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Posts Tagged ‘Jaren Combes’

Jaren’s birthday, and a story …

Posted in Children, Family, Loss, love, My Chinese Checkered Past, tagged on February 17, 2010| 18 Comments »

Jaren kissing me goodbye on his way to a party

Another year has passed and today would have been Jaren’s 45th birthday. That is almost as hard for me to grasp as the fact that he’s not here for it. It is the day to repost this …

February 17, 1971 … 7:41 am … welcome to the world, Jaren Eli Combes!

I’ve written a lot about Jaren, but one story worth repeating comes from the day of his birth and is one he liked to hear, so I’ll repeat it:

Once upon a time, in a decade and hemisphere far, far away …

Delivery of my second bio child was pretty easy. Only seven hours of labor, then a straightforward delivery (Yes, I suppose there’s a pun in there somewhere.) was a welcome relief after the twenty-four-plus hours I’d put in bringing his older sister into the world. It had been only eighteen months since I’d done all this before, so I was much more relaxed and quite happy to hand off my new son for his after-birth cleanup having conducted nothing more than a quick count of fingers, toes and other appendages, assuring myself that everything was in the right number and the right place.

A couple of hours later, I was resting comfortably and chatting with the new first-time mom in the bed next to mine. Feeling quite the old hand … at all of nineteen … I was experiencing little of the anxiety my roommate suffered as she waited for the first post-birth contact with her newborn. With a toddler at home, I was happy enough to have some peace and quite for the very short time I’d be allowed.

Soon enough though, a nurse entered the room with an armful of bundled baby that she carefully placed in my arms. Once again using the skills I’d mastered over the past year and a half, I easily unwrapped the little tyke for his first thorough inspection.

Sure enough, the fingers and toes were fine and he looked the picture of health. That was, as it always is, such a wonderful relief after nine months of involuntarily conjuring some worst-possible scenarios in a hormone-overloaded mind.

What he was not, however, was pretty. In fact, he was pretty ugly. His face resembled a road-squashed potato as much as anything else, and straggles of black hair wove around a veiny, lumpy, scaly head. He was very long and ropey, with scrawny arms and legs and a distended abdomen that sported a red and puffy umbilicus anyone could see would end up being a very prominent outie.

“Oh, my,” I’m sure I sighed loudly while I examined my homely little bundle of joy. “And his sister was so pretty when she was born…”

My roommate took serious issue with my evaluation, insisting that all babies are beautiful. I explained that his unfortunate appearance did not in any way hinder my deep and abiding motherly love, nor did it mean he’d not eventually become less of a gnome, but he was certainly NOT beautiful in any classic sense of the word.

“Just look at him,” I said, holding the tiny guy up so she could get a good look from her bed. “Really now, all love aside, he is an ugly baby.”

She was on the verge of agreeing when, right about then, the nurse came back with another bundle.

“Sorry,” she announced, “but I’ve made a mistake.”

Uh oh.

“This baby,” she said, indicating the one she held, “is yours, Sandra.”

Please, no. Please, no. Please, no!

“So, this one?” I barely could bring myself to ask …

“Is hers,” the nurse said sweetly as she reached to swaddle the naked little baby I held.

My roommate had the nurse pull the curtain between our beds and never spoke to me again. Her husband shot me furious glances when he visited over the next couple of days, but never said a word, either.

I often wonder if they tell this story.

By the way, my son was beautiful! He still is.

Jaren lived only thirty-eight and a bit years … today would have been his 39th birthday … and I can so easily pull up those moments of the first meeting between us … his huge blue, blue eyes that just got bluer as he grew … sugar bowl ears he eventually grew into … baby boy all pink and new and smelling sweet … tiny hands and feet that gave no clue of the 6’5″+ frame he filled out … the smile that never stopped lighting up any room …

I miss him.

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Jaren … Six months gone …

Posted in Children, Family, Health, Loss, love, tagged on December 2, 2009| 13 Comments »

It’s been six months today since my son, Jaren, died of a massive heart attack. The fact that half a year has passed has done little to alleviate the loss, although I can now write the words, “Jaren is dead” without crumbling.

In the case of the death of one’s child, I don’t think time heals. Much like an amputee, the edges of the missing part of me have scarred enough to tolerate the many times a day I bump up against memory, pick at regret and finger possibilities forever gone, but gone is gone and phantom pain hurts.

Jaren was the smartest and funniest person I have ever known, and the privilege of being his mother for 38 years I will carry for the rest of my life. Only 38 years is an unbearable shame nothing can change. Nothing.

Only recently, I received a copy of the autopsy report, something I had been waiting months for. No parent should ever have to read such a document, but for me it was a necessary part of the process I must go through to come to some understanding of the events that led to such a horrible conclusion.

