Disaster Falls

by Stephane Gerson

  Still, because Alison held Owen tight through clouds of smoke, amid the crowds, above the railing, onto the ferry, and across the river, we did not worry about him that fall. We did not worry even though Alison was experiencing PTSD—cold sweats, panic attacks, tremors after loud noises—and Owen continued to say “plane no come out” past his second birthday in October. The therapist later explained that while children carry no memory of what they experience before age two, their brains store traumatic moments in sensorimotor form. Without being available for deliberate recall, these memories have an impact on later behavior.

  Walking home after a session, I spoke to Owen about the ways the 9/11 attacks might have affected him: the dislocation within our family, his deep attachment to Alison, his anxieties about separation, his complicated relationship to solitude. He said little but seemed to listen attentively. When the school year ended a few weeks later, Owen told us he had had enough therapy. His problem had not disappeared, but he could now make sense of it. He was moving forward, ready for the summer.

  —

  Owen’s anxieties could have stemmed from all kinds of causes, including his temperament or mine. Some children are more anxious than others, and so are some parents. But in the wake of the accident, 9/11 provided a way of understanding Owen in life and death. Here was a key to the unimaginable, a direct connection between public disaster and private misfortune. Here was a pattern of diffidence and bravado in which he uncovered his fears, wavered for an instant, and then resolved to overcome them, summoning an inner will that made him intrepid though not always for long. If Owen often seemed fearless, it was because he was attuned to what filled him with dread. This I came to believe.

  Past incidents gained newfound clarity. During a pool outing a few months before the accident, Owen had jumped off the low diving board and then walked to the highest one, the iron structure that some swimmers never notice and others need to tame. Though he felt intimidated, Owen did not step away. He stood at the base for several minutes, perhaps calculating the board’s height or else imagining what it might feel like to jump. Then he made up his mind. A slow but steady climb, a sure-footed walk to the edge, a clean leap. He did this alone, leaving me to watch from the bleachers.

  Fear returned as soon as he came out of the pool. I suggested another jump, but he refused. Owen was caught in a web. While he could disentangle himself for short escapes, he still had not found a permanent way out.

  —

  Not long after Owen’s last session with the therapist, we traveled to Utah. Alison was attending a conference for family mediators in Park City (she had switched professions a few years earlier), and Owen, Julian, and I came along for a vacation. The four of us had taken hikes together before, especially around Woodstock, but Utah’s untamed ruggedness and organized adventure were something else. Every day seemed to provide a new confrontation with nature, another opportunity for Owen to grapple with his limitations through a mix of apprehension, hesitation, and sudden jolts that pushed him over.

  At Arches National Park, a narrow passage led to a vast expanse that resembled an outdoor funnel. Standing on a ledge, we took in the vertiginous incline leading to the sandstone Delicate Arch, a sublime encounter with elemental forces and the passage of time. Alison suggested that Owen walk down with her, but this frightened him. His back against the rock, he watched others make their way toward the arch. At one point, two teenagers suddenly bolted into the funnel. We looked on as they ran down and vanished in the ochre landscape. Owen then announced that he, too, would make this run. His swift about-face took us by surprise. So did the intensity of his anger when we told him it was too dangerous.

  A few days later, we drove to Vernal, a nondescript town in northeastern Utah that our river outfitters had chosen as our meeting place. This was the start of a four-day rafting trip down the Green River. Friends of ours had taken this same trip a year earlier and described it as a perfect family vacation. There were twenty other vacationers—adults, teens, and children—and half a dozen guides in their late twenties and early thirties. Our leader, an athletic and friendly though laconic woman named Delma, welcomed us at the Best Western Dinosaur Inn for an evening briefing. She distributed tents and sleeping bags. For dinner we were on our own.

  Like other members of the party, we ended up in a no-frills, wood-paneled saloon with deep-fried ice cream on the menu. Toward the end of the meal, Owen told us his throat felt tight. He had expressed concern about rafting before, but we were still figuring out his anxieties and their symptoms. Softly massaging his neck with his fingers, he asked if he could die from this ailment. There was worry in his eyes.

  The rafting began the following morning—a clear and sunny day. Owen and I sat in a raft with a guide and two other vacationers, a policewoman from Las Vegas and her young son. The river was so smooth at first that we could almost see our reflections on the glassy surface. The guide invited the boys to jump into the water while holding the rope that wrapped around the raft. Owen’s body glided as if suspended.

  After lunch, the two of us moved to a two-person ducky, something like an inflatable kayak—light on the water but less sturdy, less stable than the heavy rubber rafts, which could hold several people. Alison and Julian had taken the ducky in the morning, and now it was our turn. Owen sat in the front while I steered from the back. Though we did fine in the calm water, he grew nervous when we entered a short Class I rapid, with white wisps and enough momentum to shift the ducky from side to side. Owen held his paddle tightly. Afterward, he exhaled and smiled, droplets streaming down his face. When we hit another Class I minutes later, he shrieked, turned my way, and screamed, “This is the best day of my life!”

