Crime Spree

The love for a child has finally driven this nanny to a life of crime.

Well, a night of crime.

Alright, maybe just an hour or so of crime.

But crime, nonetheless.

My day started out a little roughly.  You see, today is Ryan's birthday.  Would be?  Is?  I never know which verb tense to use.  He's forever 7, but if that mother fucking bitch called cancer hadn't taken him then he'd be turning 11 today.  Crap.  Did my language there offend you?  You should probably stop reading now, if that's the case, because the rest of this won't be very fun for you.

I woke up crying even before my alarm went off, trapped in the intersection of grief and the depression side of PTSD.  It's not a place I get stuck in often.  In fact, all of it is usually very manageable...except for the occasional times like this morning, when the dark sadness overtakes my heart and leaves me curled under the blankets, wondering why I ever need to get out of bed again.  Lucky for me, my oppositional streak starts to fight the heavy darkness and gets my sorry butt out of bed after a half dozen hits of the snooze button on those mornings. 

Today, I knew that time spent with the SnuggleBoys, my current nanny kidlets, was probably the best way to put light into the day.  And, I looked forward to a visit with Ryan at the cemetery.  I figured that with the cemetery closing at 6pm, I'd have jusssssst enough time to get there and spend a few Happy Birthday moments after work. So, I got out of bed and made myself face the day.

I held onto that plan until late afternoon, when I decided to gps the fastest route from work to the cemetery, pulled up the cemetery website, and discovered that the cemetery gates would be closing at 4:30.  Not at 6.  At 4:30.  And I work until 5.

I wept, a little.  And shared my frustration with a small group of nannies.  We keep a running messaging conversation through our workdays and weekends about our lives, our joys and frustrations, our observations on the world, our ideas for kid activities.  Today, they kept checking in to see how I was coping, to make sure I was okay.  So when I told them my screw up about the cemetery hours, they got it.

Samantha, especially, got it.  Like me, Samantha knows what it is like to love someone else's son through cancer and then to lose that sweet little boy to the mother fucking beast.  (I warned you before about that language, didn't I?)  She's had other major, heart wrenching losses.  She gets it.  And her immediate response was "T if you want I'll meet you there and sneak in with you. No joke. I will help. As per my high school years I'm a pro at this. And although I have been in retirement for many years. This totally warrants breaking out the old skills again."

There I was, ready to be defeated.  And there Sam was, refusing to allow that to happen.  I admit I hesitated at the thought of breaking into a cemetery, in the freezing cold, after dark.  And then Sam added, "Also who gets arrested for sneaking into a cemetery to visit a grave? No one. That's who."

Sold. 
 
Not even two hours later, I was sitting in my car at the entrance gates to the cemetery, lights off to avoid detection, texting Ryan's mom to see if the cemetery had security guards.  (For the record...no.  Just cameras.  Good to know.)  Sam pulled up, hopped out of her car, and suggested we park in a nearby neighborhood to avoid detection.  Smart, that girl.  And she was ready, in her black clothes and black coat...I should have thought of that!  

We approached the cemetery with Sam muttering, "Sidewalks all the way around, that's good, we're just walking.  We just got out of work and met up for walking, that's all.   Oh, we can totally hop this fence.  Not here though, not near the gates.  There are cameras there for sure."  I followed along, certain that we would get caught, but comforted by the fact that our friends and my dad had already offered bail money.  

I wasn't as confident as Sam was about hopping the fence.  The 387 foot high fence with spikes on every horizontal bar.  Okay, maybe not that high.  Maybe more like 8 feet.  But definitely true on the spikes.  I'm sure that Sam, with her athletic and gymnastic past, could easily vault over that fence with a running start.  I, on the other hand, have the upper body and arm strength of a spaghetti noodle.  I took one look at that fence and had instant visions of various body parts impaled on top of the fence and trying to convince EMS that we had a really valid reason for breaking into the cemetery. 

