. I urged her to get professional help and she quickly changed the topic.
“Eat that steak in the fridge, Dad. You know what? Just eat everything..”
That was the last thing she said to me and to this very day I still think it was a cryptic message. It’s like she knew all along that she would not be returning. Ten hours later this sad premonition was to become an indelible truth. My daughter Crystal was dead.
I’m not sure if ironic is the appropriate word but it is strangely coincidental that the night of Crystal’s death, before I’d been informed, I found myself watching a film called “Meet Joe Black”. It was a Hollywood movie starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, whereupon the grim reaper takes human form and develops an unlikely friendship with the very man whose soul he’s been sent to retrieve. In hindsight, I always found that a remarkably odd choice of film to just happen across. That’s especially weird when you consider the grim reaper was literally in the process of making my daughter’s acquaintance.
We were still very much in lockdown mode and there was no pressing need for an early rise, so I enjoyed a few late night beers along with the film. That’s why it’s somewhat surprising that I was able to be awakened by my phone at 5:30 a.m., as I’d probably only gone to sleep an hour earlier. It was my son-in-law Dave on the phone.
“What’s up?” I asked him groggily.
“I’m gonna come by and pick you up.” He said flatly, with no indication as to why, but a tonal urgency suggesting that it would be done nevertheless.
“Okay,” I mumbled, shaking my head clear of the foggy remnants of sleep, “give me 10 minutes..I gotta change..”
He agreed and I quickly started to get changed. It was obvious that something very heavy had gone down and that I’d soon be made aware of it. I suspected that it may have something to do with Crystal because she never did return to the house that night and I would’ve heard her as I was up later than usual.
When I got into Dave’s car ten minutes later, I turned to him and asked him how my daughter Melissa was doing. He struggled mightily to answer.
“Uh..She’s pretty devastated.” He whispered, “But she’s..She’s okay considering..”
“The kids?” I had to ask.
“They’re fine..”
I knew at that specific moment, Crystal was gone. Dave couldn’t bring himself to tell me and I completely understood his apprehension. Who the hell wants to tell a parent that their child has died?
“Stop at Circle K on the way back to your place.” I said “I have to get a couple packs of cigarettes. I think there’s gonna be a lot of smoking today..”
Indeed, there was a lot of smoking on that day. There was an awful lot of crying as well. The limits to our emotional fragility are severely tested in these trying times. There’s a helplessness in being wiped out mercilessly by a tsunami of grief, left lying naked and exposed to the rest of the world. Now imagine having to be that vulnerable in the company of your ex-wife and her husband. It was both awkward and challenging to say the least.
My ex-wife Sharon has made it abundantly clear that she does not exactly hold me in high regard. If anything, one might even suggest that she holds me in absolutely no regard whatsoever. Admittedly, I am a confident man. However, I do realize that I’m also a fat, functioning alcoholic with very little to show for my years of dedication to the service industry. You’d be hard pressed to make a case for vanity based on those attributes. I do try to make the most out of what I’ve been given though and, fortunately for me, laughter always seems to lighten the load. It also seems to agitate particular people to no end. Especially Sharon, as she seems to get angered by my cheerful disposition. I suppose that makes me spiteful because I do take great joy from that.
For obvious reasons a truce was called and our ill-feelings were temporarily relegated to the sidelines where they paced about anxiously like football players, ready for game action at a moment’s notice. There were a few cumbersome moments though. At one point I felt like I might get frostbite as I leaned in to give Sharon a sympathetic hug. All seething resentment aside, she is a mother who is grieving the loss of her child. No dice! She pulled back immediately and glared at me like I’d poisoned her cat. Even her husband Max gave her a disapproving frown and nodded towards me, suggesting that he too had experienced the “scowl” on more than one occasion. It was as if he was acknowledging a kind of kinship by nodding silently in agreement, “Yup. She can be cold alright”.
There is very little allotted time for immediate family to actually mourn the loss of a loved one. Sure, there’s the funeral and the ensuing wake, which has now been rebranded redundantly as a “celebration of life”. Personally, I feel that the actual celebration of life should occur while the person is still alive. Hence the key words “celebration” and “life”. There are many conflicting emotions when remembering someone and very often these feelings are not something to celebrate. Besides, the chances are likely that the immediate family members have been getting bombarded with phone calls and text messages from the sympathetic, albeit curious, people that are not so immediate to the deceased.
How many times must you re-tell the sad tale of your daughter’s demise before others will understand that it’s really not what you’d prefer to be doing at that moment? And how many people tell you that you’re in their prayers despite the fact that they have never displayed any spiritual inclinations in all the time you’ve known them? Ah, they’re just humans and are probably just as confused as you are.
I found the administrative aspect of the mourning period to be the most disillusioning. You come to realize very quickly that the whole funeral/celebration of life thing is a shameless scam. Death is an actual economy and, sadly, your loss is somebody else’s gain. How dare these complete strangers profess to know what “she would’ve wanted”. Of course, the dead person would want the most extravagant vase for her ashes, wouldn’t she? And are you absolutely sure that she didn’t want to be buried instead of cremated? We do have an outstanding assortment of mahogany coffins that are, quite literally, to die for. Are you sure that she wouldn’t want that?
Sharon and Melissa took care of that side of the “business” and I will always remain eternally grateful for that, as I’m pretty sure that I would’ve physically assaulted a funeral director. I was left to utilize my service industry connections and organize a memorial service, otherwise known as the “celebration of life”. I was left humbled by the gracious display of generosity shown to my family by my previous employer. Even though I had just recently left to go work for his rival, he offered his services and provided both the banquet hall and catering free of charge. Despite his reputation as a tenacious businessman, he revealed himself to be a thoughtful, caring human being first and I will forever cherish his memory.
The girls once again took charge of the actual presentation and, if I may be quite honest and possibly misogynist, they seemed much better suited for arranging flowers and choosing music than I could have ever been. Though I was quite miffed at the nostalgic display of chronological memories that Sharon had arranged with pictures from Crystal’s past. I was in only one of the hundred or more photographs that were used, despite the fact that I was living with Crystal at the time of her death. Either she had cut me out of the photographs years ago or she was taking her disdain for me to a whole new level. It bothered me tremendously but I tried to keep my personal feelings aside. I was determined to take the high road and I knew both of our daughters would very much have preferred it that way. I was comfortable knowing that every single person in that banquet hall knew that I was Crystal’s father and that I had loved her. It didn’t really matter to them if her mother thought I was a douche. That’s not why they were here.
Yes, there have been some challenging times but, being as it is time, it inevitably passes, quickly turning into memories. And upon reflection, I do notice how it evolves into a different time. It’s literally like watching the live birth of a brand new experience, a memory in the making. Indeed I will resemble the same man I’ve always been but I will no longer be that same man. I know what I’d like to be but I can’t objectively tell you what I am. I find this whole life thing to be an exhilarating improvisational experience. The secret is to make yourself comfortable with uncertainty. You can do that, you can do anything!
The End
Written by Christopher J. Gavin