birth

Can We Have One More?

/ djuanadreed / 2 Comments

filename-1 (4)1Next Sunday, May 3rd is Riley’s birthday and the anniversary of his death. It feels like a countdown. I am already very uncomfortable knowing it is coming. There are a boat load of good memories of raising Riley. Eighteen years worth to be exact. Yet I cannot seem to be able to reach them all yet. It is like my brain has put up a road block that says you can’t handle them all at this time. I’m not pushing it. I can wait. They are there to be reflected on for the rest of my life. I’ll let my brain take it’s time.

On a summer day in 1995 while watching my 5-year-old and 3-year-old in the play pool in our backyard, I had a thought. The thought continued as I smiled content while they sat at their plastic table on the patio dripping wet from the pool eating the lunch I had made for them. The thought percolated for the rest of the day even when I was saying, “Do not draw on that table!” “Give it back to your brother.” Even while I was thinking Why do I bother to shut the door as Braden laid on the bathroom floor talking through that gap between door and floor saying, “Mom. Mom. Mom.” That night after our dinner for four, after tucking the kids into their beds,  after we had covered our day’s events, I took a deep breath looked at Greg and blurted it out, “Can we have one more?”

Three children instead of two sounded good. The two children we had brought into this world were perfect one girl, one boy, yet when I thought about family holidays in the future, I pictured the more the merrier. We needed more grandchildren to spoil and to climb into our laps. I was still young, the kids were still young yet I was thinking ahead. Three children sounded good.

Greg’s reply was, “Wait, What?, Whoa…Hmm, OK.” Ok I really don’t remember what he said but it was probably a conversation that had a Wait, a What? a Whoa followed by some thought and a whole-hearted agreement. I think that process of thinking on his part didn’t take any longer than mine. It sounded right to both of us to have one more.

I decided that if I could have my wish, I would deliver before the heat of an Arizona summer. I knew I would be happy with a boy or a girl but from the start I imagined a boy. We believed God had a plan if it would happen, the timing if it did, and the sex of the child. We asked God for a healthy child. Greg and I started trying for one more.

I found out I was pregnant while Greg and the kids were in Oregon visiting his family. I couldn’t wait til he got home to tell him so I told him over the phone. It was meant to be. He was excited. I was excited. The kids were excited. There would be dinner for five now. We started preparing for one more.

When I was pregnant with Bria, I imagined delivering a chubby blonde boy who was like his Dad.  Bria was a gorgeous baby girl with rose bud lips and big blue eyes. Braden was a handsome baby boy with a full head of dark hair and an easy sweet demeanor. We decided that the baby’s name would be Riley if it were a boy or a girl. We were going to have one more.

Riley Reed Peterson was delivered at 9:30 pm after my water breaking hours before with a rush to the hospital only to find out we weren’t even close. After some time, they induced me. As Greg sat by my side holding my hand while watching a Phoenix Sun’s playoff basketball game, the contractions got closer and the grip of my hand in his got tighter.  In due time, I delivered my smallest baby in size of 7 lbs 7 oz with dark hair and a loud cry. He was perfect. We had one more.

We welcomed Riley into our lives with tears of joy and pride. We said goodbye to Riley with the same tears of pride and joy for having had one more.

I Love You, Riley.

Belonging To “The Riley Group!”

/ djuanadreed / Leave a comment

Riley's Bday party 003I just woke up to a dark room. I took an accidental nap on the couch. There are on purpose naps and there are I closed my eyes for a second naps that I would say are accidental. I woke up with an urge to start searching through some of Riley’s email and Facebook. I go in spurts where it seems doable to dive into Riley stuff and other times I cannot, so I don’t. I am trying to know what by looking? I am not sure. I am seeing things that were personal to Riley. Things I wouldn’t have seen ever if he wasn’t gone. There are moments while I look that I don’t think that I want to know. There are more moments I think I do want to know. I have had the privilege of knowing Riley better by the stories that have been told to me by random people about him. I am thankful to see him through their eyes.

I went way back in messages to 2009 and saw Riley as an 8th grader.  I could hear his immature voice and the pre-teen thinking in what he wrote as a 13-year-old. He made a group called “The Riley Group!”  He did that because I had found a Djuana page on Facebook and had found out there were other Djuana’s in the world. I know, hard to believe others are named Djuana but last I looked there were 33 of us. Riley messaged a bunch of people of all ages with the name Riley asking them if they wanted to join his group. No one joined.  Dangit, I want to go back and make that endeavor successful for him. Why wasn’t I paying attention then and helping him make that group? Should I have been? I remember when he did it, he announced his plan to me. He even wrote on the page “‘my mom joined a group called the djana group so i decided to make a riley group, all Riley’s join the group!” He misspelled my name. (I’m smiling.)

While looking at his Facebook, I also came across his musician/band  page made in 2013 called “I Got Lost” where he posted a recording of him playing  “Black Bird” on his guitar. I cried listening to it. I could imagine his fingers on the strings with his head down while he played.  We know he recorded other songs that he had written. We haven’t found where he downloaded them yet. I hope we can find them. It feels very important.

I happened to be in the choir room this last year when some of the students were performing for the class. Riley and another choir member sang a song. Riley played his guitar.  I heard him, came out of the back room and stood in the back while I watched my boy sing and play for his peers. The choir teacher later told me she saw the pride and joy on my face as I listened. I am sure she did see that.

Riley was on the cusp of feeling more successes in life, in college and beyond. I wish he had lived to have seen those successes.  I wish he hadn’t taken that pill. I hope he has heard the stories people have told of how knowing him changed their lives.  How he made a difference for the girl who was contemplating suicide. I hope he knows how grateful that boy is that Riley took the time to befriend him. I hope that he is aware of how many lives he impacted. There’s a story by a girl who was in the hall crying. Though Riley didn’t know her, he went out of his way to distract her from whatever was making her cry. He said something random which is what he often did to get people’s attention. That created a conversation, her smiling and ultimately feeling better. My son, with a smile and a personality to match, had made people’s days where ever he went.  He had 800 people who filled the church pouring into make shift seating at his funeral that would have belonged to “The Riley Group!”

I sat with a counselor this week and she told me grieving  is a hard process. She said to give myself a break. That losing a child tops the list of losses. I get that. I know that. It must be the umbilical cord between us that is never really gone. The distance between us pulls me, yanks me, and holds me to him. I won’t ever let go.

I continue to wish that this is a bad nightmare and that I will wake up. Something tells me that 20 years from now I’m still going to be hoping, wishing, pleading to wake up. Oh, my sweet baby boy.

I Love You, Riley.