To Honor The Memory

We are changed because you can't live that death and not change.  You can't keep on without the hope of tomorrow, without the crutch of a family, without faith in a heaven, without trust in forever.  Because it could stop you.  Stop you cold.  Stop you there on the edge where the smell of it lingers and the blade of it cuts against nerves frayed raw in the waiting.

It's already been so long but he still echoes along our hemlines and reaches us in moments of stillness and story.  "Do you remember him, Zander? Do you remember Grandpa Gigi?" And of course he does but he can't articulate it.  "I remember him singing once," he says.  "He was always sick though."  And he was.  Always always sick as far and long as Zander's life bridges.

I remember watching the way he felt it - the heaviness of his heart and the tear that split his face in silence as he leaned up against me.  How that was a day he had to grow up a little faster and know a little too soon the fragility of this life.  How he wanted to be strong but knew only how to be real...

Cancer stole pieces from each of us and stirred up new pieces within him to make a difference.

And now he is ready.

He may never know the result of what he's doing.  Because when they cut his hair it is no longer his and it will be taken and fashioned and fixed upon a star-crossed child to hide their balding and lessen their burden.

He is near bursting with the thrill of the giving and the troops that have rallied around him to support the cause out of their generous hearts - friends and strangers who cheer for him as he pours out his goodness on the world in this act of love.

Because that's all it is.  Love.  Love for a man we lost.  Love for the oh so many people right now battling their own war.  Love for a stranger.

Plans to give them a hope and a future.

http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/zanderscutforcancer

When He Doesn't Know I'm There

His eyes dart fitful around the gymnasium, seeking through the echo of all these parents - searching, searching, never finding.  I want to be like the other fools, bouncing in their child-sized chairs, waving arms wild above their heads so their child knows.  But I am loathe to embarrass him and loathe to embarrass myself and surely he'll find me, sitting right here mid-way, beside his father with the phone camera poised.

His shoulders are low and he bites his lip and he's dejected as he grabs his bucket and drum sticks to sit on the stage floor and I am the cruel missing link and he doesn't even know that I'm not at work, that I'm sitting right here and I'm really caring about what he's about to do.  He doesn't even know.

He doesn't know that I'm watching the way he watches the teacher, follows directions, hits that bucket with those sticks like he might be able to save the world by doing it - that's how intent he is.  All bang bang my mom's not here - calling out like a tribal litany.  Bang bang bang.  How his tongue sneaks out in his concentration.  How he flicks back his hair with a toss of his head. (Oh, how I'll miss that hair!) How that eternally worn wooden Jesus fish bounces against his chest.  How he's prettier than most of the girls.  How his brow furrows in concentration.  How I'm too far to see them but I still know every single freckle that dances across his nose.

He doesn't know that I'm clapping with the rest of them.  That I think he did his very best.

He doesn't know that, when he bows, I think he is the most graceful creature up on that stage.  The way he bends his body and dips at near 90º.  The regalness of it.  He doesn't know.

Not until that night.  When I tell him.  "Like a prince!" I say.

"What?" He doesn't want to be pleased at this.  He doesn't want to be a prince.  Just a boy who's mother loves him enough to wave wild from the crowd.  But he is pleased.  A blush across those freckles.

"A prince," I say again.  "It was perfect.  A perfect bow."  And I demonstrate and he laughs.

When He Loves Me Loudly

He is so thrilled as he presents it, arm extended and pages and pages flopping down and he, on one foot, biting his bottom lip and grinning because he just knows he's going to overflow my heart with all this greatness.  I read it out loud and he explains the pictures and he's oh so proud.  Isn't it strange how the one who can break your heart hardest is also the one who works so hard to stitch it up with sneaky hugs and crayoned patches?

When he loves me loudly I can't help but boast it.  See?  I do matter to this little human who pretends so hard to be stone cold.

And when he loves me loudly I pray I never go deaf.