I saw him. I saw my son.
I sat in our new Sky Zone park, plugging away at my computer, when there was a knock on the office door. The corporate representative who was in town popped his head in the room.
“Ashley, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Rob said with a smile.
Curious, I closed my laptop and stood, pausing to stretch. I reached for the ceiling, arching my back. It was time to take a break and walk the park anyways. I adjusted my shirt and removed my glasses, setting them on my computer, before walking towards the door. Rob held it for me as I stepped out.
“Ashley, this is Cara. She’s a mom of a special needs boy, who I thought you might like to say hi to.”
You see, Rob knows a little bit about my son Declan. Not a lot. Certainly not the whole story. But he knows I had a disabled child whom I lost, and he knows that I am an advocate for disabled children. That I have a giant soft spot for these children and families, that we spent $50k to build a family bathroom for them in our park, and that I desperately miss my son.
I looked at Cara, and then saw her son. He faced away from me, towards the front door. He stood quietly and brought his hands near his face. He curled his fingers into fists and then released them, over and over. One finger at a time, starting with his pinkie. Just like my son always did. He tipped his head to the side, in that same way Declan did. He looked down and shuffled his feet. And it was no longer her little boy that I watched, but mine.
My breath caught in my throat, and I stared. “Declan!” my heart screamed. I caught myself as I moved to step towards him, my body ready to grab this child. To wrap my arms around him and squeeze him tight. My knees shook as I strained to get it together.
It’s not him, I told myself. It’s not Declan.
I tore my eyes from the child and looked back at his mother, tears streaming down my face. She’d been talking. Saying something about her son. I’d barely heard a word.
“Are you…” she started.
I choked a response out. “I’m sorry, it’s not you,” I said as I looked back at her child. The child who was the same height as Declan, a similar build, and whose mannerisms screamed at me that this was somehow him, beyond the grave.
“I had a disabled child,” I said. “I lost him last year.”
She told me about her son, that he was a gentle child, but much older than he looked. He was 17 years old; one of the features of his disease was that he was very small for his age.
I kept staring, and it took every ounce of willpower to not turn into a puddle on the floor. Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see her son. I only saw mine.
Declan had been so excited about us opening our Sky Zone parks. He walked around talking about it constantly. And that day was our Grand Opening day. While I am not one to believe in the afterlife or a higher power, I can’t help but wonder. Was that some sort of sign from the universe? That his energy was with me that day? Did he come to visit me?
I know that to my fellow humanists and atheist friends, that is ridiculous. But agnostic has always been where I’ve landed. I just don’t know. I can’t believe in a God just because I want to. But that sure does seem like an odd coincidence. Opening our first park was one of the most stressful and challenging things I’ve ever been through. And he had wanted so badly to see it. Was that him? Coming to see the park and telling me; “Good job mom, you did it! It’s open. You survived. And I’m so happy to see.”
Cara told me how much she loved our park. How grateful she was that we had a family bathroom for families like hers. How her son loved the sensory experiences that our attractions provided for him. And I wept. In her child, I saw the things I miss the most. Declan’s sweet, gentle, beautiful soul. I wept because I miss him. And because, in some small way, I get to keep helping kids like him.
I refrained—somehow—from falling completely apart that day. From grabbing her son and hugging him tightly. Even thinking about this almost a month later, I’m a puddle. My nervous system saw Declan that day. The boy I lost. Grief is weird like that. Fine one minute, and then you see a kid making a strange hand gesture, and you’re taken out at the knees. I still don’t have all the answers, but I’d like to believe that somehow, somewhere, my little boy was watching.