David Morrell: Fireflies: A Father's Classic Tale of Love and Loss

Compassion. If you think about it, every person you know, every friend, every stranger, in every building you pass, will one day (and perhaps even now) have a devastating personal loss. My acquaintance exemplified what we have to do. Show our compassion. We have to say, “I’m filled with sorrow for what you’re suffering.”

We have to weep for the pain of our fellow mortals. You’ve probably seen those bumper stickers that ask, “Have you hugged your kid today?” You bet. And our fellow sufferers. The letters of consolation my family received, not only from friends but sometimes from strangers, were powerfully helpful. They showed my wife, my daughter, and me that we weren’t alone, that someone cared, that shoulders were there to lean on.

Lately I’ve found that I’ve been hugging people a lot, and until Matthew’s death, I wasn’t what you’d call a touchy person. I hug them impulsively, and it seems to help me and them feel better about the day, about persisting in this tenuous universe.

“Life is suffering,” I said in Matt’s euology, quoting the first of the great truths of Buddha. Let’s face up to that and show the best of our human qualities-not intelligence; I think that’ll doom us, if nuclear weapons and worldwide pollution are any evidence of our stupid cleverness. Not intelligence but compassion.

What else have we got to depend upon except each other? If someone you know has pain, tell him or her you’re sorry. Don’t keep a distance. Be human.

There’s another aspect of grief I need to talk about. Its physical effects. I’ve described my collapse while Matthew was unconscious in Intensive Care. I’ve dramatized my experience in the Emergency Ward, where cardiologists and neurosurgeons tested me and finally explained that I’d succumbed to stress and exhaustion-a frightening condition, though I hadn’t yet learned that “fear” exactly described my symptoms.

Three weeks after Matthew’s death, at nine o’clock on a Wednesday night, I sat in a La-Z-Boy chair to watch a TV program I’d been anticipating, an episode in a brilliant thriller from Britain, called “Edge of Darkness.” I use the world “thriller” in a qualified sense. At the beginning of this episode, there was nothing “thrilling” going on. Scenes were being set, characters established. But the show was a distraction, and I was grateful for anything that might help take my mind off Matthew’s death.

Suddenly I felt a tingle in my feet. In hot and cold rhythms, it rushed up my legs, soared through my abdomen, and reached my heart. As I’ve said, I’m a runner. Because of that physical conditioning, my normal heartbeat is sixty. At once, it beat faster. I checked my pulse. It had risen to ninety. With equal abruptness, it raced beyond my ability to check it.

I hyperventilated. I convulsed. I felt as if I’d just run a fast five miles. My guess is my pulse was now a hundred and fifty. And then the spasms hit my head, and as Donna raced across the room to try to help me, I managed to say, “I’m having a… heart attack. I’m… going to die.”

You can’t imagine my terror, and you can’t imagine how quickly this incident occurred. A minute ago, I’d been fine. Now I was heaving in my chair and sure I was dying.

As quickly, the spasms dwindled. My heart rate went down. My breathing returned to normal. But I was so shaken by the experience I couldn’t function for two days.

That’s when I decided I needed more medical advice. Through the grace of a doctor friend, I was able to interrupt a cardiologist-internist’s hectic schedule and be examined. This kind man took three hours to check me thoroughly. To be prudent, he even ordered sophisticated heart tests known as echo-and-sonograms. When he concluded, he told me I was one of the healthiest persons he’d ever examined.

“No, there’s something wrong with me,” I insisted. “My head. I think I need a CAT scan. Maybe I’ve got a tumor. Maybe if…”

The doctor, who knew I wouldn’t mind his sense of humor, said, “Oh, I think you’ve got something in your head all right. But a CAT scan isn’t going to find it.”

“You think I’m nuts?”

“I think you’ve been having classic panic attacks. You need to see a psychiatrist.”

Now to me, a psychiatrist meant psychoanalysis, and since I’m a fiction writer, I worried that he might misinterpret my ability to imagine and suspect I was having delusions. But the result was quite the contrary. The psychiatrist listened for ninety minutes as I babbled about my supposed heart condition and my son’s death, and finally he told me with compassion that he concurred with the cardiologist’s opinion. I was suffering classic panic attacks. In lay terms, my emergency defense system-exemplified by my adrenal gland-had worked so hard before and after Matthew’s death that it wouldn’t turn off. Now for no apparent reason but with obvious subconscious prompting, it was kicking into gear when there wasn’t an emergency.

So here I am, on four tranquilizers and a sleeping pill each day. I haven’t had further panic attacks, though I do hyperventilate on occasion; but I’m learning how to subdue that. If you’re suffering from grief and you’ve endured the symptoms I just described, don’t assume they’re panic attacks. Don’t be an amateur physician. Have a medical exam (because your heart might indeed be infirm). But if the diagnosis does turn out to be panic disorder, your condition can be controlled. You’ll still grieve. There’s no cure for that. But at least you won’t have panic to add to your terrible sorrow.

Yesterday my son’s principal physician came to see me. He brought Matt’s final autopsy report. It proves that the fantasy you just read isn’t possible. Even if I did have precognition, I couldn’t have saved my son. He was sicker than I feared. The debris from the dead bacteria that plugged his heart and killed him was only one of many things wrong with him. The debris had also plugged an artery to his brain, causing major cerebral damage. If Matt had survived the septic shock, he’d have been mindless at best. In addition, he had fungal and yeast infections throughout his body. They would have been fatal. As well, a brain aneurysm he’d had from birth could have ruptured and killed him at any time.

But most significant of all, the final autopsy, on a microscopic level, revealed that Matt’s cancer wasn’t cured. Malignant cells lingered on his spine. At this moment, my wife, my daughter, and I would be back with him in Intensive Care. But now, in addition to suffering indescribable pain, he’d have been paralyzed, no cure possible, the only mercy death.

My prayer was answered. Dear God, just as You’re supposed to be a father to me and to love me as Your son, so please identify with the love I feel for my son, Please help my son, because Your son is asking You.

Matt died as best as possible. The worst, yet the best. Because at the moment what I formerly thought was the worst would be only the start of something far more horrible: a slower, more painful death.

I grieve. How much it hurts. But I’m at peace. Because I’m convinced at last that my son was doomed. Nothing could have saved him.

But Father…

God…

It hurts.

… Winter is come and gone,

But grief returns with the revolving year.

– PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

“Adonais”

Cycles. Circles. Dates. Numbers. Anniversaries.

On November 9, 1977, when Matthew was six, in the midst of an evening birthday party, Donna suffered a miscarriage. She lost what would have been our third child. This child had not been planned, but we anticipated it lovingly. I made two urgent calls-to Donna’s doctor, who told us to rush to the hospital, and to a friend, who agreed to race to our house and allow Matt’s birthday party to continue. Ironically, this friend was also present when I picked up the dove in the mausoleum after Matt’s funeral.