Like a freight train from nowhere

We went to college together.  He gave me rides to my summer job and I tutored him for his summer session recap.  We both survived college in the same tiny class, not the best of friends, but the closest that good acquaintances could be.

Last weekend, his wife gave birth to two boys, 28 weeks gestation.  Two days later, they said goodbye to their oldest boy.  Their youngest grows stronger daily in his incubator, his mother keeping constant vigil while his father plans a funeral elsewhere.

I felt horrible the moment I learned.  There was nothing I could do.  So this is how this feels.  This is how all of those people felt, 4 years ago.

Today I intended to go to the funeral.  Then I read on their blog about the slideshow he had prepared and I knew I couldn't do it.  I couldn't watch those photos, so full of love, trying to capture a lifetime in a few clicks, scroll past my eyes with beautiful strains of music floating in the air all the while.  I couldn't see two people wracked with the soul numbing grief of saying goodbye.  I could not go to the funeral for the baby of a man I have known for 11 years.

I might have gone - I could have sat there, nearly sick with the grief of it.  I could have cried and hurt, watched that little casket (would it be fuzzy white?) move down the aisle.  I could have endured the outpouring of love for this sweet little boy, all the while ripping in two with the agony of it all.   But....

The tears would have been for another boy.  The grief and hurt would have been for my boy, not the boy who today deserved the love and the tears.  I have survived that tortuous, hellish day.  I can't relive it and I won't.  I need to not think about that day, so that tomorrow I can get out of bed and live my life.

I'm sorry.  But I know that he will understand; if not today, then four years from now.