  The best day of my life. What do I do with such words? I fear that letting them stand alone is to belittle what happened that day—as if, after such a statement, something terrible was preordained. Kids say all kinds of things. When a child proclaims that this is the best day of his life, he does not necessarily mean that this day is the best one he has ever experienced. It is simply a way of describing a mood.

  But these were Owen’s words. I cling to them, I know I do, but perhaps he did not overstate matters. Perhaps he said what he said because he had achieved a personal milestone, because he was on his way and knew that he was, because he felt a sense of freedom and safety that had all too often eluded his grasp. Perhaps Owen uttered these words because his throat had opened so wide that it took in the crisp air and let out the dread and exhilaration that stand as the impossible horizon of a life that already seemed short and long at the same time.

  Amanda: I’m soooo sorry! I was friends with Owen in second grade.

  The accident occurred so early in the trip that we did not yet know the other vacationers. The policewoman from Las Vegas, the family from Southern France, the girl scouts from Long Beach: all remained strangers to us. We remained strangers to them as well. The only difference was that our son had died.

  Some of these vacationers later found Owen’s online obituary. In Woodstock, I read the comments they posted on the guestbook. I did so slowly and repeatedly, as if this might help me feel gratitude rather than indifference or resentment toward people who made it out with their families intact—people who, that day on the river, came to represent a world in which we no longer belonged.

  I told myself to accept that the experience that split us apart also bonded us together. All I could feel, however, was an empty sense of obligation, and then remorse, too.

  July 31

  We knew you only briefly during our time together on the Green River, and cannot imagine your grief and loss. It was very obvious from watching all of you interact on the rafting trip that you are a close-knit, loving family, and it was clear that Owen felt loved and cared [for] by all of you. We feel some solace knowing you are part of a deep, rich faith tradition and a widespread community; we fervently hope you are able to find some relief within that circle.

  August 19

  We want
to tell you how truly honored and blessed we feel to have gotten to know Owen even for that very short time. We are greatly saddened by the loss of such a shining star.

  August 20

  I met Owen on the river trip. I went to this camp a couple of weeks after. We got to light a candle for someone. I lit my candle for Owen. I am so sorry for your loss.

  August 28

  We hardly know you, but the intense tragedy we lived through on the Green River has brought us together….We didn’t have time to get to know Owen during this trip, but we caught his sparkling gaze and his smile. We are shattered by what we saw, distraught, powerless before the injustice of this accident.

  July 31

  We remain convinced that it was not a coincidence that the skies darkened, the thunder roared, and the heavens wept on that fateful Sunday.

  June: Do you feel really sad or uncomfortable?

  At summer’s end, we packed up the house in Woodstock and headed back to our faculty apartment near NYU. This return to New York, five weeks after the accident, frightened us in different ways. Alison feared being alone with her grief; Julian worried about standing out at school; I dreaded the daily encounters with places and scents that would remind me of what we had lost. From Governor’s Island, where Owen had run down hilltops, to Harlem’s Little Senegal, where he had bought an OBAMA 2008 button, his presence pervaded the city. He could surface anywhere, a sudden jolt of pain.

  This remained the case throughout that first year, which we spent in New York and, occasionally, in Woodstock. There were changes during that year, but they rarely rose to consciousness. The main thing I noticed was Owen receding from view, ever further away. Otherwise, the days melded into one another, each day equally insurmountable, each one overflowing with sensations and experiences and yet equally hollow. Time flattened out, which is why it is difficult to write about this year in a linear way. Whether something occurred after two months, or four, or eight, has little importance. During that year, everything took place on the same day.

  In the mornings, I accompanied Julian to school as I had for years, down the paved alley by our building, right on Houston Street, toward Sixth Avenue. We might talk about his math homework or the oldest woman in the world, who was 128 and lived in Turkmenistan. We both tried to keep it light during those walks although Julian did point out that this woman had lived sixteen times as long as Owen.

  After drop-off, I walked to my office, left on MacDougal, past Eugene O’Neill’s Provincetown Playhouse, which NYU was turning into bland offices, and then across Washington Square Park. I rarely made it to the Arch without bending over, hands on my knees, stranded among the tourists and college students.

  One day in November, Alison and I broke this routine by spending a morning with Owen’s classmates at school. “Death was not on the curriculum, but now it is,” the principal had told us beforehand. We met the class to make sure Owen did not become a taboo figure, to show that we remained present, and also to retain a connection to that part of Owen’s life. Sitting on the carpet with the children, we listened to their memories and answered the questions they had prepared.

  “It happened in the early afternoon,” we told them.

  “We feel all kinds of things these days, often at the same time, and we are not sure what any of them mean.”

  “We think about Owen all the time, even when we don’t know we are thinking about him.”

  We replied truthfully but did not tell the kids that we now understood what older people mean when they congratulate parents for raising a child. This is a colossal undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. We did not say that, while raising a child is a lesson in transience—each stage of life vanishing at the precise moment of its maturation—losing one crystallizes the permanence of death. The child remains a child, forever so. Nor did we trot out the line, found in nearly every self-help book for bereaved parents, that while we lose our past when our parents go and our present when our spouse dies, only upon the death of a child does one lose one’s future.

