Why I Keep Your Helmet

I keep the helmet you wore when you died in the storage room.  I don’t see it often, but enough.  On good days, I pass right by it.  On hard days, I stare at it and forget why I came into the storage room.  It is in the Grant section on a shelf where it stays.  

I come to the storage room when I’m looking for something useful; something I need for living life, like a can of tomatoes to make spaghetti for the kids who are hungry and ready for dinner. Sometimes, when I pause just long enough as I pass the Grant section, I touch it as I pass by. 

Sometimes, when I find myself in the storage room looking for something I need, I take the helmet off the shelf instead.  This helmet is of no use to the living anymore.  I don’t need that helmet for anything and yet, I can’t quite bring myself to dispose of it, at least not today.  

It still says too much to me.  Its presence is a reminder and I feel a service in its enduring message. In the story it tells are lessons. Sometimes I stop, pick it up, even inhale the scent of you and remember. It’s a painful joy but I like it. 

In the days after the accident, the medical examiner came to bring us the video footage from the crash site.  One of my friends who was there with me, asked him indignantly, “Why did he die?!?!” (We all had that question mulling around in each one of us). She added, “He was wearing a helmet!” 

I laughed. The medical examiner gently answered, “When you fall from 200 plus feet, it doesn’t really matter if you’re wearing a helmet or not.”  She looked down, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.”  It’s that feeling of someone asking the question everyone is thinking, but no one wants to ask.  WHY did you die??? 

The answer is an answer no one wants to hear. We were all in shock.  The questions that make no sense and answers that do. My blood boiled just a bit, even then. I didn’t realize I was feeling angry then. It was only 3 days after you died. I didn’t have the capacity for anger yet, but I remember the snide remark in my head. “Yeah, it makes no difference,” I thought at Grant as the sadness of what that meant now settled into me that first time and has layered on many times since.

Right now, I’m in the storage room, having come for tomato sauce and I find myself holding that helmet.  I ask that question again… why did you die?  There is no answer.  Just quiet.  I turn it over to look on the inside.  I see the lining where your forehead once snugly fit.  

Inside the helmet is where I see the signs of life that are still present.  The sweat stains and dirt smudges. It tells a story of your head and face being in contact with the inside of the helmet. It shows the setting of the story in the heat of the sun and the dirt in the sweat, maybe from the wind.

It’s the only item I have that still smells like you.  I miss your smell too.  I bring it up to my nose and inhale it.  I miss so many things about you. I find myself grasping at things that are as close to the presence of you as possible, but this is the only item I have that still retains the smell of you.

The lining in the helmet, that part wasn’t really washable.  You wore it and sweated in it so much and so many times. Who would have thought to preserve such a thing? In it that essence of you yet survives.  It’s one of those things you don’t wash. 

Since you never washed the helmet, you’d always shower right after you came home from a flight, so this helmet in my hands, has never been cleaned of your scent.   So here I am, left with the evidence of life from the wearer; you, in my hands.  What remains of your body when it was alive, your DNA.

Evidence of you is there. Again, some essence of proof I’m not dreaming the nightmare that you’re really gone, because you did indeed exist.  You’ve been gone so long now that sometimes I’m not sure if you did indeed exist, but then I smell this here and I remember.  You did.     

I put it back on the shelf, push the memory away and pick up the can of tomato sauce I went down into the storage room to grab.  I head back upstairs to the kitchen to use it to make dinner for all the little living bodies around me.

Again I know that I’m taken care of. The evidence of this truth is in the can of tomatoes I hold in my hand.  I had everything I needed with you and still now without you. I know I was blessed with you. I know I am blessed without you.  I would have liked it to be with you, but now it’s not, so I adjust. I feel the joy of the beauty in what is now. 

It’s not the painful kind of joy I feel when remembering you or smelling that smell of you. It is the happy kind when I hold my kiddos, smell their hair and am present in their lives.  I hug them. We pray and give thanks to the God that still cares for us.

I serve up some spaghetti made with tomato sauce I just ran down to the storage room for. I was down there just long enough to be reminded that I still have everything I need in the memory of all that’s gone.  The grace in the memory that shows me how blessed I am now. 

I say a little prayer of gratitude in my heart for all the feelings I can feel and that's a compelling moment to remember the choice I get to make each moment.  It is all evidence of how alive I am.