The night John died my mom called me at the Cape house to tell me, distraught and confused, disoriented, her world changed forever. I was two hours away and when she asked me to come to the hospital I told her I would be there soon but not that soon and maybe we should just meet at home. Molly drove from NH, I drove from the Cape and we were all about the emerge on her in our home in Gloucester. Molly called me to tell me that she had just talked to Gramma and she was doing the strangest thing. She was reportedly at home watching the end of the Bruins game.
Of course she was.
And it was an amazing game. We were all sure that Johnny must have helped that last goal in to solidify the Bruins going to the Stanley Cup. We were sure that there was something divine working here and it had everything to do with John.
Tomorrow it will be 3 weeks since we lost John.
It feels like 3 days and it feels like 3 years and it feels like 3 minutes since I kissed the top of his head and I got him last and I walked out the door never to see him again.
Three weeks of crying and planning and laughing and sleeping and walking around outside our house in the dark looking for John.
Three weeks of hoping for the kids and telling the story of John's life and John's death and three weeks of the Bruins.
Last night the Bruins played the 7th game of the Stanley Cup final in Vancouver. Tim Thomas was our new family hero replacing Big Papi and Tommy Brady and Jonathon Papelbon and
Grampa John.
We cheered for the home team from the big flat screen TV, me, my mom, Charlie and Eddie. The kids were at the Cape with Gary but they called throughout the game to cheer with us, to yell with us and to celebrate the home team.
For the first time in those three weeks there was a long period of laughter and forgetting, of staying present with the team, with the moment.
It was not as loud as if John had been there because he was always the loudest yeller but Charlie and my mom came in a close second. We ate pizza and poked fun of each other and we watched at the edge of our seats.
The Bruins won and they won big. Vancouver went nuts and destroyed the town and in Boston we celebrated but after 5 minutes of watching the after party on TV a new feeling set in, the Bruins are over, John's dead.
It was the same type of feeling I would get when I ate a whole sundae or bought a new outfit. It's so exciting and a great fix for about 5 minutes and then reality sets in and whatever it was that you were struggling with to begin with is still there.
I'm not going to go to the rolling rally in Boston. I'll watch it on my big screen TV. I won't be able to find John in Boston but I find him here in the living room, on the couch or in the woods on top of the hill in West Gloucester. He is walking and dancing and he can breathe. He is a little boy skating down at Fernwood Lake with his friends and his brothers and he can breathe.
Sometimes I feel like I am slowing sinking to the bottom of that lake
without a breathe
without a noise.
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