Keystrokes

Sometimes Brady could type.

If I held him on my lap and massaged his hand just right, he could press the keys with one finger. It didn’t always work. Often it did not. Sometimes it added frustration on top of frustration. When it did work, it was a slow process. But it felt like a small miracle, because he could be specific, and he could be heard. He didn’t type very much the year before he died because it was just too hard. But I saved most of his little notes over the years and I’m thankful I have them.

He had a Chromebook and an Apple laptop. His password for both was Ragnarok, his favorite Thor movie.

Once, he typed “Ma.” Then he stopped. Or we thought he stopped. We spent nearly thirty minutes guessing movies that began with Ma, repeatedly landing on an Indian film with subtitles that was very obviously wrong. Brady was exasperated. The Matrix? The Mask? Maze Runner? We could not figure it out.

Later he tried again and typed: IT’S CALLED MA. All caps. We finally realized he hadn’t needed a break at all. Ma was the full sentence. He wanted to watch the scary movie Ma with Octavia Spencer. (Brady loved a good scary movie.) That one looked slightly unhinged, and despite my affection for Octavia Spencer, we never did watch it.

Other times, instead of a request, he typed a note.

Today I found this one. A Father’s Day message from a few years ago. Six words, typed slowly and deliberately, with effort and intention: I love you 3,000. A borrowed line from Tony Stark and his daughter Morgan in Avengers Endgame, but also: unmistakably Brady.

A reminder that even when his body failed him, love didn’t. It still found a way out.

I think grief is not about lost love. It is about enduring love, forced to live in the absence of the one you miss with your entire being. In A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis asks us to consider our short time together on earth as just a prelude to our cosmic, eternal relationship. I love that.

We love you 3,000 too, Goose. Eternally.