My son, Aaron, and I were very close.  He was so responsible, respectful, and loving.  I know that people say that after a young person has died, but a lot of other people say the same thing about Aaron.  He was a closet alcoholic.  Very few people knew that he drank.  I thought he had quit three years earlier but found out after his death that he just hid his drinking.  I had bought him a new truck on Labor Day.  On September the 9th, he came to visit me (he was a college student, working, with his own apartment) to bring me flowers because I wasn't feeling well.  When he left, he went to a party and started drinking.  Later, he drove into a fire hydrant and wrecked the front of his new truck.  He never went to school or work again but was trying to figure out a way to get the money to fix the truck without my having to know about it.  I know this because of notes by his phone with all the numbers he was calling to try to get a credit card.  On the evening of the 10th, he called me to ask how my kids were at school this new school term.  Then he asked if my friends would be there for me if I ever really needed them.  Everything in the conversation was about me.  When I would try to redirect to him, he would switch the focus back on me.  That wasn't that unusual, so I didn't see red flags at all.  The next day his answering machine was recording all of his conversations, so I know he tried to get help from someone in AA.  He went to a pawn shop to sell some of his things.  He wrote four letters - three to friends and one to me.  Mine came in the mail after I got home from placing some items in his casket.  That evening he went back to a different pawnshop and bought a shotgun.  He laid out his receipts for utilities, his keys, the title to his motorcycle on his kitchen table.  On his bedroom dresser, he spaced three pictures of the two of us together.  The police didn't touch them because they said it was obvious that those pictures were meant as a message.  He played Stairway to Heaven, pulled the string on his toe at the moment the song has a loud crescendo.  I obviously can't be sure of that, but no one heard a shotgun blast in nearby apartments, so I feel sure that he chose that song for that reason.  He called his friend just before he died to tell him to call the police because he didn't want me to find his body.  The friend called me and I arrived at the moment the police did.  They held me back but I saw their faces when they reached the bathroom.  Their necks twisted in a way that I didn't think was humanly possible.  They rushed back to me saying that it was too late.  When I hit the deck, I scraped my elbow.  For many years afterward, on September 11th, I had the same scrape on my elbow but it was under the skin.  As they were leading me down the stairs, lines from a poem came to my mind, "There's room in the halls of pleasure for a long and lordly train, but one by one we must all march on through the narrow aisle of pain."  I knew that, if there was a way to survive this, I would.  I waited for them to bring Aaron down.  There were so many people.  There were neighbors, police officers, and TV cameras.  The victim's service person got rid of the cameras for me.  I told the detectives that I wanted to touch Aaron.  They said no, but I insisted.  Since his head was missing, I was so disoriented by his body shape and remember being so afraid that I wouldn't find his hands under the sheet, so I reached down and held his foot which was still warm. 

     I spoke at my son's funeral.  There were so many young people there and I wanted to be sure that they understood how final death was and not glorify Aaron's death in any way.  I told them that he never meant to cause anyone pain, but only to end his own.  I said that I didn't intend to close myself in a dark room and think of all the things that might have been but instead to walk into the sunshine and let the brightness of that light intensify the beauty of all there was of life.  However, I walked into darkness for a very long time.  I didn't want to live anymore.  It took several years for me to find a new normal.

     Here is my "Spirit Vision".  I lay on my bed sobbing very loudly since it was the first time I had been alone.  My face was in the blanket so I wasn't seeing anything.  Then suddenly, while still facedown with my eyes closed, I saw what looked like a tent made of undulating wispy lines of what appeared to be smoke.  I will never forget the light because it was so warm and beautiful - not bright like florescent lights but more like a soft light.  It wasn't really the color of the light that struck me but the feeling I got.  I've described it as the kind of warmth that I feel when it's really cold outside and you're in a warm room with a lamp.  That doesn't really describe what I saw, but there aren't words to describe the feeling of the light.  At the same time, I sensed the most powerful love you could ever imagine - nothing like any kind of love experienced on this earth.  I knew that the wisps were looking at me, but they had not faces - nothing that would let me know that they actually were looking.  Yet I was certain.  Then one of the wisps pulled away and came toward me.  I knew it was Aaron and was so happy!  At about a half-way point, I could no longer see anything but felt Aaron's arms around me.  We were both crying and hugging each other so tightly.  Then there was a frantic conversation between us.  I never knew any of the words- not even when the vision ended.  Yet I am just as certain today as I was then that he was explaining things to me and I was arguing with him, begging him to come back to me.  Then I felt his arms letting go, and I pleaded with him not to leave me.  Suddenly I could see again and he was at that same half-way point.  He clearly said, "I will be back if you ever really need me."  He returned to the other spirits, for I knew that's what they were.  Without words, they communicated that their job was to teach Aaron something.  The vision ended.  I sat up, confused about what had just happened.  I questioned my sanity.  You would think that as clear as I was then and am now that he was safe and loved that I would have been at peace.  That was not the case.  I wanted to be with him.  I wanted him to take me with him.