December

The top of my chest collapses under solid concrete blocks. The lower chest sits hollow, absent, vacant. Breathing hurts, as if it, too, searches for its genetic extension, its life, its child. I sip gulps of air — just enough to cling onto my own life. But I'm not sure I can live and I'm not sure if I even want to. The breath, they say, is life force, prana, our connection to life itself. Over the years, when I practiced yoga, I spent hours examining and then controlling the breath. We worked with the cleansing breath, the belly or deep breath, and noticed the shallow breath, often induced by anxiety and fear and uncertainty. Absent the breath, there is no life.

I enter the wide double doorways and hear only the sound of artificial breath — the steady forced push, the insistence of the machines that drape the sides of my son like a cloak. That is not Thomas's breath. I hold mine in, afraid to exhale and disrupt the stillness. My throat fills and the paralysis rises up through my jaw, the same jaw I'm looking at on my son — sharp, chiseled, assured. Everything stands still and the numbness falls heavy like the sentence of a crime committed. My son's eyes are closed, his black hair smoothed over but uncombed. And then I recognize the stillness again between the machines' sounds. It is the absence of life force in my son's trauma room. His is gone.

My eyes look up at my husband, who is also named Tom. As an emergency-room trained nurse and former Air Force Pararescueman, he has answers, I tell myself. Tom has seen combat injuries and fatalities, saved lives, and watched some go, but when I look up at his face for the answer I am seeking — the possibility that Thomas will live — it's not there. He looks blank and numb, and I sense the sadness that has already settled into his heart.

I turn and look at my son for the answer then, but it's not there either. Thomas's left foot is turned in toward his body in an awkward twist that looks like a broken doll's. I walk around the bed and touch his right hand, noticing the faint green color under the skin of his narrow fingers. It's colder than it should be. His neck is full and enlarged, and a small piece of gauze extends out from either ear. I hold my breath again. I see the blue, plastic cold-water syringe that's lying next to his left ear, the final test of unresponsive brain function. The fingers on my right hand reach for my son's left cheek and I whisper to him, "Thomas, it's me, Mom. Thomas, I am here. Thomas, I love you." I pull my son in close and crawl halfway onto the bed because there is not enough room for my legs with all of the machines filling the space around him. All I can think is that I have to warm his body, because warmth represents movement of energy, cell exchange, and the possibility of life. Warmth is hope. He doesn't respond to my touch; there's no relaxing of his shoulders into my embrace. I keep trying to warm him. It feels futile, but I won't let go. I will never let him go.

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I tell myself that I should take a picture — not a mind's-eye kind of picture but an actual photograph — because I already know that if my son is gone, I will cling onto every memory of him and of us together for the rest of my life. I am already desperate not to forget a single detail, like the colorful green and blue and brown ribbons that color his eyes, like the way he chuckles. I will do anything not to forget, including taking a picture. It's pure panic. But I catch and chastise myself for thinking this morbid thought. Most people would find this beyond the boundaries of sanity. Why would anyone want a photo of her dying child in a trauma unit bed? I reconsider. There will be no photo.

A man enters the room cautiously and unannounced, wearing a taupe suit with brown shoes and a tie of a color I cannot recall. He's barely taller than I am and he sports a white halo of hair. He asks gently, "Can I pray with you?" If I speak I will cry so I only nod my head. My husband wraps my shoulders with his oversized, strong hands. The prayer is thoughtful and long and sad because it's a confirmation that my son isn't here. I don't believe it, though, because none of this is real. The man asks for God to embrace us — my husband and me — and give us comfort in this dark hour. He asks that my son know peace and love into all eternity. It's as if my broken heart seeps through my tear ducts. One, two, three drops fall. The lump in my throat turns solid. This cannot be happening. I whisper again, "Thomas, it's me, Mom. Thomas, can you hear me?" I'm trying to hold onto life force, both Thomas's and mine, and I feel it slipping away like the slowing beeps of the monitors that push and pull his life. I ask my husband if the crash cart has scissors (it does) and if he can get them for me. He peels back the sterile packing and hands them to me. I reach over the top of my beautiful son's head, just as I had a million times during his twenty-two years of life to comb his hair or trim his bangs or brush the hair off of his forehead. I cut off a piece of his hair, slide it into a plastic cylinder that, moments before, contained his gold chain necklace, and close the light blue cap. It's my son's DNA.

Time freezes in the depths of a winter that my soul has never known. It feels as if the life support machines — the heart and lungs that replace those functions of my son — begin to replace mine as well. I am losing my own life. He is my life. The blip blip of the heart monitor slows; the silence in between each blip is a painful reminder that life is escaping, shutting down. I know it's just a matter of time, because the nurse tells us that Thomas will likely die within two hours of my DNR, "do not resuscitate." The machine blips slower and slower and slower until I cannot take the agony any longer. I abhor the widening gaps of silence. I ask my husband to turn off the heart monitor so I don't have to hear it any longer. He does, but the push and pull of air continues its steady pace into Thomas's lungs in stark contrast to the life force that is disappearing. The hand of the clock on the wall jumps ahead one minute and I just hold onto my son. Push, pull of air. Push, pull of air. God, help me, please, help my son. I can see right before me the slowing of energy, the gentle release of life, the dissolving of hope. Life tiptoes ever so softly away. It does not apologize for leaving. The doctor walks in the doorway with my son's trauma room nurse. His face turns upward to the clock and he speaks lightly: "Zero zero five three." The official time of death.

My son's friends are first to arrive — his roommates, Mike and Elliott, and his best friend's parents, Becker and John. John holds a special place in Thomas's heart and he treated Thomas like a son, teaching him how to shoot a rifle and making sure, on nights when Thomas slept at Elliott's house in high school,...