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Week by Week

Nathan Carroll Ralston

This is a story written by Nick Ralston, Nathan's dad, for a college writing class. This is in response to a question about a book called "Growth of a Soil." Apparently the characters in the story kill their children....

I lie in my warm bed trying to sleep, to relax and I am losing this battle, why because there is a battle in me whether to give you a paper of safe crap, stapled squarely in the upper left corner or to give you the real, the ugly paper I read from now. I was afraid that this class would cause me to want/need to recount this event. While reading this book "Growth..." it made me even more nervous, made it more inevitable that it would happen. I don't do this to ipress or depress just to express the reason why it is my opinion, and only my opnion, that Inger and Barbo are both ignorant fools for destroying one of the only perfect things this world ever sees, new unspoiled, untainted life, life without sin, remorse, pride, vanity or shame.

My story should start when I too was a fool.

"Oh Nathan, PLEASE stop screaming," I say too strongly to have any effect but to make him louder. He won't keep still on the changing table, thrashing and wriggling about, but only because he is tired. I am also tired and worn, too tired to see what his real problem is, he has none, he just needs a nap.

A gift was given to me with him, doctor's visits, two in one day. 45 minutes in his doctor's office waiting room, then 20 minutes with him and the doctor. Next came an hour in my doctor's waiting room. I happened to be tending to him, we were entertaining each other, myself on that wooden bench, he reclined in his stroller. I kept trying, with great success, to make him smile and laugh at me, silly man he knew, acting silly in front of him and people neither of us knew. That was Thursday, I remember those smiles of those minutes of that part of that day better than any he ever gave me. The day ended without note, he woke around 11:30 PM and I propped a warm bottle to him and went back to sleep myself, still had a full day of classes tomorrow....

Piss there's the alarm, out of bed early again, can't be late for the bus. Shower, clothes, hair, tooth brush, tooth paste, teeth. Oh Amanda is up and moving too. I am ready to walk out the door but I'll check Nathan, sleeping, covered up on my way out the door.

Friday, March 6, 1992 at 8:00 AM I walk toward where he is sleeping seeing only his hand out from under the little quilt. Hmm, never seen his hand all white like that before, my brain rationalizes that itis because it stayed out in the night air. So I swoosh that quilt/shorud off the rest of him to bid him good morning and good day. He has a pleasant look about him, small smile on his small face and his eyes are open, but....but OH GOD, NATHAN! OH GOD, NO!

Fate, karma, destiny the three of those mother fuckers ganged up on me and pulled the plug of stability, normality, expectation out of my life and it was all spiraling down towards the hole that had been made. God the room was really spinning. Oh shit, Amanda. She is walking out of the bathroom. God, how can I get her 100 miles away from here? I can't, can't talk to her, stop her, hold her, she moves past me. What those three mother fuckers did to her I cannot say. She cried and grabbed Nathan's odd cold, oddly painted body to her. She looked, finally at me and I just back at her.

I dialed 911. "Uh, my son died in the night." "We'll send an ambulance, what's your address..."

There was that siren, I heard it from way off, I knew it was ours, knew it was useless. He was long since gone, possibly smiling and looking at his destination. In burst the world, Med Techs with their "tackle boxes" laying out his body and giving each other the no-fucking-way look. Then there was a police officer I had to talk to and give some info. It was his birthday, I thought I heard someone say, I really felt sorry for him and I hoped my world wouldn't ruin his day. The deputy coroner came and took him away, wrapped in the quilt he had slept in....

My son Nathan was four months old when he died of SIDS. There are times when I laugh at his memory, times when I'm blue, and times when I wail. He taught me the value of life and I will never forget.