As we pulled out of our driveway that early April day, Emmet noticed a bird’s nest at the edge of our lawn. A lone housefinch, chest flushed red, peered at us as we waved goodbye to our home.
“See you in June!” Emmet chirped from the backseat, settling into a worn copy of Dog Man. We were headed 150 miles northeast to Boston, clinging to hope that the bone marrow transplant he would undergo in less than a week would return him to health and more carefree days. My mind drifted to Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game, the unofficial anthem to seasons and summer camp.
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Emmet is ten, I mused, like the boy in the song. I winced, remembering that Emmet would miss another summer at his own beloved sleep away camp.
Words like, when you're older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
The seasons had gone round and round, but for us, they had morphed into one long, seasonless night as Emmet's hospital stay extended from April to May then June, July, August, September.
It turns out “when you’re older” is not a given, and promises of someday aren’t always kept. In late September, Jeff and I returned home, the backseat empty.
We hadn't waited at the hospital to hear the official cause of death. After three transplants, multiple rounds of chemo, and, finally, intubation, we knew Emmet's body had simply had enough.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he’d wailed, as they rolled his bed to the ICU for the last time. As though he were ninety years old and not almost eleven.
“You can,” I’d begged. “Every day is one day closer to going home.”
But he knew. I knew. We didn’t know we knew.
When Jeff and I stumbled into our house that late September day, it was as if we’d plummeted from the sky, wings shredded, into the broken remains of a nest we didn’t recognize anymore. Our grief exploded through the doorway, spattering each corner of our house with drops of despair. My sister and brother-in-law were there to break our fall, as we fell to the floor sobbing, clipped and broken.
Still taped to our front door was a red paper square Emmet made when he was five, in shaky letters: Wlcum to Emmets house.
Was it still Emmet’s house? Was it still ours?
When a nest is shattered, birds don’t always fly away. Some circle back, again and again, hovering over the broken twigs, in what biologists call “searching behavior,” frantically looking for their nest or young. Some birds linger around a destroyed nest, unable to comprehend their loss. A mother bird may leave the nest—somewhere quieter, somewhere she can rebuild.
The following weeks we moved in a fog around the house. Echoes of baseball catches and games of tag reverberated in our backyard. His room lay untouched—unfinished books on his nightstand, dirty laundry in his hamper. At night, I crawled into his bed and buried my face in the pillowcase that still held his scent, fainter each day.
We decided to put the house on the market.
“We can look at those apartments downtown by the water,” I suggested to Jeff. “There’s a gym in the building.”
As if a Peloton could make up for the loss of our child.
We saw shiny new buildings with glass walls, perched high above the harbor—luxury nests, far from the wreckage of our own. I pictured long walks by the harbor, breathing in salty air, cleansing the sludge in my brain, the ache in my bones.
But I feared the quiet and the thoughts that crept into my head. What if I had noticed his bruises earlier? What if we’d opted for the stronger chemotherapy? What if we had waited a few months longer for a better match? What if we’d chosen a different hospital?
We found a different one-bedroom apartment, steps away from a movie theater and a Mexican restaurant that smelled of cilantro and grease. It was loud. Chaotic. Safe. We decided to sign a one-year lease. The woman at the rental office was on vacation, but the papers would be ready next week.
When we got home that afternoon, I saw the housefinch, her breast as crimson as the leaves that had already fallen, like a ripened nectarine. She sat on the same high branch. Why was she here, lingering in a vacated tree, tangled in the branches of a nest with no leaves, no protection, no warmth?
Some birds refuse to leave their nests.
We didn’t sign the lease.
We couldn't leave. Some part of me, steeped in magical thinking, believed that if we stayed–if we didn’t change the address of his world—he’d know where to find us. Understanding something in your mind doesn’t mean it’s fully absorbed by your heart.
Time passed. The grief didn’t fade but the memories became fuzzier, the pain softer.
A new son arrived in our nest and with him, an understanding: home isn’t the nest itself, but the echoes within it. The joy of rebuilding. The love that lingers in the rafters. The screeches of little boys discovering dragonflies. The way that 3-year old Oz hugs the stuffed elephant that his big brother left behind.
The red square of paper that flutters each time we open the door.
Wlcum to Emmets house.
