Presents in his Absence

Occasionally, not often, I feel a pang of sadness at the thought of the family Clay might have had one day. Sometimes it’s what kind of work he might have pursued, or on which continent he’d have lived. Would his accent have changed in his four years at Dartmouth, from unmistakeably English to “mid-Atlantic” or even to my American accent? When a parent gets caught up in these questions after the loss of a child, it can be difficult to witness and celebrate the milestones of the friends who remain—graduations, weddings, etc. Clay’s friends will all be turning 21 now. For me, it would be a sharp sting not to be able to share in the joys and important occasions of his friends, so I hope I don’t ever get stuck in that ‘future loss’ montage. Though I don’t think one ever has much control over where the grieving soul moves.

So far the pain of my loss revolves largely around the loss of his presence: his company, his contribution to the here and now, and his place in this family. In fact, I find it almost impossible to process any given state of the world, of my family, or of my own mind, knowing that it lies entirely outside Clay’s earthly influence. Even the things ostensibly unrelated to him– what I eat for breakfast, say, or the global pandemic—are altered by his absence.  I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t lost a child can understand that without fretting about my sluggish rate of progress, without urging me to “move on.” I think a bereaved parent might relate to it, though. In any case, Clay was really funny, and lockdown would have been immeasurably more fun with Clay sliding across the kitchen floor in his red spandex morph suit, or rolling from room to room on his Ripstik. We felt his absence acutely during the lockdown, imagining how it could have been with his wacky and witty sense of humour keeping us all amused and sometimes annoyed.

Moving on homophonically, I also miss his presents; Clay was an exceptional gift-giver. He was only about twelve or thirteen when he chose a rather stylish woven-leather bracelet, a birthday present for a school friend. After Clay died, the friend graciously told me he still wears it. Our kitchen is filled with souvenir gifts from France, Italy and Spain, brought back from various school trips abroad. We pour our olive oil from a ceramic bottle decorated with olives and use it nearly every day. I loved the china coffee mug he found on a school ski trip, checkered red with an Alpine ski motif, because the look of it reminded me of me. His last Christmas gift to me was a glazed clay pot that he’d found at our Saturday farmer’s market and we now use it to hold pecans, walnuts and almonds for breakfasts and ice cream sundaes. The coolest stuff his dad wears were all presents from Clay, and I’ll likely wear my fluorescent pink sneakers until I’m too old to walk in them. I was never sure if they were cool or not, but now it just doesn’t matter.

I think it’s because his gifts made me feel known that I always felt they were so special. Once when he was very young I opened a small, dark green globe teapot on my birthday. I was lost for words because I already had one exactly like it, not often used. I gave him a big hug and a smile because I realised the image of my teapot must have been unconsciously etched in his little brain somewhere, so he really knew I’d like a dark green globe teapot. Makes sense. Years later when he was tall enough to spot the two together in the highest cupboard, we had a good laugh.  He said “Hey–you never told me you already had one.” These days I drink a lot more tea just to cup that teapot in my hands, hot and round. A wacky crocheted tea cozy now keeps the teapot warm, a gift from someone who must have known Clay.

In the last six months of Clay’s life, when we became increasingly aware of the emergent personality changes due to his experimentation with drugs, we still had precious glimpses of the ‘real Clay.’ That January, 2019 he handed me a package with very little ceremony. It came to him in the post a week or two after my 50^th birthday, and we now realise that just then his money was coming and going too quickly between shifts at work and his growing need for illegal substances.  But what was inside touched me deeply. The year before, I’d sent my mother a kalimba, or thumb piano, so she could make music when she was travelling away from home. Secretly, I’d really wanted one for myself but never said so to anyone.  Somehow, he knew. Inside the box was a beautiful mahogany 17-key kalimba he’d found for my 50^th birthday. There’s a particular spot next to a grassy dune on a sandy beach in Florida where we sat together in our last April as I worked out how to pluck “Stairway to Heaven” on the metal bars, mostly pulling off the recognisable Led Zeppelin harmonies. It takes some learning for the brain to adjust to the kalimba’s weird, non-linear layout of notes.

Perhaps his most thoughtful gift was given to his girlfriend Skye on her 18^th birthday. He’d been planning it for months. She had lost her best friend some years before, traumatically and incredibly sad at that young age. He felt sad too, for Skye. A mindless comfort for her was to doodle her best friend’s name, making hearts out of each of the letters. Clay sketched the design for a pendant based on her doodle, sent it to a graphic designer he’d found on Fiverr, and then on to a 3D printing company. They made it into a silver pendant, and he strung it onto a silver chain.  I think she still wears the necklace to remember her friend AVA.

That was exactly three years ago, and I’ve lost any sense of how long that is. Three years spent raising three little kids felt more like three months, but in these last three years I’ve aged a lifetime. Still, don’t try to convince me that it wasn’t ‘just yesterday’ that he and I walked barefoot along the pier out over the Gulf of Mexico, drinking 7Eleven Slurpees and getting splinters in our feet. I won’t believe you. Perhaps there are Slurpees in heaven.