CORRECT TENSE

Are you or were you, Joel? Your name is etched in a granite stone above a grave. Is that where you are now? You are gone. Though gone doesn’t automatically mean dead, dead does mean gone. Although—maybe not. Perhaps you are merely not present, or maybe you are present in another form or another way. You may not be alive in the sense you once were, but you can be alive as a memory as long as someone who knew you is still living. So, you might not be dead and gone until the youngest person to have ever met you dies. When there is no one left to recall, what difference will it make anyway?

Do you have ASD, or did you have it? Did it follow you into the ground or disappear when you died? We threw out all the diagnostic reports that pigeon-holed you into a DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) cubby, funneled you into special education classes, and shadowed you wherever you went. We all tried valiantly to focus on your abilities, and no one tried harder than you. So, what happens to ASD when you and the test results are gone?

You were such a pain in the ass with all your repeated questions, but we’re the ones with questions now. And you were so clumsy, but not anymore. The house is very still now, nothing is in danger of being broken, and everything is in its place. But you are missing, and we are missing you. You were always so affectionate—now your hugs seem to come from the inside out. Are you still funny or did you stop being funny when you stopped being? You do still make us laugh. Here’s a joke you might like: Are you having the time of your life, or are you having the time of your death?

May I say you are kind and generous, or do I have to say you were determined, good humored, and honest to a fault?

Do you or did you have curly hair? If curly is relative to straight, what does death do to curly? Do you need a haircut? Has it grown to a full ’fro, or has it gone completely? Can everything you did have actually ended with you? We still have all the proof: licenses, diplomas, unpaid traffic tickets, VHF operator card, Air Cadet wings. Crazy that the only paper that counts is the one that says you are dead. How could a person be a brother, son, Bar Mitzvah, and then not be one? Are you Jewish, or were you? Does death steal identity and erase belief?

You lived and died loving trains, planes, stars, buses, and dogs. Did you love Piper or do you? He looked for you for days after you died. When he stopped looking for you, he started looking like you—wolfing down food then belching, pawing us for attention, and thundering up and down the stairs. I caught myself smiling one winter day when he scarfed some new snow just like you used to. Piper turned eleven this year, and I am worried that when he dies, it might feel like losing you all over again. I may smack anyone who tries to cheer me up by suggesting that I can “always get another one.”

When I go down to the basement to do laundry in the room next to yours, I wonder if any of your breaths are still in our house? If matter can’t be created or destroyed, where did your last breath go? I found one of your wisdom teeth in an old 35 mm film cartridge and thought about how the dentist and I bribed you to let him knock you out by letting you hold the keys to his Mercedes. It was weird holding your tooth, and it does feel strange to have an actual part of your body, full of your DNA, in the drawer of a desk where you did homework, but I guess lots of parents save their children’s teeth. I know a woman who is so desperate to feel close to her daughter that she gilded the girl’s tooth and made it into an earring that she wears and touches so she can feel near to her. The daughter is alive and well and living nearby.

Here’s a crazy idea I had: Maybe when I die, they could cut out my heart and find room for it in your coffin. I hope Daddy isn’t insulted to know I want my heart to be with you. Maybe he would understand. I don’t know how much of you will be left in your pine box by the time I die, but I imagine whatever of you is there no longer fills it up the way you did when all of you went into it. Some of you must have disintegrated by now—maybe enough so that there will be room for a heart that is smaller than it used to be.

When you were born, I became your mother. An awful lot has changed, but I am and will always be that.