I had promised my dear friend that I would bequeath William’s transformers to her son, who was only two and a half years younger than William, and who counted him one of his best friends for most of his life. I had forgotten that promise until a couple of days before his 18th birthday. Suddenly, the idea recurred to me, and I dug through storage to retrieve them so that I could give him something truly meaningful for his first adult birthday. He still plays with transformers (as do most 18-year-old boys whether or not they admit it), and thought it would be nice to be able to play with his friend again even though he is no longer here. They used to lend and borrow transformers back and forth between the times they saw each other, each having acquired a new one that was of interest to the other between times.
So, I went to my storage bin and located the tote that contained most of the s, as well as grabbing three totes of legos/bionicles/assorted toys that I had promised to other friends of William’s, who, like him, still actively played with their favorite childhood toys, and who had shared this pastime with him in better days.
Sorting through the transformers and pulling out the extra bits of legos and other toys to set aside was difficult, but i had waited until the last minute, so the time crunch was a bit of a blessing. I mostly stuck the other toy pieces into a shoe box to deal with later, though I did take some time to go through the journal that William had kept when he was 5-6 years old, and was once again amazed by the rate of his development from drawing 2-dimensional figures that were composed primarily of lines to figures that resembled 3-dimensional shapes, with articulated joints, and his sudden ability to write strings of letters that resembled English words. For example, this exchange:
Der Mom,
I love you. Ples clen my room.
Love Willam
Dear William,
I love you too, but I will not clean your room for you. I will help you clean it if you ask nicely, though.
Love,
Mom
Going through his things has dragged me back to where I was a year ago. I don’t know if that means that I have not been grieving properly, or if this is just a normal hiccup on my own development, but it is hard. As I sat there, trying to sort bionicle from lego as I used to do when I would help him clean his room, not so very long ago, it occurred to me how horribly unfair it was, that here was an adult child who could not decide on the difference between bionicle and lego, yet, he thought he could choose between life and death, and made the wrong call, and now so many are affected by his choice. It’s just so unfair. To William, who still had so much promise ahead of him, to his friends, who still want to play transformers and legos, and to me, who has to sort through the remaining toys, without being able to ask, ‘do you want this in the lego or bionicle box?’
I fall to pieces 