Beautiful Impossibility

It’s almost Aidan’s birthday again.  Oddly enough, in some ways I spend just as much, if not more time, preparing for his birthday than I do any other of our family’s birthdays.  Perhaps it’s because for Aidan’s birthday it’s not simply a matter of what will we do but how to do. And ten years later I’m still never really sure of what the “right” way is to go about this.  

He’d be turning 15 this year.  He was a year behind in school so I imagine he’d probably be pretty excited about graduating 8th grade and starting high school with his friends.  He’d probably just settle for one birthday/graduation party.  I could continue on with all the different probablies, like what activities he was involved with, what sports he played, and so on as I’ve imagined over the years, but the thing is, that never really leads me anywhere but sadness and one thing I am sure of is he absolutely would not want that sadness.  So this past year, I stopped imagining the probablies.  

I believe my gift to Aidan this year was living.  Almost a year ago I found myself laughing again from a place I hadn’t laughed in a very long time.  I had become so comfortable in the isolation of grief, I didn’t even know that kind of joy still existed in me.  I decided then to stop defining my life by his loss.  I shifted from living for him to living like him. 

This shift has changed my life.  Aidan was rarely without a smile that lit up any room he was in, his joyful energy was contagious.  Despite the many challenges he faced, he never worried or complained or cried about much of anything.  He was just happy and so I set my own intentions this year, to live like that. When he didn’t want to play a certain game or do what everyone else was doing, he simply got up and walked away to do something he preferred, never expecting others to change for him.  He waited his turn quietly and loved trying new things. He was fearless and pretty much anything he saw his older brothers do,  he took on as a personal challenge and persisted until he mastered it himself. He was stubborn and insisted on wearing his crocs on the wrong feet and I let him because I admired his stubbornness and confidence.  He loved helping others when he was able to and to this day I can still smile at the thought of him jumping up and down cheering for Seabiscuit every single time he watched the movie (which was probably close to 1,000 times in his short life) as if the race was happening live in that moment and he didn’t know who would win. If those were the qualities he possessed at four years of age, I can only imagine the young man he’d be today and I can only hope some how he sees that the example of his life was not lost on me, but admired and hopefully well emulated in my own life today.        

Grief is a long, treacherous, lonely journey.  But maybe that’s the point, maybe this was all for me and not just something that happened to me. Perhaps this journey has been to teach me to stop living for others, to live for myself by the example of those I most admire.  

My other gift to Aidan this year is throwing away the need for “the plan” and just getting better at waiting for things to unfold in their own time.  I’ve stopped worrying about much of anything and nothing really bothers me much at all these days.  

Yesterday, I worked out alone.  I found I worked harder than I recently have pushed myself in the group.  Then I went and in nearly complete silence rowed a 5K on the rowing erg.  The first thousand meters was torture without music to distract me but then I found my place in it and it was as meditative as a long run.  I keep doing that, I realized, doing a little more and trying a few new things with each passing year.  Anyone who knows me, knows it’s no secret how much I love the sport of CrossFit.  Maybe it’s because, for me it parallels life so eloquently.  Almost everyday, there’s a new challenge.  You figure out and accomplish one skill and the next day, the skill has advanced to a higher level of performance.  So you keep working through it, piece by piece.  It just continues to evolve beyond what was once considered impossible.  And in turn those of us who choose this sport, find ourselves living beyond what we once considered  impossible for ourselves.

Aidan did that.  Just by living for 4 and half years, instead of the 24 hours he was initially given, each passing day for all that time, surprising seasoned healthcare providers with his will to live.  That will was not lost on me for a moment.  I love that Aidan's life taught me to always reach beyond impossibilities and improbabilities, it's what kept me working through all those lonely days until that day I laughed and found that joy again.

For almost a decade, Aidan’s death defined my life.  His loss transforming me into a person I no longer knew, raw, scared, lonely, and bitter, just going through the motions, hoping to feel better one day and I began to think it was impossible to get to that day.  So now, all this time later, working through all those days and each new challenge one at a time, I’m again allowing the beautiful impossibility of his life to define me and remind me of the adventure of each new day and when you don't give up, that nothing is ever really impossible!