music

Clean Sheets

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One week from today I am hitting the road and moving to Kentucky. I have purchased my very own log cabin in the woods to write in. As I get ready to leave, I am savoring the heat of Arizona summer and the convenience of McDonald’s french fries being a hop, skip and a step away. There’s a list of things, relationships, feelings, smells, sights I have soaked in as I know it all changes soon. I am a third generation native of Arizona and this is all I know. I picked a place that holds new and different experiences ahead. I am up for the challenge! Yet while I am here, I have had some hard tasks.

One of those is going through Riley’s pictures, school projects and papers that I had saved over the years. There have been many smiles as I pull things from boxes and files. Like this one which I absolutely love! <div style="float:right;">

I also feel the sadness of seeing pictures of Riley as a baby and realizing at the moment the picture was taken, there was a promise of a life that would last to an old age.  I counted on that. I assumed it. I dreamed of what his life would be like. I smile when I see the ‘I love you’s’ written to me from him over the years. From preschool age to 17, there are notes and messages telling me what I say to him daily.

If that hasn’t been hard enough, cleaning his room for the last time took a big toll on me. I finished it yesterday. Alot of tears have been shed in the last 48 hours being in that room. Alot of talking to Riley has happened. Mostly I tell him to please come back and that he should be here. In the last almost 5 months since he died, I have taken naps on his bed and laid there hugging his pillows. I have stood in the middle of the room and looked around for long periods of time absorbing the feel of his space and how he made it that. You can see what he loved in the space of his bedroom.photo 4 (26)

Now it was time to clean it up. The first task was to strip the bed and wash the sheets and comforter. His smell is gone now. I had buried my head in his pillows and cried over the past months. Now the sheets and comforter have a clean smell to them. That’s a familiar smell too but still, the last time he laid in that bed is gone. There were still dirty towels and the shorts he wore that night on the floor. I washed those too. It felt like a goodbye as I put them in the washer.

On his dresser there were tuxedo shirt buttons that I missed when I returned his choir outfits in May. Many times I had gathered those and made sure he had them for a choir concert. There were pens, pencils, concert stubs, receipts and a lot of dust. There was a receipt for dinner where he had taken his girlfriend on prom night only a week before he died and a short Golfland pencil that he had used to keep score when they went goofy golfing after prom. There were guitar picks sat on shelves, his desk and by his bed. Loose change, empty glasses, school passes and broken sunglasses. I picked these things up and organized them in a cup of change, a cup of pencils and pens. I threw away things like the broken sunglasses though even that was hard since they had touched his face at one time. He started wearing this exact style of sunglasses at a very young age! Look what I found!

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I also found a treasure in a shoe box in Riley’s closet. His WWF wrestlers had been safely tucked away. Oh how Riley and his best friend, Ryan loved everything to do with WWF.  He had a plastic wrestling ring and a pretend champion belt.  I heard, “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!” in my head as I held the plastic figures in my hand. I can picture Riley’s joy and I’m up to something grin as he and Ryan were running up and down the stairs playing and doing little boy things. We did have to keep an eye on those two!photo 2 (50)

 

The things that I have collected from his room to take with me remind me of parts of him.  His gray and purple Vans that used to sit at the bottom of the stairs, an ASU sweatshirt I bought him to remind him of my alma mater knowing he was going to go to NAU. I have a guitar pick, books, his tuba mouthpiece, a rock he had saved along with all kinds of random tiny small things that were held by him at one point in time that will surely bring a smile and a tear to my eye in the days, months, years to come. I can pull them out when I need them. I have this sense of did I get everything I want to take with me? How do I pick the physical things that represent Riley as I leave? Did I get what I need? I’m not sure. The most precious and important things are in my head. That goes with me wherever I go.

As I finished dusting and vacuuming Riley’s room for the very last time with the sad realization that he is not going to come home and mess it all up,  I stood back, looked at the clean space in front of me, cried a little more then took a deep breath. One step in front of the other! Just one step at a time is all that is needed. That I can do.

I Love You, Riley.

 

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Belonging To “The Riley Group!”

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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.

