7am

For roughly 100 days of this school year, I've set an alarm for 7am. At 7am I make breakfast for Ryan. We spend a few minutes together before he heads out to school. I start his day with a bit more nutrition than he'd find in honeynut cheerios. In exchange I get a few sentences of conversation, a "thanks mom" and maybe a hug.  Precious moments in these last few months before he graduates and moves away.  

That was Before. After is different. In After, 7am is when I remember that 24 hours ago . . . 48 hours ago . . . 72 hours ago, I did not yet know that my son was dead. 7am is when I went into the kitchen to make him pancakes, because his final words to me were a text, "Can I have pancakes tomorrow?" 7am I start the pan warming. I pull the leftover batter out of the fridge. I'm looking forward to giving him exactly the breakfast he wants. He doesn't often ask for things. And then I hear his alarm going off and realize something isn't quite right. I climb the stairs - no he's not in the shower. I knock on his door - no answer. I try the knob, locked. And I begin to know. I pound on the door and something like panic begins to happen, except it lacks the blessed irrationality and amnesic effect of panic. I'm fully rational and remember every second. 

I text Jamie on the way down the stairs, "Come here." I turn off the burner, take a skewer from the drawer and race back up the stairs, faster now, trying hard not to know what I know. 

I pop the lock, open the door, and there is Ryan and not Ryan. Not asleep and not awake. I touch his arm to be sure and it is absolutely cold.  

From there it's a blur: 911, Jamie, police, a medical team, sinking to the floor before I collapse, seeing the mottled color of his back as they check to be sure. He's gone.  

That was the beginning of After, the space in which 7am is excruciating, a memorial to the moment between normal and grief. 7am is lose my breath, twist up my gut, sobbing. Wishing desperately that I could make him pancakes tomorrow.