October 15, 2002

Dear Jamie,

It is hard to know what to tell people. I always want, even need, to tell people about you. It is painful not to do so. I have always shared about you wherever I go- photos of you, stories about you. If I do mention you now, there is a very unpredictable quality to the conversation afterward. Many people are pretty sensitive in general. I've had some people, usually women, grab me and hug me if I mention that my son was recently killed. Sometimes, though, even the most seemingly sensitive person ends up saying something very thoughtless. I try to know that people are really trying to be helpful, but that no one in our society is ever taught how to deal with grief, or situations like ours. We're not schooled in the language of the heart, how to comfort the hurt, or be with someone who is wounded emotionally or spiritually. This is especially true of men. We have lots of classes available to help us learn first aid and CPR to save a body. But very few resources are available for how to "save someone's soul" (and I don't mean in the contemporary Christian sense of the phrase). In the first couple of months after you were taken from us, neither Mom nor I could stand to hear a great many things we did hear. We even considered making a David-Letterman-style "Top 10 list"- "The Top 10 Worst Things to Say When Someone's Child Dies". 

Today, I was talking to an acquaintance. He is someone I've had light conservations with over the past couple of years. We don't know each other very well, but we are always friendly to each other. I somehow got into talking to him about the last accident, and some of the details of it. After we had talked for a while, I began to realize that somehow he didn't know about you. He didn't know that you were gone. When it became even a little more obvious, I asked him, "You did hear about my son, didn't you"?
"No", he looked at me a little surprised, his eyebrows slightly lifted.

So, I told him about you, and your accident, and showed him a picture of you. He told me he had lost his wife several years ago, and that he had gone through a lot of pain around that, and that he understood that it is even more painful to lose a child, or at least the effects last longer. He seemed very shocked and caring. Then he asked me how my wife is doing. I answered in my normal way. "Well, she's devastated. This is really hard on her." Then came the remark. Innocent but cutting, he said, "I imagine something like this must be harder on the mother."

Why? Why do so many people think this is harder on the mother? I wonder if it may be true in most cases. I try to think about my friend's frame of reference, and how it seems to him that this is surely easier on me than your mom. I take a couple of deep breaths, and remind myself that he's not trying to attack me. Maybe if his child died, it would indeed be less devastating for him than for his child's mother. Most people, unless they knew us together, could not really grasp what you and I mean to each other. It's not their fault. It does bother me, though, that this is a common belief about mothers and fathers. I'm sure that men and fathers can bare a lot of the blame for this perception. It is not uncommon for men to have lukewarm relationships with their children, I regretfully realize.

The relationship your sister's father, Don, has with her is probably not too out-of-the-norm, unfortunately. He donated the sperm, and then the father-daughter relationship never developed. He made a couple of half-hearted efforts over the years, but couldn't understand why Danielle didn't want to obey him on his second or third visit (when she was about 13). I look around me at fathers in this world and see a lot of room for improvement. This is not to say I was perfect- no, not by a long shot. I did love you more deeply than I've ever loved anyone though, and the thought of you not being with me was agonizing, even long before you died. I will try to focus on fatherhood as it could be, and not as it is. If these absent fathers only knew what they were missing! They'd be back, if only to fill their own need for love and connection.

Instead of feeling upset about the perception, maybe I should just feel grateful. Grateful that the love you and I shared was so strong, so special, that it really is as hard a loss for me as it is for Mom, that to think it is not seems bizarre to me. It's not something that would have ever crossed my mind, except that others pointed it out as their reality. I've said before I would never trade back all of my pain for the time we did have together, no matter how short it was. Both Mom and I feel that way. We would accept a lifetime of agony in return for the love we shared, and continue to share with you, Jamie boy. 

I'm missing you so much today. When I close my eyes sometimes, if I can be very quiet and still, I can see your soft face about two or three inches in front of mine. And sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can almost feel your cheek on mine. Almost. 

Love,
Dad