I didn’t really need to know how much his brain weighed or the contents of his stomach, but that’s the sort of information the coroner’s office provides, so I know all that now. I also know that my son had a 98% blockage in the same place my coronary artery was clogged before an emergency bypass extended my stay on the planet in 1999.

I was told at the time mine was discovered that I had a one-to-30 day probability of a fatal heart attack, and from that moment until the surgery the following day I was not allowed to do as much as raise my head.

Jaren had been suffering from intense angina, and the night before he died worked his usual shift pushing drinks at the Liquid Kitty. On his feet for hours, he mentioned to his buddy behind the bar with him that his left arm and neck were “killing him”.

Perhaps it was too late then. Maybe if he’d had the option of seeing a doctor, the bypass he needed would not have been possible. But …

If he’d had health coverage, medication to control cholesterol and his diabetes would have been provided for years, and the routine operation that reroutes blood through the heart would have happened when needed. Other health issues could have also been addressed, and he wouldn’t have felt so alone, so on his own, so without options.

Jaren never asked for help. Any questions about his welfare were always answered with an “I’m fine”, and although he always went the extra mile for anyone in his life who needed him to do that, he did not do it for himself, nor request it of anyone else.

The list of “should haves” for me is longer than I can look at in one sitting, so I pick and choose and wish I had done different things and had one more chance.

I miss my son. The world … not just my world, but the whole damned thing … is poorer without his smile, his gentleness, his humor and his amazing intelligence.

If there’s one thing I would ask on his behalf now, it would be that universal health care in America becomes a reality.

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Writing when there are no words …

Posted in Family, Loss, Writers, tagged , , on August 12, 2009| 11 Comments »

I don’t know why, but it came as a shock to me that because my son was not married, it was up to his father and me as next of kin to make a whole load of decisions we so did not want to make when he died: cremation or burial; where to bury; casket color and style and open or closed; clothes to dress him in; headstone material, design, size and copy; music … and words.

His dad thought it right that I write something for the funeral “program”, an idea that jarred me to my bones, to say the least. I could not imagine that I could find any words at all … but I did.

Here they are as they appear on the back page of the whatever-the-mortuary-handout-thing-is-called:

Jaren Eli Combes
17 February 1971 – 2 June 2009

The bluest eyes
The sharpest mind
The brightest wit
The kindest soul
The biggest heart

From tiny baby boy to
Big Guy
In stumbling steps
through 38 years
Reaching
Dreaming
Hoping
Giving
half of his last cookie
the shirt off his back
acceptance without judgement
love without condition

Illustrated composer
repository of memories
assuager of consciences
We laughed and danced in
his quirky brilliance

Too James Dean
to stick around too long
We run with the thought of
a rock & roll heaven

Find peace, my son

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The Club No One Should Have To Join

Posted in Children, Family, Loss, love, tagged on August 6, 2009| 14 Comments »

Me and Jaren ... being goofy as he often was ... on a happy day.

Me and Jaren ... being goofy as he often was ... on a happy day.

I have been inducted into a club no one should have to join, Mothers of Dead Children. The only advantage of membership is that, unlikely as it may seem, it does provide a level of understanding that evades anyone not eligible.

The initiation process is a horror, and there is no recruiting committee; in fact joining the ranks happens before one realizes such a club exists. No secret handshake sparks recognition of other members, and any meeting requires nothing to connect.

Since my son died on the 2nd of June, many, many people have reached out to me. Support has come in many forms, some practical and covering bases I wasn’t able to attend, others clumsy attempts at consoling, a few downright agonizing in their neediness.

Although all have come from the heart, many drain from the little energy there is to slog one day to the next. The consistent exception? The instant comprehension from those who have had their own children die.

It doesn’t matter if the dead were big or small at the time, as to parents our children will forever be our babies. There is no need to do more than nod and absorb the fact that this person truly, truly understands. There are no words striking the “time will heal” chord, as members of the Mothers of Dead Children Club know too well that while time does allow some adjustment, we will probe the hole we live with for the rest of our days.

With no expectation of wholeness, we can comfortably exchange tales, cry without shame, laugh without worries of appearing to be calloused, and describe in minute detail our children and our pain.

To those who say, “I can’t imagine what it must be like,” we can unite in verses of “Don’t even go there … do not imagine this even in the darkest nights”.

When we are told we are strong, we can appear to be exactly that, as without the slightest effort we feel the member-wide slump of shoulders, the exhausted sagging toward floors, the lump in the throat, the razor-like sting of tears held again on the inside … and we know it’s okay, normal, the way it is.

There is comfort in this familiarity, or at least a version of comfort, and we cling to it as we do to the shreds of ourselves that bring our children close for those instants we can, however briefly, ignore the loss of them and celebrate what went before.

To my fellow club members I say: I am so, so sorry … and I wish I didn’t know you.

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