It would be a while after both Micah and me allowed the guilt we felt to be removed from our shoulders before either of my other two sons fought a similar battle. What follows is the excerpt from the same chapter of my book, Good Grief?!?, in which my youngest realized the crushing weight he’d been carrying.
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We’d spent most of the Thanksgiving weekend with family. It had been awkward. We all felt like someone was missing. We were still in the phase of ignoring the feeling, but holidays made it especially more difficult. Emotions around the house were high. Micah had been in a car accident the day after Thanksgiving. That added to the stress in our home. It was a couple days into December when Isaiah hit the same wall, or rather the wall hit him.
Isaiah had started grief counseling shortly after Amy’s death. But it wasn’t working. He wouldn’t talk about anything of consequence for any length of time. Every time his counselor or I would bring up the topic of Amy’s death, Isaiah got jumpy…He would try to change the subject, often to something “funny”. Whatever it took to not have to talk about Amy’s death, he tried it. Sometimes he said what he thought we wanted to hear, but it was clear by the actions he was just talking for our benefit. Isaiah has a tell, however, that makes it easy to read him. When he’s overwhelmed, Isaiah runs away…or rather, he hides. When he’s hurting, he often lashes out at those close to him, for very petty things.
On a Sunday night in early December, Isaiah could no longer keep everything bottled inside anymore. It was after dinner. Isaiah and Micah had a loud verbal disagreement over something minor. I knew what was happening.
“Micah, just drop it. Isaiah’s in a mood. He’s just going to say hurtful things.”
I was trying to get Micah to break away from the fight and cool off. It didn’t work. Now he was just as mad as Isaiah had been. Micah felt slighted. He thought I was siding with his youngest brother. He didn’t think I was being fair; he was clearly right. When I realized my attempt had failed, I switched tactics. I apologized to Micah and told him he was right.
“I’ll take care of it,” I reassured Micah. “Let me talk with him.”
“You ALWAYS choose him over me! You ALWAYS take his side,” Isaiah retaliated. That’s when I knew the wall was near.
“No, I don’t,” I stated quietly and calmly. “I’m not choosing sides. I’m saying Micah’s right. Usually, I defend you, but you’re not right this time.” I knew that by talking quietly, calmly, Isaiah would be pushed over the edge. He wouldn’t calm down until he truly blew his top. Helping him reach that boiling point would lead me to the heart of the problem.
“It’s not fair!” He was screaming. “Just leave me alone!” Isaiah was enraged. He stomped up the stairs, louder than he had ever done in the past. I climbed the stairs slowly after him, further pushing the boiling point. He stormed down the hallway and slammed his bedroom door behind him. I took almost twice as long to climb the stairs and make my way to Isaiah’s door.
I knocked.
“Go away!”
“Isaiah, what’s wrong?”
“I said, GO AWAY!”
I reached down and opened the door. Isaiah was lying prone on his bed. His face buried in his pillow. When he realized I had entered, he screamed into the pillow.
I took my spot on the side of Isaiah’s bed. I put my hand in the middle of his back.
“Isaiah,” I began, just above a whisper, “what’s wrong? I know this isn’t about Micah. What’s really wrong?”
“Just please go away,” he said through the muffle of the pillow.
“I can’t, Isaiah. I need to know what’s wrong, and I’m not leaving until we get to the bottom of this.”
I sat on that bed in near silence, hand upon my son’s back, for nearly three hours. Every once in a while I would ask Isaiah “What’s wrong?” He never answered. Midnight had come and gone. I was tired, and I had to teach Monday morning. I needed sleep. I could have justified leaving and going to bed, but I knew the situation would multiply by morning.
Isaiah and I are so very alike. I usually know what’s going through his head in any given situation. It’s the closest thing I have to telepathy (which I’ve asked God for many times). This time I knew he was angry about something related to his mom. There had been so much stress in the house. Everyone had cried buckets, that is everyone but Isaiah. He’d cried…briefly. He witnessed my breakdown over Amy’s “missing” wedding dress. He’d listened to conversations Micah and I had while Isaiah was supposed to be asleep. He knew Gabriel was an emotional mess. I added everything up and realized Isaiah had decided not to feel. He saw everything falling apart around him and decided he’d be the stable one of the family.
I finally broke the silence.
“Isaiah, you’ve got to talk to me. I’m not going to bed until this is settled.”
He finally rolled his body a little to the right and looked up at me.
“What’s going on in your head?” I asked rhetorically.
“It’s my fault,” he whispered.
“Are you talking about Micah, or something else?” Isaiah sat up in the bed.
“It’s my fault,” he repeated. “She didn’t have to die,” he whispered.
“Honey, it’s not your fault,” I said, still rubbing his back.
“I should have heard her. I should have woken up. I could have helped her.” Each statement got a little louder.
“Isaiah, there was nothing you could have done.”
“You mean I didn’t do anything.”
“No. You couldn’t have done anything. When God calls someone Home, it’s their time. We can’t stop death.”
“But…” he didn’t finish.
“Isaiah, listen to me. The doctors believe Mom died of a blood clot. There wasn’t anything that could have been done to prevent it. She would have died if I had been upstairs in the bed. She would have died if you or your brothers heard her and tried to help. There was nothing you could have done.”
“Really?” he asked feebly.
“Really,” I replied, arms outstretched. Isaiah fell into my arms and sobbed. I cried with him.
When I finally got to bed that night, four hours had passed since I followed Isaiah into his room. I got a brief amount of sleep that night. Teaching the next day was easy; I was ecstatic Isaiah was no longer believing a lie, that he was free of guilt. It would be another month before Gabriel hit the wall.
“Micah, why’d you skip so much school already?” a boy in one of his classes asked him that day. They knew each other from the previous semester, but they weren’t really friends. (Micah had transferred from a private school to an Arts focused, option, public school in the middle of his junior year, and it had been rough.
Good Grief?!? 