He was 20. In a dream last night I was sitting somewhere with Zac’s friend Crystal.Conversation swirled around me and it seemed to be a series of inaccurate statements about my son’s death. I do not recall them all but basically no one was getting the details right. I shouted “He was 20″ That woke me up and I laid awake for the next while processing the interaction. The thoughts that came to me have faded but the need to write this entry did not. I had a lovely solitary meal in a very inviting space last night. I had the small journal I’d brought to record this trip and all the writing inspiration I gathered along the way with me and I wrote non stop even after my food arrived. I recalled the memories of April 16th twenty four years ago. They are still so clear in my mind and so profound as it was the last day I saw my firstborn son alive. Today’s date twenty four years ago was the last normal day. I did not know of course what was to come in the early hours of April 18th. What happens when I go there? Every little part of it can bring me to my knees and yet somehow it doesn’t defeat me every day.I am thankful for that but I am also thankful that the magnitude of it never completely leaves me.How can it be ok both ways? How can I sit with both?Here I sit so far away from it and it sits right here with me. I have heard the phrase ‘the dead die twice”. The second death occurs when no one is left to remember. Zac will not have the second death as long as I have breath, as long as his father, his sister , his brothers , his aunts, uncles , cousins and friends remember him. He will live on in stories his nieces and nephews are told. He lives between the covers of my book The Year Mrs. Montague Cried. He was 20 I shout and every day I remember!
