| Welcome to | |||
ADDYCAKE PRESS |
 |
||
|
|||
There will never be adequate words to describe what
it is to lose Adam. Everyone knows that losing a child is terrible;
I’m no different from another mother who has. But saying that
conveys nothing of my particular loss. And words that describe the
details of his death are now the ones most commonly used to describe
him. They negate everything else - his past, what he was to us,
what he was to the world out there. Adam was the one who, when he came through the door at home would seek me out, like a ‘heat seeking missile’ as he called himself, to give me a hug. From wherever I was in the house I knew he’d come to me, ask how I was, ask about my day. He supported me when I was down, challenged me when I needed a push, tried to understand what upset me and then tried to help me make the necessary changes to do something about it. He did this in different ways with everyone he loved, patiently, tirelessly. Adam was a student for most of his life so he never had much money to spend on those he cared about. But he made up for it with gifts of himself that often took a great deal of time and effort—whenever his beloved brother Gen came to town it didn’t matter what other commitments or plans he had - he would drop everything to be with him; one Christmas he gave his dad a personalized calendar of the family throughout the years, each picture so carefully chosen and lovingly displayed; he made an elaborate chocolate cake for my birthday one time, put it on a beautiful glass dish, decorated it with rose petals and placed it in the garden for me to find. Then there are the stories, the beautiful children’s stories he wrote to Dalia on Valentine’s Day, when she wasn’t feeling well, or for the special times between them. The wonder and joy of what it was to be a child never left him but it was as an adult that he realized that he could tap into that part of him and put words to the page. He remembered what it was to think small, child-sized small; remembered how the inanimate could be animated; how anything was possible. Some people may say that writing informed by such things is a form of escape from the complex and difficult world we live in—as people grow into adulthood they try to recapture happy childhood moments and hold on to them forever. But that isn’t how Adam saw children’s literature and isn’t how he wrote. The children’s books he loved said something meaningful about the human condition and the magic of real life. That’s what he wanted to do. I read his stories in the first few days after his death. I was dumb with grief and did not know then how hard it was going to be to give voice to my loss, and tell others about him. I did know, however, at some level, that when I held the pages in my hands, more than anything I could ever say, these stories would give you my son. In reading them perhaps you will understand something of what I lost.
|
|||||