We walked and walked and went around the far edge of the cemetery perimeter.  Sam's logic was sound:  The other entrance was less likely to be lit up, and we'd be more likely to gain entrance without detection.  Don't mind us, just two people out for an evening stroll.  Oh, even better, the stone pillar will make it super easy to get over the fence.  

Sam was convinced she could help boost me over.  I was convinced that I would die, skewered on the fence spikes she kept warning me to be careful of. We shoved the paper wish lanterns and my jacket through the fence. Just as I was about to attempt to launch myself into the headlines ("Nanny Loses Limb on Cemetery Fence"), Sam decided to check out the third side of the fence perimeter.  She came running back, "We've got kickass angels watching over us, T.  There's a whole section of fence missing back there, with just caution tape on it. We don't have to climb anything!"  

So there we were, stepping over the caution tape and skulking through the treeline, with me following Sam's example and smoothly ducking into the trees whenever a car would pass on the road.  Sam's commentary continuing, "What's this little building, there are probably cameras near the building, we should stay near the trees.  But there's no lights or cars here, so that's good.  Who the hell closes a cemetery anyway?  What if you had a really shitty day and just wanted to come hang out with your dad or your grandma or whoever after work? These lanterns are really white, easy to see..."  and we slipped the lanterns under our coats.  

I was feeling pretty much like a criminal mastermind at that point.  Totally badass.

And with that, we made a beeline for Ryan.  A little difficult in the dark, but within a few minutes we were there. 

It's tricky, to ask someone to join you at a child's grave.  It is awkward for most people, and that makes it uncomfortable. I think it is hardest for those who never had the chance to meet or to know Ryan.  But Sam...she handled it with an easy, loving grace that I suspect is born of her own experiences with grief and loss.  She understood and embraced the idea that Ryan was there with us in those moments.  She helped battle the wind as we lit the paper wish lanterns, scolding and encouraging as if Ryan himself were the one making mischief and creating difficulty in getting those things lit.  She let me babble on about how he used to stand on his rocking horse, and about how he died the day before I was supposed to leave for Spain (but I'd cancelled my trip just three weeks prior), about how Little Litigator and the Twincesses asked to come have picnics with Ryan.  And we sent off those lanterns...the first one took flight swiftly and easily.  The second one bobbed and weaved and tilted to and fro...and Sam gasped, "Oh, he's DANCING!"  

He was.  And so was my heart, though still grieving...forever and always grieving the loss of that sweet, funny, vibrant boy...dancing with what I'm sure was Ryan's spirit, laughing at his old nanny for thinking she was going to die on the graveyard fence, knowing that we'd find an easy and safe way in if we just paid attention and trusted that he had it covered for us. 

As lonely as grief is, as isolating as it can be, I'm convinced the only relief from it is community with others...even when community, like tonight, is just one friend in the dark of a closed cemetery.  A friend willing to risk sitting beside me in the backseat of a patrol car because she knows how powerfully a nanny's heart loves, how shattered that heart is by loss...and how healing it is to not be alone. 

It may well be that tomorrow our faces show up on the evening news under the title "Women wanted for questioning in graveyard break in" and turn us into fugitives.  I'll look pretty shitty in prison orange, and I'm sure I'll have to make up some story about some vicious and heinous crime in order to avoid becoming someone's prison bitch once I'm convicted, unless Samantha is willing to run rogue with me and drive across the country, evading capture like Thelma and Louise.  But until then? 

I'm really grateful for criminally minded friends who shine the light of their compassion into the darkness so that I can find my way out. 

I'm forever going to love that boy.  As hard as it was to lose him, as horrific as it is to be witness to the indescribable grief of his parents and family, as wretched as my own grief can be, I am forever going to love Ryan James Miller and I'm forever going to be so thankful that I was blessed with the opportunity to know and love him for all of his seven years. 

And I'm confident that, even if the lights in the darkness tomorrow are red, blue, and flashing, there are plenty of people at the ready to post bail and help me pull myself out. 

Thanks, friends.  Your light means more than you know.