Letter 45 – The Cabinet

Hi, my beautiful boy.

I used to call you that. Not too long ago, I would say, hi, beautiful boy. Sometimes when we were talking, or sitting together, I would tell you, you are my beautiful, beautiful boy. I miss saying that. I miss telling you that. You are still my beautiful, beautiful child.

I have a photo of you that I got from the gathering we had for you. I realized, when we were getting ready to have the gathering, that I didn’t have any recent photos of you. When things were stressful at home, I forgot to do things like that. I asked that if anyone had any recent pictures of you, to please bring one to the gathering so I could have them and remember you with your friends.

Someone brought this photo, and I could tell it was taken not long before you died. You were straight-faced in the photo, looking directly into the camera. It felt to me like you saying, here I am. It is what it is. I am what I am.

I love this photo, even though it is a tough one to look at. I can feel there’s a darkness to it. I like the picture, but keep it tucked away in a drawer of a cabinet. Sometimes I take it out and say to myself, I see you. I see you.

The cabinet is in my office. It’s like a hutch with glass doors on the top half and drawers and doors on the bottom. It is a place where I have always kept things that were special to me. A place that I can look into and say, I remember. I remember when I got tats, and I remember the time in my life when I had this, and I remember when someone gave this to me. Things that were special to me and still mean something to me now.

Now, you are there, too. I remember Tricia telling me early on in our sessions that we should create something like a shrine to you. A place to remember you and think of you.

When we moved to the new house the cabinet was emptied for the move, and everything packed away into boxes. We moved the cabinet into the office and I knew this was where I would put the things of yours that I kept. The cabinet and the boxes of your things sat in the office for months. Untouched. That space became “the unfinished room.” I couldn’t open those boxes. I couldn’t bring myself to put the cabinet together. To build a remembrance of you when I wasn’t ready yet to say goodbye. It sat there, for a long time.

I knew one day I would have to work on it. I told myself, soon. I will work on it soon. When Thanksgiving break came around, about eight months after your death, it felt like it was finally time. I took the week off, and my only goal to put together the cabinet. If I could remake the cabinet, it would be a place that I could visit, and a room that I could use, where you would be if I needed to be with you.

So I did that. I surrounded you in that cabinet with everything that has been special to me during all the phases of my life. The music box that makes me think of my dad. The stuffed black cat that my mother gave me in remembrance of the cat I had grown up with that I had loved so much. The otter figurine that I got for no reason, except for the fact that he looked friendly. I remember telling you once that I thought an otter was your spirit animal, when we were playing that game. Playful, fun-loving, holding hands in the water. You didn’t like the idea of an otter being your spirit animal. You said, maybe a wolf. And I said, yeah, yeah, maybe. But in my mind I told you, Otter, Garrett. You are totally an otter.

I put a ceramic bowl my mother made in there, along with my favorite photo of her. I put the water coloring of your name that I painted for your room when you were born. I put your memory box in there.

A cutout of your newborn blanket is in there. When that blanket was just about destroyed from all the love you gave it over so many years, I wanted to save just a piece of it. I cut out one small corner and put it in a frame. When I was doing that I remember thinking to myself, he will like this when he gets older.

I put two butterflies in there, from when I was in high-school and the butterflies represented me and my best friend. A bean bag tiger, from when I broke my wrist and my mom drove me to the hospital and said, hang in there, tiger. A little lock of your hair there, from a very traumatic first haircut. And one of the first photos we ever took of you is there, being swallowed up by an elephant frame.

I have surrounded you with all the protections that I have to offer, the things that I have loved most and contain my most cherished memories. I protect you now with everything that I have left to give.

The one thing missing in that cabinet is a picture of you. At first, I put in the picture that I got from your gathering, but it wasn’t right. The picture did not feel right with the other things that were in there. I wanted a lighter picture, a more joyful picture of when you were your best, most wonderful, self. But I didn’t have one from the age you were when you died. I talked to Kevin about it. I knew he had taken a video of you not long before you died, during a time when things were looking good and we thought everything was going to get better. Is it possible to get a picture of Garrett from that video? I asked him. One where he’s smiling and gives off that happy feeling that he had? And he said there was, and that he would do that for me.

I did not know what a difficult thing it was that I had asked. To ask him to watch this joyful video over and over, to capture an image of a joyful child who is no longer with us. He only told me this later, about how hard it was. But I’m very thankful that he did that because now I can see you as I knew you to be, my beautiful boy, exuding an exuberance for life that I always have associated with you. Kevin made a few pictures from that video. I have one upstairs, in the cabinet, and one downstairs, near the kitchen. There you are. My beautiful child. And now when I sit in my office, writing these letters, I can look to the side and see you there, among all the other things that I have loved most in my life.