A Long Distance Connection

My grief for my son, Tom, goes in waves, and lately it has felt like a tsunami. I am overwhelmed at the emptiness his absence creates. I still yearn to hear, touch, and even smell him as my desire for connection has not dissipated over the four years he has been gone. I have learned to acknowledge and even savor these moments because Tom is a part of me, and I have not and will not stop loving him just because he no longer walks visibly beside me.

Sometime after he died by suicide, I found a pair of LED, wi-fi connected lights in a favorite catalog. I bought the set and gave one to my surviving son, Tim, and set up the other one in our bedroom. It seemed like a frivolous purchase, especially at the steep price, but I was drawn to the idea of a long distance connection with Tim and his girlfriend, Shaylee.

I was not sure how they would react to the gift, as Tim lacks my overwhelming sentimentality, but they seemed enthusiastic to set it up when they returned home. I do not remember all of the technical details of activating it, but I remember how excited I was when we discovered they were working, ours a few feet and theirs 200 miles away.

It is simple really – when I touch my light, it turns on with a color of my choosing and at the same time, the light in their living room lights up the same color. It is an instant connection. When I see the light is on, a wonderful warmth touches my heart knowing they have been thinking of me. A few times, I have reached to touch the light, and it turns on before I do, letting me know they are thinking of me at the same time I am thinking of them.

When my father died last November, my husband and I were not home for three weeks. Shaylee told me there were times they turned on the light even though they knew we could not see it because they were thinking about the challenges we were facing. I have turned it on knowing they were not home, because the light signifies our special connection. Tim told me recently he sometimes turns it on in the middle of the night so we see it in the morning and know he is thinking of us.

I know we can call, email, text, message, SnapChat, and use many other forms of instant communication, but the nice thing about the light it is says everything without having to say anything. There is no need to pick up the phone, just gently resting my hand on the light does the trick.

One evening, they turned on the light and when I saw it I said out loud, “I wish there was a way to touch a light and let Tom know I am thinking of him.” That spiraled into me wishing there was a way for Tom to do the same for me.

And then I thought about how we adopted the color yellow when he died as a way to remember and acknowledge him. Yellow was his favorite color in childhood, and it is also the ribbon color for Suicide Prevention Awareness. When I see yellow things in my daily life, I now choose to take a moment and acknowledge them as reminders of his ongoing presence like the yellow finch which flew over our pool yesterday when we were swimming and the two yellow teardrop necklaces I alternate wearing – one glass, the other a faceted topaz.

And the sun, which shines through the leaded glass window in our front door during the early morning when I stumble to the kitchen for my first cup of coffee, and the breathtaking yellow setting sun, whose brilliant, intense, and beautiful color is impossible to capture through the photographs I occasionally post on Facebook with the caption, “Hello, Tom.”

It was not until that recent night that I made the connection between the lights at Tim’s and our house and Tom and the sun. Although I cannot reach out and touch it, I am assured the shining warmth of our closet star is Tom’s way of reminding me he is thinking of and walking beside me every day.

© 2019