Early in the morning hours of June 2, 2012 my son, Mathew Nir Girdley, died of an apparent epileptic seizure. Since we're not having a big funeral and viewing, I thought I'd take some time here on the blog to write a eulogy of sorts to mark the passing of my baby boy.
Mat was born on August 6, 1983. It was quite the joyous event. I knew from the age of 17 that I wanted a baby around the time I turned 20--and I always knew it would be boy--so he and I could "grow up" together. I was in the delivery room with his mother when the doctor said, "Stop pushing!" and she yelled back "I'm not!" The first sight of my son was of his butt-cheeks flying through the air as he shot out, snatched the "salad tongs" out of the doctor's hands as he went by, and of the attending nurse catching the baby as if he were a football.
Through his toddler years up to early teens he was my buddy. He was never afraid of horror movies because he knew (thanks to my theatre and magic background) that it was all done with makeup and camera tricks. He accidentally rode his first roller coaster around the age of two and instead of being petrified, he pointed at it when we got off and said, "Again!" As he grew he loved my magic and was a stage hand and co-performer in many, many shows. I "taught" him to love
HitchHiker's Guide, Monty Python, Weird Al.
Several years of his mid-to-late teens I don't know about because he went to the midwest to live with his mother. Around the time of his 18th birthday, he had his first epileptic seizure and moved back here so that Russ and I could try to get him treatment, insurance, and get him through college.
He had many, many seizures while he was here. He would get on a new medication and for about 4 months, the seizures would stop completely. Then they'd start in again. The first several would be small then the severity would progress to bigger and bigger events until we could get him on new medication. Nothing ever helped; his body continually built up a tolerance to whatever he was on at the time. Russell arranged for him to take part in a Johns Hopkins study complete with a surgical implant to detect and "short circuit" the seizures, but Mat decided it was too risky and declined at the last moment. A few weeks later he fell off our insurance and…there was nothing more we could do.
He did get his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Baltimore. He majored in "Simulation and Digital Entertainment" which is fancy-speak for video game programming. I also had that as my degree and was teaching at UB. Mathew was occasionally horrified to find himself in a class that his Dad was teaching!
Still we managed to take him on a few trips. We took him to the Bahamas shortly after his 18th birthday. We took him to Las Vegas for his 21st. He went with us to local amusement parks, New York trips, Broadway shows, movies.
Shortly after getting his degree and opting out of the surgery, he moved to Tennessee to be near his girlfriend Kristen that he had met on the internet. She's a real sweetheart and Russ and I really love her. He was there for about two years, and Russ and I secretly paid his rent for him, but he could never hold down a job due to his condition. Ultimately, he couldn't persevere, and moved back home a couple of years ago.
Still unable to work, he "paid his rent" here by helping us maintain the house. Even so he studied web design and took "remote" classes from me as I taught him XML, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, Flash, and so on. He never stopped believing that his big break was right around the metaphysical corner.
He was a complete video game junkie, and was never happier than when he was "plugged into" whatever world he had on the screen. He idolized Link (from
Zelda) and one of his proudest achievements was his hand-made Link costume he wore to Otakon. While sorting through his stuff, we were amazed at how many folders, flyers, posters, cutouts, and general trinkets he had collected devoted to the game.
He never knew when a seizure was going to strike. There were no warning signs. He could be talking to you and in mid-word he would be gone in the throes of a full-blown episode. When he was in a seizure, he was lost; he had no idea what was going on. After the seizure was over, his mind was essentially erased for about two hours. He had no clue who he was, where he was, what day or year it was. After he had "recovered," he still had no memory of the event and would often insist he'd had no seizure…even after we showed him the time-stamped video footage we'd managed to shoot.
I say all that because the night before he died, I had told him about a company that was selling downloadable games--really good games--at ridiculously cheap prices. He was excited to hear about it and as I said "goodnight" and headed up to bed, he was at his computer downloading the games. When we found him the next morning, his bed had not been slept in but the computer was on. We are pretty sure that at whatever time it happened, he was very happily playing one of those games…and then the seizure hit him and took him. We're sure he never knew. One moment he was playing and the next he was gone. So we're sure he was happy at that moment.
Below are some pictures taken at various times on various trips to the Bahamas, Las Vegas, birthday parties, magic shows, and so forth.
With His Two Dads
The picture above deserves a story. Russ and I had scheduled a vacation to the Bahamas. Months after it was settled, Mathew moved back from his mother's (shortly after the seizures started). So we bought an extra ticket and took him along. But he had to come down on a flight the day after ours. Russ and I were there and picked him up at the airport. Well, Mat had overslept the morning of his flight, so hurriedly grabbed his suitcase and leapt into the car of the person taking him to the airport.
In his fluster, however, he grabbed the wrong suitcase. His clothes stayed in Baltimore and he brought along a look-alike suitcase filled with movies and Nintendo game cartridges! We didn't know until he opened it up to get out his bathing suit....and surprise!
It wasn't always easy to have him around. He was stubborn. He'd fib in a heartbeat if he thought he could get away with it--even if the evidence was in plain sight. But he wasn't a bad young man. He was good….he just never had a fair chance at being fully alive. Partly due to being of that generation, but mostly because of the epilepsy.
He loved his friends. He was good at "being there" for people. He gleefully shared his time, whispered secrets, words of encouragement. He loved to teach people magic tricks, card games, "leet" moves in his video games.
When he was 7 or 8 years old he was at a summer camp when Father's Day rolled around. He wanted to do something for me--it was undoubtedly a camp project--so he found a rock, he painted it green, then wrote DAD in red paint. He was soooo proud of what he'd made for his Daddy. I have kept that rock in a place of honor ever since. Every so often I'd take it down and show it around and I think we was more than a little embarrassed by it's crudeness.
But it's always been my most cherished possession.
This is the guy I miss the most. This was my buddy when he was 7 or 8 years old and full of hope, and promise, and unquestionable love. He was my baby boy.
He was 28 years old. He was loved very, very much.