  I was not sure what to make of this adage. It is true that the stories that had slowly been taking shape within the nuclear family are cut short, even as parents come to mourn the teenager, the young adult, and even the mature parent alongside the eight-year-old child. Still, this line misses the fear of forgetting and the parent’s regret for what the child has never experienced. It also fails to capture what it means to lose an intimacy forged in furtive glances, invented words, jokes told more than once, sightings of neighborhood oddballs whose backstories are imagined in tandem, literary characters who come alive after repeated bedtime readings, and skirmishes that play out on a daily basis. There are tacit agreements, too. When Owen got up from his chair after lunch and stood by my side, I understood that I was to give him a sip of my Coke. Neither one of us had to say anything.

  —

  Owen’s death seeped into my days like an imperceptible drip, an endless series of microscopic laser hits. In the morning, it settled in the body language of parents and children whom Julian and I passed on the way to school. They gently bumped into one another in ways that appeared accidental but had in fact become so familiar and predictable over time that, for parents and children alike, they were perfectly natural. Later in the day, Owen’s death embedded itself in simple moments with Julian. The fly balls he caught and the grounders he missed during our games of catch were Owen’s too. Here is where a dead child ends up, not only in the milestones—the first days of school and the graduations—but in the froth of daily life. True horror can prove so quiet that one almost believes nothing is happening.

  On Owen’s gravestone, Alison and I inscribed: HEAR HIM LAUGH, SEE HIM SMILE, FEEL HIS KISS. REMEMBER THIS BEAUTIFUL BOY. But when I heard Owen laugh, saw him smile, or felt his kiss, I grabbed my face, pulled my skin, and placed my hands on my head. The ache was acute and unbearable and yet somehow it passed, and that passing too proved unbearable.

  It was all too much, and so my body broke down. Two weeks after the accident, I twisted my ankle. A few months later, a rash appeared on my chest. Then, in no particular order: shooting pain in the arms, numbness in the hands, twitching of the stomach muscles, pressure on the rib cage, bowel irritation, headaches, faltering sex drive, throbbing in the legs and knees, tingling of the feet, lower back aches so severe that I could not sit on a hard chair. A hernia—surgery. Bladder constriction—prostatitis. Buzzing in my ears—tinnitus. This felt like a constant awareness of nothingness.

  Before beginning his examination, my urologist asked if anything significant had happened in my life during the past year.

  A physical therapist told me I was carrying the trauma in my pelvic floor.

  An osteopath felt “overwork” in my stomach, my gallbladder, my pancreas. She told me that my body would remain in flux for two years.

  A back specialist invited me to tell a story about my body—a necessary prelude to healing. But which one? There was a story about the ailments that, however debilitating, diverted my attention from the void I could not face. There was another story about the body that had let me down on the river. A stronger kayaker, a faster swimmer, an all-around better athlete would have held on to Owen. And there was a story about the guilt that, however much I tried to contain it, seeped out like noxious fumes. In this story, my body deserved to suffer.

  —

  On some days, I could tell myself that it had been nothing but an accident, an unfortunate alignment of circumstances. On other days, my body hunched over as ache mixed with regret, bewilderment, disappointment—and guilt in all guises. Guilt for signing the release and letting him board the ducky. Guilt for not bringing Owen home. Guilt for failing to uncover new memories. Guilt for allowing sorrow to overshadow Owen. All of this was about what I had done (or not), but I also felt guilt for my temperament, the ease with which I had deferred to the guides. This was about who I was.

  I sometimes wondered if I was growing attached to guilt as a way of being in the wor
ld—some kind of perverse bond to Owen. Still, I told few people about it. The few times I did open up, friends struggled to understand. “You are in no way responsible, there is nothing you could have done.” These could have been Alison’s words, too. She said she never felt guilty. Her refusal to blame absolved her as well as others. It was the opposite for me: with anger and blame of others hidden away, guilt had free rein.

  One morning, Julian related a dream in which he had known in advance that Owen would fall into the water but could do nothing to prevent it.

  “Don’t feel guilty,” I said.

  “I don’t,” Julian replied, “but Mom says you do.”

  Having learned about fate and free will in English class, Julian wondered if we could have done anything differently. But he quickly added that he was not accusing me. “It was not your fault,” he said. Again: “It was not your fault.”

  Julian needed a father who was blameless, decisive, and confident in his dealings with the world. I knew this but could not escape thoughts about the river on which I had not saved his brother. I had failed to protect and might do so again. This is the kind of thought we register without fully acknowledging its existence. We allow it to hang as if suspended, barely discernible but always there, caught in that narrow space between the life we lead and the life we fear.

  —

  Julian’s and Alison’s bodies were also changing, though not in the same way. Having turned twelve a month after the accident, Julian would soon experience the hormone-induced kick that would stretch him out. In the meantime, he loaded up on carbs—cereal, burgers, cookies—and grew thicker. During the first weeks, well-meaning friends had asked him what food he wanted around the house. Pasta, he said. This is what he had for lunch and dinner every day in Woodstock. He could speak openly about what he called comfort food, aware that he sought refuge inside his body when everything spiraled out of control.