4 Years and 362 Days

I'd already been on disability for almost two years so being at the hospital was easy to do.  By "easy to do" I mean I didn't have a job interfering with my deep desire to be with Aaron and my family.  By no means do I want to mislead anyone into thinking getting up in the morning and getting myself ready to be at the hospital all day and late into the evening was easy to do.

My mom drove down from her home in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, my nephew and niece's dad drove up from Chicago and the family and close friends took up the entire waiting room.  It was becoming a very busy place to be.

Word spread throughout Aaron's high school on this day about what happened.  The response from the students was an enormous outpouring of solidarity, friendship and love.  They created a Facebook page where people could post prayers for him.  Friends that had trucks lined them up on the school lawn that ran up against a main thoroughfare.  Those students used window markers and wrote messages like, "Pray for Aaron," "Prayers for Aaron," and other messages I can't remember.  The students fully expected Aaron to pull through.

And why not?

At their age, they are fearless and invincible.  Setbacks happen but you're given another chance.   Close calls happen but you recover and move on.  A lot of people inhale chemicals.  Surely, whatever people were saying about Aaron, wasn't as bad as they said it was.

And that's when some of the saddest moments of Aaron's tragedy brought me to tears.  That's when the elevators to the ICCU started opening with groups of students, Aaron's friends.  As soon as the elevator doors opened, you could see they expected Aaron to be up and talking, pulling a prank like he so often did.  They were not prepared emotionally for what they were about to see.

Pretty soon there was a line of students waiting to see him.  Then ICCU learned there were so many students that wanted to come upstairs that they formed a line downstairs and brought in a chaplain.  I remember at some point being up near the front of the line when the students were coming out of Aaron's room, comforting students with a hug or whatever they needed.  Many of them who could talk said, "I had no idea it was so bad."

Sometimes, knowing how bad it is, breaks the fantasy of how we want it to be.