Remembering Adam, Always

I Googled "28" today. It's a number, just a number. The number between 27 and 29, which, I suppose, makes it somewhat unique.

On the 28th of every month for the last year and a half, I have more often than not thought little about it, at least at first. An ordinary number, an ordinary day, even though, a year and a half ago, just after I had licked the last remnants of nachos off my fingers and given up on the thin film of airy bubbles resting on the bottom of my pina colada glass, just before I was about to settle in for a poolside nap before my next snack, the 28th became anything but ordinary. 28. A number just after 27, the age my friend's son had just turned only a few weeks earlier. A number just before 29, the age my friend's son would never reach. She told me by text that he had died, apologizing but noting there was really no good way to tell me.

Adam would have been 28 now. That is not something I ever thought I would say, all those years ago, when my friend and I spent seemingly endless hours watching our kids play, wishing away the time, some days, so we could feed them dinner and clean up their messes and bathe them and finally relax. When we would call each other for support or advice or just to complain, or, more often than not, to laugh about something one of the kids had said. When we would fill lazy days away from our offices with idyllic trips to museums or the Planetarium or the zoo or just the neighborhood park, lazy days that sometimes made work days seem a welcome respite. Years later, when we visited colleges together, worried together about where they would end up, arranged a celebration for them, together, when they graduated from high school, I would not have believed that Adam would never be 28.

Our plans for this 28th of July have been undecided until yesterday. We will meet, five of us and my friend, at Adam's grave. We will bring our own chairs; my friend will bring the coffees and the treats. We will share memories, we might laugh, we might cry. There's no playbook for visiting the grave of your friend's child, the one who referred to you as his other mom. Or one of his other moms. There is certainly no playbook for my friend's mother, still processing -- without much success -- the loss of her grandson, and her own daughter's pain.

My friend claims that we are the ones who have held her up, helped her make it to this 28th of July, a year and a half later. That day, 18 months ago, when everything went horribly wrong, everything became blurred. I somehow packed my bags and flew back to Chicago and made myself "present" for my friend, and for everybody else caught up in this most surreal fog. I remember very little, except for every word of that text.

The fog has lifted, for the most part, but not one of us has yet to fully accept that Adam died. I have visited his grave before, but still, the reality of it all eludes me. Today, as six theoretically intelligent and strong women gather for coffee around Adam's grave, as the six of us babble incessantly and no more or less incoherently than we usually do, I will think about Adam, rolling his eyes. If he could tell us how ridiculous we look, he would. If he could set us straight, he would. But he will let us do our thing, and he will know how much he is missed.

Small Victories, on the Streets Where We Live

I held on to my 86 year old mother with something just short of a bone crushing death grip as we made our way through Times Square the other day. A roiling sea of people moved in every direction, and I was far more concerned that my mom, still recovering from a broken hip, would be felled by by an errant elbow or, maybe, a baby stroller than I was with the kind of dime store terrorism that has come into fashion.

The concrete blocks that rose up at regular intervals on the sidewalk seemed more of a nuisance than a precaution. To many, they were nothing more than a good place to sit (though I would bet the sitters were actually undercover cops). Broadway had been closed to traffic for a few blocks, with New York's finest lining the intersections in an obvious show of, if not force, at least presence. It took me longer than it should have to realize that this wasn't simply an ordinary urban pleasantry -- a pedestrian mall for the weekend. This is "us," now, always following closely at the heels of the latest threat. Liquids pass with ease through airline security now that ordinary cars have become weapons.

Our foray into the Times Square subway station was even more death defying. It had nothing to do with the fear of becoming a sitting duck in an underground tunnel stinking of urine on the off chance some lunatic decided to blow things up that day. I was too busy wrapping my body around my tiny mother -- centimeters behind her so she wouldn't notice -- as she insisted on navigating the maze of stairs and ramps without holding on to me. Kind of the opposite of teaching a child to ride a bike -- I was pretending to let go but hanging on for dear life.

My mother, in her own special (and infuriating) way, is doing what everyone else was doing in Times Square the other day, and in places people tend to go all around the civilized world. She is determined to live life as she always has, to not let a little broken bone or some surgery stand in her way. She is not thinking about terrorists; she is living life, on her terms. Her bucket list may seem uninspiring to some, but to her,  a day at the theatre, a walk through Times Square, a crowded subway ride, and dinner with her children is like shooting for the stars.

The thought of the car plowing through a crowd in Times Square only weeks earlier floated through my mind briefly. Not "terrorism," they said, but I think we can all agree it wasn't a random act of kindness either. Still, as I held on to my mother and did my best to keep her safe, I marveled at the sheer number of people out to simply enjoy a beautiful summer afternoon in New York. Small battles won by all of us, every day.