Play Your Guitar For Me

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IMG_5146-LIt is late at night  in a house in the woods in Kentucky. There are these awesome little bugs here that are called fireflies. They are a wonder. They blink. There are butterflies of all shapes and colors that come sit on my shoulder or stick to my pant leg. Everything is so very green here. I took a walk yesterday and came across a family of deer standing in my path. One big one turned around and stared at me for the longest time. I stood still and stared back. As I walked, a bull frog hopped across my path  and crossed over to the other side. A hawk flew over my head searching for prey. The stars shine bright at night in the pitch blackness with no street lights. There are sounds in the woods that I don’t recognize. I wonder what I am hearing. I know there are coyote out there leering. I am thankful for Koda, the Doberman that stands watch near me. There are daddy-long-legs walking about and spiders sitting in webs. Nature is beautiful.  Laying in the hammock in the shade under a tree with the breeze blowing  is heavenly. God made this place. I am thankful to be here.

I am here, but my head is not here a lot of the time. I smile and hold pleasant conversation.  I laugh at times. I find wonder in the little things around me and then I sink again to the pit of my grief for my son, my love, my Riley.  I love him so much. He was my sweet baby boy. I don’t know how this could have happened. I don’t know how he truly can be gone. I listen to the stories about Riley that come from adults as well as his peers. I hear stories about how he changed their lives by the things he did, what he said, by  his smile and his demeanor. That was My boy. He was a wonder in so many ways. His intelligence. His laugh. His musical talents. His computer skills.  He effected many lives in a good positive way by just being Riley daily. Why did this have to happen? Someone please tell me.

Sitting and listening to someone playing an acoustic guitar makes me think of Riley strumming on his. I think of how I would stop whatever I was doing and listen to him play.  I would be washing dishes and would stop, dry my hands and plop down at the kitchen table to listen. The tears well up in my eyes at the thought. It was a gift he gave me when he played his guitar and he didn’t even realize it. Sometimes he’d walk through the living room, stop at the electric guitar, turn the amp way up and play and I’d think, I like the acoustic guitar much better. I’m showing my age I fear with that statement. There was a time where he goofed around with the piano. He’d pick a song to play and mess with it without any music til he got it right. How about the time he decided that he needed to buy an organ, saved his money and sold a couple of his personal things to go buy a used one from a little old man. Watching him sing in the high school choir brought me such joy.

Tonight dinner was breakfast for dinner. I thought about the things I do with eggs and then the breakfasts I made which led me to think about what kid of mine liked what and then I cried. Riley memories make me cry. The memories of things I can’t have again that create silent tears rolling down my cheeks while my bottom lip quivers. I try to not hold the tears back but I probably need a walk in the woods to release some wales of crying to cleanse a little. It is not right to have to live without your child. It’s just not right. My sweet baby boy is gone and I can’t do anything about it.

Riley come back and play your guitar for me. I’ll make you some eggs. Please?

I love you, Riley.

Riley, The Musician

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Riley, The Musician

“Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.” -Tom Lehrer

I HATE DRUGS. I HATE DRUGS. I HATE DRUGS. I HATE DRUGS. I HATE DRUGS. I HATE DRUGS. I HATE DRUGS.

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The following was posted on my Facebook page on May 4th, 2014. Riley’s birthday was May 3rd. His birth and death occurred on the same day. He was 18. My sweet baby boy. I am here to share Riley’s story.

“I guess I have to write this………After I posted Riley’s Happy Birthday post yesterday while I was worrying about how much grief he was going to give me for his baby pictures being posted, I got a phone call that still seems that it can’t be true! I am still saying that over and over in my head. Riley made the decision to celebrate his birthday by taking acid and while what appears to have been a “bad trip”, he shot himself. My sweet baby boy. Gone in an instant. Accepted to NAU. With his plans to rule the world. He had such Musical talent. choir. Intelligent. Deep thinker, and Loved by so many. All the talking he and I did about drugs….yet kids are curious, they think they are invincible…Talk to your kids. Scare the hell out of them somehow. Tell them Riley’s story. The world was a better place with Riley in it. I’m not so sure how I’m going to be able to survive without him.”

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