Nick’s talented friend Liam produced a DVD of various ‘shorts’ he and Nick had made during their high school video class along with photos of family and friends, and funny cartoonish caricatures from Nick’s notebooks. Liam added some narration and music from bands Nick liked such as STYX and Collective Soul. Watching Liam’s compilation DVD the first time I recognized my son’s 4-wheeler video, the one his video instructor had said was “good enough to submit to a college program for admission.” I hadn’t seen the various river gatherings Liam added with Nick’s friends, hanging out on warm Oregon summer days, jumping and diving into the river. I gasped from my pew in the front of the church, below the big screen, seeing Nick pull off a triple flip into the Molalla River below the sheer rock cliffs into blue-green water, glistening, while onlookers, perched on mossy rocks, cheered from both sides of the river corridor. I gasped, “Nick! That’s dangerous!” I had thought immediately, before the reality of the pine coffin before me in the packed church alerted me to the stark tragedy of Nick’s funeral. It now makes me laugh at my original motherly reaction, still worrying about Nick, even at his funeral.
Nick did not die in the river enjoying one of his endless summer days with friends in Oregon. Instead, he was hit by his own truck and left unconscious on a roadway in Casa Grande, Arizona, where a man on his way home at dusk, a sandwich on the seat beside him after a day of golf with the guys, saw my beautiful boy lying prone and mistook him for a coyote and made the decision to run over him. (This was all taken from the man’s statement written in his own hand for the police report.) Thank God he didn’t leave Nick afterward. He called 9-1-1 at 8:01 p.m. and waited for help. It wasn’t enough and the call from our daughter, Fawn, her tiny far away voice is surreal and unbelievable even today. “Nick’s gone” she managed to say.
As a mom I had spent every moment worrying and plotting to keep my children safe. I suppose I was what now might be referred to as a “helicopter mom” but I tempered efforts with opportunities for my children’s personal growth and often the consequences of their choices did hurt me more than them. When Nick was almost two, he climbed a chain link fence and called out for me from the top, “Me down peese!” I stood close, assuring him that if he fell I’d catch him, but he would have to climb down on his own, which he reluctantly and slowly managed, beaming with accomplishment when on solid ground.
The morning of the last day of March in 2007 after loading the last things into his prized Ford Ranger, bright burgundy, straight as an arrow, complete with a couple of booming speakers, Sirius antennae and loud exhaust, he came into my workshop at home where I was frantically walking off worry and concerns on my treadmill, trying not to cry let alone try to persuade Nick not to drive the distance from Molalla where he had lived his entire 20 years, almost 21, to travel to Casa Grande, Arizona where he planned to spend the last couple months of his sister’s freshman year with and then accompany her home to Oregon. I walked the last of 6 treadmill miles that day watching Nick carefully look at each photo collage on the walls–trips to Ft. Stevens to camp every year for his birthday, wrestling collages including those with Nick’s arm held high by referees and many others of his “signature move” that gained him the title “Captain Cradle.” He moved along the walls to a couple framed collections with Northwest Pee Wee Rodeo photos, Fawnie barrell-racing and pole-bending and Nick on pee wee steers and buckin’ horses, alongside an arrangement of 4-wheeler photos taken on the property in the Foothills of the Cascades where we hiked, hunted, and rode horses through acres of timber and to the river and up the river corridor. He lingered on arrangements of special occasions with photos like “first snow” hikes when it was our tradition to bundle up and hike through our stand of timber, through the family Christmas tree farm to Nick and Fawn’s paternal grandparent’s home “next door” a few acres uphill to the West. Even at a young age of five Nick had gained a sense of being prepared and had filled a backpack for the trek in a foot of snow. We later discovered five pairs of underwear among a few prized toys in his pack after returning home and tucking a very worn out little boy into bed. Other framed collages were of Nick with an arm cast from his Christmas vacation in 2006. He and group of high school friends reunited from various colleges to snowboard and catch up on their friendships. Nick had misjudged a “jump” and on his double flip he was unable to straighten out before slamming headfirst onto ice-packed Oregon snow. His sister and I made the trip to OHSU on pill hill in Portland where I cried and worried and waited for Nick to regain consciousness and asked a nurse if he was going to die. She smiled and assured me “He’ll be fine.” Months later when Nick continued to struggle through the effects of occipital damage from the blow I would say “Nick, you have to take care of yourself! If anything happens to you it will tear our family apart and it won’t be fair to your sister.”
In the days following Nick’s departure to Arizona his dad and I spread a map out on the kitchen table and marked his progress with each phone call. I kept picturing him waving from his truck as he pulled out of our driveway when his dad, trying to reassure me, said “He’ll be fine.” Yet, I still worried and immediately missed him and wanted him home.
On May 1st all my hopes and dreams came true when Nick called me at work to say he’d “made up (his) mind” and would return home and go to PSU and not work 12-hour days while going to school and maintaining an apartment in the city. I was elated! I had tried many times to persuade him to stay home while he studied for his degree. “You can’t work, go to school, never sleep, and try to write!” His plan now was to finish at PSU, just an hour drive from our home, then move to either California or NYC and become a screenwriter. “We’ll be home by Mother’s Day” he announced. I couldn’t have been happier! Both kids back in Oregon attending Oregon Universities. Now to get them each safely to age 25 when their brains would be completely formed, and I wouldn’t have to worry anymore!
Before ending our call Nick said, “I love you Mom!” He died around 8:30 p.m. that night. May 1st. May Day. The world would never be the same. The sky looked different. The ocean sounded different. I walked in a seemingly parallel universe as lives continued around me. I wandered around in the woods at night, quit my job, turned our home into a shrine to Nick, cried and raged. Our family did fall apart but years later, almost 15 now, the pieces have fallen into place. My daughter is very happily married and my 2 1/2 -year-old granddaughter recognizes photos of her “Uncle Nick.” Fawn’s dad and I are able to talk and be friendly. My new husband and I stayed with my daughter, son-in-law, and beautiful granddaughter over Christmas and New Year’s in South Carolina along with Fawn’s dad, Layla’s “Pa.” We cooked and ate together, visited, laughed, and even remembered Nick, who we miss very much but who we are able to celebrate. The grief doesn’t go away but it changes and it’s a very different process for each of us. I don’t worry about Nick anymore. I feel his constant presence and know “He IS fine” and we are fine also.
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