In his hands he held a small, blue blanket. He kept turning the blanket – what remained
of the blanket in any case – around in his hands. It was no longer a full blanket – hadn’t been
for years. It was just slightly larger
than a handkerchief now. Still
soft. He brought it to his nose and
inhaled. It still smelled of her. Mint and… paper. Like books.
Something she always had in her purse – a packet of mints or mint gum
(which invariably opened and scattered all over the bottom of her purse) and a
book. She read constantly.
The blue blanket had been their son’s. It had wrapped him on the day they brought
him home from the hospital, covered him as he transitioned into his ‘big boy
bed’, and had followed him throughout his childhood. As a young boy, he had stuffed the blanket at
the bottom of sleeping bags when he went to friends to sleep over. As a teen, he’d hung it over his window. Before he left for university, his mom had
cut this small square off the main blanket, before packing it into one of his
boxes. Even at 18, he was bringing his
favourite blanket along.
One of his friends, who had studied in the fashion department,
had taken a small cutting of the blanket and woven into a tie, which he had
worn on his graduation. This blanket had
been with him his entire life.
And now, this small piece, the only piece that was left,
would likely follow him to his death.
His son, his bright, energetic and entertaining son lay just
doors away. Machines were breathing for
him. Machines were pumping oxygen
through his body while keeping his heart beating and his blood flowing. His hands were still warm. His eyes seemed to move beneath their closed
lids. But without the machines, his body
would do nothing on its own.
The doctors had said he could exist like this for
years. That the machines would keep his
body alive. But he had to decide if that’s
what he wanted to do. And he had to make
this decision alone. He’d already said
goodbye to his wife, the mother of the boy in the room down the hall. He didn’t know if he could say goodbye to his
son, too. Not within a day of saying
goodbye to his wife. What would his
life mean, if he didn’t have his family in it any longer? Could he face the empty years? Could he face going back to the house,
knowing his wife and his son would never again walk through the front
door?
His son had been an adventurer. In high school, he’d joined an orienteering club
and gone on a week-long camping trip with his friends, using only maps and
compasses. No GPS. In university, he had studied
environment. He wanted to make a
difference. He studied forestation and
deforestation. He studied environmental
impacts. He was an environmental
scientist. Or, that’s what his degree
said. He would never become that
environmental scientist. The drunk
driver that hit his wife’s car while she drove him home after his graduation,
took care of that. The head injuries he’d
sustained, the doctor’s said, would likely leave him unable to speak, see, swallow
on his own, to breathe on his own.
Basically, that driver took a strong, smart and lively boy, who looked
for adventure, who lived every day to its fullest, and always thought so much
of the people around him – and left him a shell. A body, that needs machines to breathe for
it, machines to pump his blood.
He made the decision.
He could not allow his son to exist.
Not when it meant he couldn’t live.
His son would not want to lie in a bed, being kept in existence, if he
couldn’t participate in life.
He got up, steeled himself, and went to his son’s bedside to
say his final goodbye. He would tell the
nurses his decision, and he would sit with his son, until his son no longer
existed.
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