I don’t know why the memory of Jessica’s scream is the memory that won’t leave me alone. There are much more terrible memories from that night, so why does her scream haunt me? Why that sound and not any of the many images—the awful, lingering images? Maybe there are so many images that they push each other out or muddy each other’s clarity, leaving the sound of the scream distinct in my head.

“Dawson!” she screamed.

She screamed our firstborn son’s name and I hear that scream always.

It’s not that I’ve forgotten everything else, or that the other stuff doesn’t bother me. Everything from that night stays with me in some form—sometimes as a blur, sometimes with clarity, but nothing pushes itself forward like the memory of her scream. The other memories hurt, but they have to be summoned in some way—a phrase in conversation, a shadow as I walk by his room—something has to call them forth—they don’t wait around to pounce on me without warning. But not the scream. The scream comes and goes as it pleases—keeps me awake, interrupts my thoughts, disturbs my life. It comes to me when I’m pulling up to a stoplight, or walking into a store, or casually talking to friends. Sometimes the scream is so real I think others must hear it, but it’s for me alone. Her scream, yelling his name, yelling “Dawson.” Then screaming “Oh no” over and over again.

Why is it the scream that tortures me and not the image of Jessica standing outside his bathroom door, bent at the waist, holding herself up against the door frame while she screamed? Why am I not constantly assaulted by the image of my beautiful son, fully clothed, partially in and partially out of the shower stall, his head and upper body held up by an extension cord wrapped around his neck—a cord that was slung over the top bar of the shower, then tied off on the door handle? A cord that was precisely measured and cut to serve its purpose. Why the sound of a scream and not the feel of his thick, curly hair in my hands as I tried to support his head and relieve the pressure of the cord on his neck? Why doesn’t that show up in my head out of nowhere? Or why not the look on my middle son Greg’s face when he ran into the bathroom to see what was wrong? Or his look as he took in the scene, his look as he slowly processed what was happening, his look as he shifted into do-something mode and asked how he could help? Why doesn’t the memory of my youngest son, Conner, getting home from the movies and collapsing crying into my arms as he struggled to get out of his car bounce around at will in my brain? Why not the memory of his tears soaking my shirt?

It’s such an awful sound, a tortured scream. I struggle to even describe it. It’s the sound of panic and pain and fear, and of disbelief, and it has pushed its way into my brain where it is now at home and comes out to make itself known for no reason other than it must be heard.

I talked to Dawson only hours before he died. I knocked on his door, and when he opened it, gave him some chocolate and told him I loved him. Can you believe I don’t remember if I hugged him then? All these other shitty memories won’t go away, yet I don’t remember if I hugged Dawson before he died. If I did, I’d like that memory. I don’t know why it eludes me. I do know I hugged him the day before. Sometimes I close my eyes and remember that hug, and I can remember pulling him close. I hugged him tight and I thought he felt fragile and little and I told him he was a good son. I said those words. I said, “Dawson, you are a good son and I love you so much.” He chuckled and hugged me back and said he loved me too.

Occasionally I wonder if, after a while, some other memory will replace Jessica’s scream. There are so many memories from that night that could take its place.

For instance, the memory of me saying to Jessica that Dawson was still warm. The EMTs came rushing in, and as we waited downstairs, I told Jessica that Dawson was still warm, so they will save him, they will bring him back. There was hope, there is hope, he’s still warm and they can save him.

The sound of air coming out of his mouth while I tried clumsily to perform CPR. It sounded almost croupy, hollow, not like air being breathed but like air being pushed out of an inner tube.

The image of his room, days later, when I was looking for something, anything—a note, an indication, something to make me feel better or worse, but for God’s sake something. I found no note, but I did find an empty pack of cigarettes, and I wondered why he hadn’t asked me to buy him another pack (I’d been buying him cigarettes the last few months before his death). It took me weeks to realize he hadn’t asked for more because he knew he wouldn’t need them.

The dishes he left there—the dishes from the dinner I had brought up to him hours before he died. The dishes perfectly empty and neatly stacked. The dishes from his last meal—which sit there still.

For now, these aren’t the memories that keep me from falling asleep. It’s Jessica’s scream that does that. Somehow I know it will always be her scream that I can’t stop hearing. It will be that scream I hear, and I’ll shudder a little, and the person talking to me will ask what’s wrong and I won’t answer—just deflect and move on with the conversation.

Still other memories. The two cops at the top of the stairs laughing, waiting for the coroner to arrive. Laughing about something while my dead son, my dead baby only 25 years old, was a few feet away in the other room. They laughed while my other sons were downstairs crying. While my wife and I sat next to Dawson, holding each other, wondering how to go on, crying as we realized neither of us wanted to go on, but knowing we had to. The cops laughing—that’s a fucking memory, but still not one that attacks me unexpectedly.

Here’s a good one—the memory of the cops asking if we knew his phone password. They said they couldn’t open it with a fingerprint, which of course means they had used Dawson’s dead hand to try to open his phone. At least I didn’t see them do that—the imagined image of that is bad enough.

I will never forget the coroner, who we seemed to be bothering—she makes for an interesting memory. She asked us which funeral home they should take Dawson to, and when we said we had no idea, she gruffly told us to choose somewhere because they couldn’t take him to the county morgue and we had to decide now. I wanted to ask her if she was this awful to everyone or just us, but I didn’t because nothing mattered anymore anyway.

If the echo of Jessica’s scream ever goes away, I think the memory of him on his bed where the paramedics had placed him after they couldn’t save him will be the memory to take its place. Dawson almost looked asleep, but his eyes were just slightly open so you could see a tiny bit of white showing through the crack. I hate that memory, but it’s a hated memory I can keep away most of the time. Still, I can feel it creeping.

Then there’s the memory of Jessica and I sitting with Dawson while we waited for him to be taken away. We sat with him and I rubbed his foot and leaned forward and rested my forehead on his shin. I couldn’t touch his face because I didn’t want his face to be dead. I wanted to kiss his cheeks and hold his face in my hands but I couldn’t. The next day at the funeral home he was covered by a blanket they’d taken from his bed and only his head was out. I made myself stroke his hair—his amazing fucking hair. It was so thick, and so long, and so envied. And I ran my fingers through it and then smoothed it down, careful the whole time not to touch his face because I couldn’t stand the thought of his skin being cold and dead and gone.

I used to joke with Jessica that when she was startled, there was no proportionality to her screams. She had the same level scream for spilling a glass of soda as she did for falling down a flight of stairs. I’d joke with her that I couldn’t know by her scream if she stubbed her toe or an ax murderer just broke into the house. I used to joke that someone could be dead or she could have stepped on the cat’s tail, but I wouldn’t know which based on her scream. I used to joke like that, but I don’t anymore.

Turns out I can recognize the difference.

A.L. Gordon is a public school teacher in Central Wisconsin and an emerging writer in the area of creative nonfiction. He is currently working on a collection of nonfiction pieces tracing his family’s struggles with mental health and the mental healthcare system. 

Photo: Oso Peninsula Sunset CostaRica by Jim Wojno