sorry isn’t enough

Posted by in letters to the boys

Dear friend,

Talking to you yesterday shifted something in me.   I cried harder than i have cried since the first week ayrie died because I realized that i killed him, that i should have moved to boston but i didn’t because i knew that it would be hard.  So i didn’t move to boston and buried the part of me that told me that moving was something I must do to keep Ayrie alive.  I held onto a hope that in my deepest depths knew was an impossible hope, that I could keep alive a child with a complicated airway when we live 1,500 miles from medical help.  And that doctor?  The one who was a jerk?  Who told me that if I was going to take him to a doctor in Boston that I should just move to Boston?  Turns out he was right.  His delivery was deplorable but his message was true.

And now Ayrie’s dead and it’s my fault.  Because I was too scared to make a seemingly impossible decision.  So instead i stayed here, trying to get the insurance company to cover Ayrie, to let him go to Boston, to raise enough money for plane tickets.  It was wrong.  It was so very wrong.  And people told me i was strong and amazing and it always felt false to me.  Well now I know why.  Because in the deepest part of my being I knew that even though the fight to get Ayrie good medical care was hard, that I didn’t do what I needed to do because that was even harder.

i want to tell Ayrie how sorry i am.  how i realize now that my weakness killed him. but it doesn’t matter. it’s too late. this was not a choice that i get a second chance on.  i simply have to find out how to live with the knowledge that my fears were greater than my will to save my son.  and that’s not going to be easy.  i will not be too weak to raise shiya well but I remember a time not too long ago when Ayrie asked me, “What does it feel like to die, mom?”  And I told him, “I don’t know, sweetie.”  We were lying in the dark, hugging the same stuffed beaver together and I remember thinking, ‘i don’t know what it feels like but it doesn’t sound bad at all. it sounds like something that I might welcome.’
I am not suicidal.  I absolutely am not so please don’t be worried.  but I do wonder what the point of living is other than being shiya’s mom and that’s a very depressing place for me to be in my mind.  I have to rediscover meaning and purpose knowing that I have to make up for my weaknesses that caused Ayrie’s death.  Only my intuition will know what this meaning and purpose is.  I pray that I have the strength to listen this time.

with the deepest sadness and full of regret,

nora