Hard Days

Some days are harder than others. Sometimes there is not a reason. Sometimes there is.

Today there is a reason. Today I explained to the deputy coroner that the part of the autopsy report where she described what I had said to her on the worst day of my life was simply wrong. 

It might not matter to someone else. The real facts and her supposed facts all point in the same direction. The conclusion is no different. The toxicology report, his stomach contents, the diagnoses from his psychiatrist tell the tale. As far as I can tell they got all of that right. It may not matter that the deputy coroner manufactured a diagnosis of ADHD and a visit from Atlanta friends that never happened. 

It matters to me. Truth has always been important to me. Many stages of my life would have been easier if I had been willing to tell the lie that made everyone comfortable. I didn't seek comfort in lies when I was 5, and I cannot countenance being misrepresented in a public document as I approach 50. 

Ironically, the worst was the piece that was arguably accurate but painfully misleading. She wrote that Ryan lived alone. His mother moved out to live with her fiancé. She says she didn't mean to imply abandonment. I can't tell how much it is my own guilt that makes it sound that way to me.  I want her to say I was in the building next door. I want it to say I was with him every day for breakfast and dinner, that I did all of my cooking in the apartment with him, that I spent all the time with him that he would tolerate, that I made every one of those decisions considering what would work best for Ryan, that I asked two different therapist friends if I should stay closer.  Don't make it a public record that I did less than I might have for my son. I did more than you will ever know, and I don't need an autopsy report to tell me that it wasn't enough.  I already know. 

She won't say all of that, but she will change the report. At some point I'll get a new one.

It's not really her fault she doesn't know how to do these things. She's too young to have a lot of experience. Worse, we don't teach our children how to listen. We teach them to be quiet and respectful. She was. They gave her a list of questions. She asked them. I don't know where she learned compassion, but she has it. 

What she doesn't know how to do is to listen to what another person says and take it in without smothering it in her own assumptions. 

What she doesn't know how to do is what I teach all the time. How many times have I heard smart, educated, articulate adults say, "That's harder than I thought."?

Perhaps I should expand my business to teach mirroring to coroners. Or school children. Or any investigator. Maybe some day we'll live in a world where we value the real meaning of what another person is saying and mothers of dead teens won't have to explain to coroners all the things they got wrong.