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My son Robb died without warning at the age of thirty-seven. In one horrible moment everything changed in my world, in the world of our family. It was as if a bomb had been thrown into our circle of eight and we were left shattered. Every one of us was devastated, and we really didn’t know where to turn. There were so many questions, and the answer coming from the medical examiner, that Robb had died of an electrical malfunction in his heart while sitting at the kitchen table in his own home, confused us. It was so benign and ambiguous. The irony of his dying at home when he’d been traveling for years to far-flung, dangerous places, did not escape us. Nor did the irony of his dying before my husband Bob and me, his parents. This seemed the cruelest blow, unnatural in the scheme of how we, like most parents, expected our and our children’s lives to be lived.
In the years that have gone by since Robb’s death, I’ve often thought it should have been me who died. All the various times I’d taken chances, risking my life in small, irresponsible ways for the sake of adventure, refusing to take life seriously.
I loved the thought of adventure as a child, dreamed of living in a lighthouse, waves crashing on the rocky shore below, never mind I’d never seen the ocean. I loved thunderstorms, too. Rain slashing against the windowpanes, the roll of thunder and the crack of lightening, the silver-white flash in the night sky were all thrilling to me. Marcia, my older sister, who slept in the same bed and who was usually so much braver than I was, hid her face under the covers, protesting, but I sat up in bed and stared out the window, thoroughly enjoying myself.
We lived across the way from the railroad tracks on the east side of Newark, Ohio. At night I’d lie awake listening to the trains clattering by, imagining the places where the passengers might be going and yearning to go along. One of my uncles worked for the B & O Railroad and I thought him the luckiest of people, traveling from here to there all the time, until I found out that he worked in the yard checking the incoming trains and rarely got to ride on one.
I have a vague memory of being on a sailboat, tied to the mast, when I was four years old, sailing out onto Lake Erie with my family and some other people. I remember I was not the least bit frightened, but loved the feel of spray on my face and the boat lurching and pounding its way through the heavy waves.
When I was thirteen I kept a scrapbook of pictures of horses I’d cut from magazines. I dreamed over those pictures, imagining myself riding across the meadowlands, galloping in perfect stride and harmony with the animal. It was with this dream in mind that I begged my dad to take me horse-back riding. Finally he said he’d found a place that had horses for hire. When I found myself at a farm atop a horse walking in circles in a fenced-in arena, I wondered how he’d misunderstood my dream so badly.
I went back to riding my bike, pedaling like fury into the hilly terrain that surrounded our town, stopping at some favorite spots and taking in the views. I always looked forward to the place where there was a stone trough which had been used for watering horses in another time. I would rest my bike against a tree and enjoy a drink from the faucet as the water splashed down, so cool and refreshing on a hot summer day.
I was a young mother, only twenty when Robb was born. I often think of that time as my instant growth spurt into adulthood. I’d been a lackadaisical dreamy young woman, sliding through life, doing exactly what I had to do and no more. Robb’s arrival changed all that. It was rough changing gears so fast from an adventure-loving college girl to a mother, but I gave it my all. I took the job of raising a child seriously. Somehow I knew it was probably the most important responsibility I would ever have. Nevertheless, I still craved parties and occasionally drank too much, and I missed being with friends my own age, just hanging out joking and talking.
It was almost as if as Robb was growing up, I was growing up too. Out of the person I was into the person I could be. I had a long way to go. I was certainly able to take care of a baby physically, feeding and dressing Robb (with lots of help from Dr. Spock’s book on child rearing), but I was emotionally insecure, unsure, and immature. I wanted to grow up for Robby but I also still wanted to be a happy-go-lucky young woman. I felt that the two things couldn’t go together—one of them had to give. By giving up the fun-loving, college-girl part of myself I was giving up my freedom. (Back then, it wasn’t as easy to just strap your baby on your back and go merrily on your way.) I also had to give up the future I’d imagined for myself. Before I got pregnant I was planning to finish nursing school, then become an airline stewardess, which I saw as a way to travel the world. When I didn’t get to fulfill those dreams, I felt unfinished, as if half of me was missing. For years I struggled with finding a new version of myself that I could be comfortable with; I had to create new dreams and then learn how to fulfill them.