tempests

Like the tempestuous sky, with its swathes and pockets of cinder white and its rolling thunderheads, my son's good and bad behaviors waxed and waned. I've often wondered if the atmospheric pressure affects his fragile brain and ventricles, bringing on epilepsy's electric storms; I'd seen one coming for days—his shrieking and spaciness, and the violent swings in-between.

As Michael and I relaxed in our screen porch after having dined there, and while listening intently to an unusually raucous choir of birds, I heard our son's own shrill cry. I raced across the yard and bounded upstairs to find the sickeningly familiar sight of him seizing. His fits are unearthly, muscles twitching at lightening-quick speeds, eyes wide open though unable to see, mouth agape in a dreadful, torturous expression.

When it was over, and like too many times before, Michael tipped Calvin's chin up to wipe drool from his cheek, and a ribbon of scarlet blood streamed out. My poor sweet boy whimpered, as I imagined the world in his mind was spinning. I got in bed with him and held him, twilight still lingering at nine o'clock. As I laid there feeling his breathing, which sometimes wavered, I thought about our friend-brother-son who took his life last August; he comes to mind often—his pillow case, his tea pot, his voice, his being. I wondered if the physical world itself—nature—as much as the personal, political and social ones, sometimes crushed him, its sharp-contrast, sunlit days blindingly harsh, its tempests and leaden skies pressing down.

I laid there next to my own son wondering when nature might take him. In a cloud? In the wind? In a storm?

beyond reason and dreams

I dreamt of him the other night, the friend we lost last August. I could feel his strong body standing close to mine, could see the anguish in his brown eyes. In the dream, he hadn't died yet, but we all knew this was his plan; we all knew he had made up his mind and there was nothing anyone could do. In life, I wish I'd known how deep his anguish went.

With his dream-time coming to a close, I wanted every minute of him to be mine. But I knew there were others who felt the same, and I knew also that he needed space to himself, this friend-brother-son of ours. And so, after embracing, he kissed me and I released him to say goodbye to the others he loved. As I rode the streetcar to downtown San Francisco (I dream of that fair city almost nightly), I saw him riding inside a trolley headed in the opposite direction. Looking quite young again, his face thin and clean-shaven, his small ears and nose holding dark-framed spectacles, he was alone and weeping, his face buried in his palms. I understood then how hard his life had become.

Later in the dream we were together again for one final moment. I held him as if he were my child, then kissed his chest where in life a gorgeous tattoo had arced. The tattoo, a quote from Voltaire's Candide, had read, in French:

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

But in my dream, his tattoo had vanished, revealing a smooth, blank expanse of skin, the one he had been born with. That was the last I saw of my friend-brother-son; he had said goodbye to me in dream-person.

I awoke melancholic, and yet yearning to go back to sleep and dream of him again. In dreams, we see people who aren't reachable, can hear and touch them. I understood how selfish I was to be glad to see him alive again, knowing that he suffered, and yet it pains me to think he's not out there living the life in which he seemed to revel.

While seated at a cafe later that morning, Michael and I saw Hector, one favorite of his former photo students who have kept in touch in recent years. As Hector approached me from behind, I watched Michael's happy surprise. I remained in my seat and leaned into Hector while he slung his arm around my shoulder. Resting my head against his side felt safe, familiar, like it did when I had embraced my friend-brother-son in the dream that morning, and in real life.

Later, I recounted my dream to Michael, told him how sad it made me and how much I missed our dear person. As I described my dream, Michael's eyes turned pink, and watered. Between us, Calvin was up to his usual antics—drooling, fidgeting, cackling. Watching Calvin, I pondered why a boy like him—intellectually and physically disabled, legally blind, incontinent, nonverbal, epileptic, autistic—goes on living with so little tangible purpose, goes on making me sometimes resent him, making me sometimes wish I were free of him, while another life, one with so much genius, vibrancy and potential ends so tragically early.

But then I remember the phenomenal essay, A Life Beyond Reason, written by my friend Chris Gabbard about his son, August, who was not too unlike Calvin. At the end of the piece, Gabbard, who has just written a memoir with the selfsame title, describes his son:

August ... is the most amazing and wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, for he has allowed me an additional opportunity to profoundly love another human being.

August died a few years later when he was just fourteen.

Having reread the essay, pausing on that last paragraph, I reconsider the despair Calvin often brings, and the grief I feel from having lost my hurting friend-brother-son to suicide. And instead of feeling sorry for myself, I feel grateful for having been able to know and love them deeply, and to have had the chance to tell them as much, in person and in dreams, past and yet to come.

Photo by Michael Kolster