"You Are My Sunshine"

12/6/18 - the two-year anniversary of Matt’s fatal flying accident. Last year, I gathered a handful of closest friends and family and conducted a small, organically organized ceremony at the crash site, at the same time of the crash.

This year, I had wanted to do the same, but for some reason, my body just didn’t have the energy or wherewithal to send the texts to the appropriate people and ask them to be there. A friend pointed out later that day, that perhaps it was perfect that way, because this second annual was the first time I ever brought Jack to the crash site, at age three and almost three months.

It was also perhaps the first time I ever drove myself there, I realized on the way. My body did this funny dissociation thing, where a few blocks from the turn to go into the apartment complex, I had a hard time telling where I was, or where I was supposed to be turning. My consciousness seemed to be frantically searching for the “eject” button, all the while, my foot remained on the gas pedal. There was never really such wavering in me to actually turn around and not go; though when I had woken up that morning and saw that it was raining, I was relieved. I did think that if it was pouring, I wouldn’t have to stand out there at the crash site for long. Permission not to dwell. It also was refreshingly different from the original day, which had been deceptively cheery in its sunniness. This is not that day, the rain whispered reassuringly.

My friend Kathryn had to tell me where to turn, and as I drove along the row of carports, cars parked on either side, it felt like an isle of Inevitability; we were here, at the place where my husband left his body. There was still a part of me that was reacting in exactly the same way I did when I got the call two years ago; repeating, “no, no, no, no, no, no.”

And yet… I drove on. It was further down the row than I had remembered. Had I not been here since last year?? I had not been here in a year. It felt like it had been last month, the memory was so vivid, but it was foreign at the same time. Time and shock do strange things to reality.

I maneuvered my van into the parking spot right next to the carport roof where the plane had crashed. The roof had been repaired a few weeks after the accident; today, there was no sign of damage. I marveled at how material things could belie such a vivid truth as the wreckage that had been here. I saw the crash site about a week after the accident, and my heart was wrenched worse than the steel beams that had broken under the weight of a small airplane falling 300 feet onto that roof.

Shingles had scattered everywhere, the plane had skidded off the roof, chopped off the top branches of the small maple tree that my van was now parked next to, and then the plane hit the ground and came to rest, gently I understand, up against a Mazzerati. Way to go out in style, Matt, was my first thought when I had been told that detail of the accident.

As I parked the van, and the noise in my brain quieted, I realized that Jack’s music CD that played infinitely looped in the CD player, happened to be playing “You are my Sunshine” as I pulled into the parking space.

This song landed deeply in my soul… not only was Matt a refreshing ray of joyous sunshine in my life, but also, when I was in second or third grade, I remember being on the school bus and hearing this song playing on the speakers. My little girl ears really heard the words. First, the loving verse we all know:

You are my sunshine,

My only sunshine/you make me happy/when skies are gray

You’ll never know dear/how much I love you

Please don’t take my sunshine away.

And then. How many people have really listened to the heartbreaking message of this second verse?

The other night dear/as I lay sleeping/I dreamt I held you in my arms

When I awoke dear/I was mistaken

So I hung my head and I cried.

That second verse trickled down from my little girl ears to my innocent heart. I leaned against the cold glass of the school bus window, and wept; hot, fat tears pouring down my face, completely uncensored and involuntary, as I felt the sorrow of those few lines. Could life foreshadow like that?? Could I have somehow known as a grade-schooler, the exact feeling that would come?

Approximately 30 years later, I knew that sorrow in a way that nochild should ever even get an inkling of. About two weeks after Matt died, I had a dream visitation from him.

He appeared before me, glowing, dressed in his usual t-shirt and slacks, with a ball cap on. He didn’t say anything, but held me as I wept. We were surrounded by white. His presence was calm, peaceful, grounding, and comforting. Without words, he told me he was ok, and that I would be ok.

I felt the dream ending. He was pulling away. I sobbed harder. I asked him to cheat the system and stay. I pleaded, again, wishing I was so powerful as to alter reality. We both knew it wasn’t possible, and he left me, again.

The visitation was so real, that when the darkness around me came crashing in, and I realized that my body was alone in my bed, hopelessness wrung my breath from me. I writhed in bed, wracked with sobs, stuffing my face in a pillow so I wouldn’t wake my sleeping son.

With mercy, that wave passed, and I somehow made it through another day.

But I did not sleep restfully for a very long time.

And yet… now, when I heard the song, parking under the arc the plane traveled as it ejected my husband’s spirit from this earth, I marveled at the comfort of synchronicity. I saw the song playing as a sign that we are in the right place at the right time.

My ray of sunshine, who visited me in my dream, because he could no longer in “real life,” continues to tell me any way he can, that he is there and looking out for us.

And, he gave me the truest form of love I have ever known - our own created ray of sunshine; Jack. Our son got out of the van with wide eyes, as I told him that this was where Dada Matt had left his earth body. He wanted to know about it. I cautiously picked my words, telling him where the plane first hit, and then where it came to rest. I found relief in focusing on the fancy Mazzerati, talking excitedly about how funny it was that that was where the plane finally stopped. Matt’s life had been a little like that; slightly wreckless, and yet close enough to fancy friends to just bump up against that lifestyle.

I wanted Jack to know everything, I just couldn’t unwrench my heart quite enough to let the story flow freely.

Jack had said in the car that he didn’t want to help me lay out the flowers I had brought. But for some reason, he changed his mind at the moment. I was thrilled; I saw it as Jack engaging with his Dada Matt. Maybe the flowers were just cool. Who knows with a three-year-old. We laid them around the little tree that the plane had clipped. Tears teetered at the edges of my eyelids, and then receded. For Jack’s sake perhaps, or for conservation efforts, I kept the depth of my sorrow in the shallows, for now.

Jack got back in the car, out of the misty morning. Kathryn and I stood a few feet away, looking into the open field on the other side of a small fence. It was speckled with hues of green; grasses and bushes vibrant after the rains. That field had been brown two years ago. I remember looking into it as the field of possibility; I wondered if Matt had been aiming for it, trying for an emergency landing. Would he have survived, if he had made it? So many little things made it feel like such a near miss… the yearning was still there in my body, a part of me thinking a harder wish could change reality.

And here I was… inevitably… not getting to know an alternate reality. We never do, really, but when the repercussions of a split-second decision, or mistake, or whatever, are so shattering and life-changing, it is hard not to wonder, and grasp for meaning.

So that is all I have. Songs mean more, geese flying over mean everything, symbols, synchronicities… I put them all into the void in my heart, and it helps. For a moment. A hue of a rainbow on a cloudy day, just like we saw driving away from the crash site. 

Thank you, Matt. I love you.