Yesterday marked 26 years since my nephew Ben died. He was only eleven when he was hit by a car on his way home from school. There is not enough space on Patch.com to tell you all the things I want you to know about Ben. He was incredibly funny, one of the pickiest eaters on the planet, kind to people and animals, imaginative and smart, but none of that explains the bright light that went out when he died.
I don't know if his death would have been easier to fathom if he had been sick, but he went to school that morning, just like any other morning and he didn't come home. Not a day goes by that I don't think about him and the man he might have become, but the truth is that most days when I think of him he is still eleven years old with that gap toothed grin.
Not long ago, I drove with my great niece to Winsted, CT where my great grandparents are buried. I was showing her the headstone in the cemetery and
explaining who was buried there when I noticed two names on the stone that I had never noticed before. Besides my great aunt Genevieve who died in her early twenties and my great uncle Joseph Raymond who had died at 5 years old, there was a infant named John Patrick and a two year old named Mary Elizabeth who had also died. That gave me pause. How did families in those days cope with so much loss? I have seen close up the pain the loss of one child caused and the ripple effects of that loss. How did it feel to lose four children, upsetting the natural order that we now take for granted?
I know that life spans were much shorter then and diseases that we don't see anymore were an ever present danger, but no parent is prepared to see their child die before them. In an effort to ease my own pain over losing Ben, I chose to console myself with the idea that he had a perfect little life with out any of the pain and heartbreak that growing up can bring. And when my sister, his mother, died almost a year ago, it was comforting to think that she was a mother to him once again. Cold comfort, indeed.
My answer to this has been to keep his memory alive by talking about him and sharing stories, particularly with the cousins who were too young to know him.
There will always be a hole in our world, but I will do my best to fill it. I suggest you do the same for those loved ones of yours who have left way too soon.
