A Mother Without You
Without You
Who am I?
I am a Mother who longs to hear your voice
saying” I love you, Mom”
I want to wrap my arms around you
And feel those sweet hugs and kisses.

Without you
I am a Mother who goes to bed
Hoping her dreams are filled with
Spending time with you.

Without you
I am a Mother who only gets to see your smiling face
In photos hanging on the wall
Twenty short years
Forever young.

Without you
I am a mother who wishes she could turn back time
And relive those precious moments.
All that’s left are the sweet memories.
If I only knew.

Without you
I am a Mother who will always love you
Never to be forgotten.
Believing that one day we’ll be reunited.

Without you
I am a Mother without her child.
I am an Angel Mom.

Eulogy by Brittany Doyle for Adriana, St. Frances Cabrini Church, April, 25, 2005
Adriana, Addy or just “A”.
Whatever you call her we knew who you were talking about.
The free spirited, outgoing stylish, elegant beautiful brown eyed girl.
If Adriana were here with us today she would tell all of you:
Live the dream, make a scene.
I left with things unsaid and undone, but I lived.
No one is to blame; everyone held a special space in my heart.
Thank you all for our time together.
I was blessed with a wonderful family who gave me independence
and the World.
Please take care of them for me.
I was blessed with friends, each that I loved in my own way.
Friends were my chosen family.
Do not be upset for I have lived.

A Poem for Adriana
Adriana:
A friend who we turned to when our spirits needed a lift
A friend we treasured for our friendship was a gift
A friend, who filled our lives with beauty, joy and grace
A friend who made the world a better and happier place.

A Poem from Adriana to her friends.
Will you remember all the days when I was there with you, remembering my smile and laughter?
Or will you forget and dwell in the lost instead, mourning for me?
A portrait of my existence lies deep within your heart, cherishing the memories we once shared.
Or will you decide nothing is worth keeping, losing the special dream you, my friends once held?
Love will never die, love is deep inside. Friendships are forever, remember my love for you friends.
I am always there, watching over you, to give inspiration and strength when you may fail in a world of fears.
Will you continue to dream and breathe the wonders of life striving to be who you want to be?
Dreams will never die, strength is deep inside, friends are forever.
Remember my faith in you I am always there believing in you. For I believe in Angels, the kind that heaven sends. I was surrounded by Angels, but I called them friends.

Eulogy by Casey Thompson for Adriana, St. Frances Cabrini Church, April, 25, 2005
You had a smile that lit up the world. Everything you did brought joy
to our lives. When you entered a room you touched everyone with your
kindness, devotion, and unconditional love. You have left behind three great brothers Bertrand, Jerrin and Justin, and a sister Isabelle, that love you more than you can imagine. Even though they did not tell you enough,you were and always will be the best sister to them. They adore you. You filled our lives with sunshine and our hearts with love-even with the simplest things you did like watching Harry Potter with Tyler or Winnie the Pooh with Bozena. We will treasure those moments always. Never will your Mom or Dad forget the days, hours, minutes, or seconds they spent with you. Their unconditional love for you is something we all hope to have. You made the world a special place by being in it. You have touched our lives, souls, and hearts. There seems to be nothing we can do to lessen the pain, but we will think of all of the good times we
shared with you and not the bad, because this is what you would want. We love you Adriana our sweet Angel and always will.

Adriana by Celene Doyle

Heels clicked on the skinny pavement that led to her burial site. Sniffles and sobs still linger in the back of my head as I think back. We stood around the six feet deep hole that would finalize her life, but not give us closure. The skies had sprinkled their grief on us that day. Tears ran down my face just as the rain trickled down the sides of her coffin. Her boyfriend and seven of her closest male friends carried the coffin to the deep dark hole. The coffin was light with her spiritless body. The young men who were accustomed to the “tough guy” approach, wept and hyperventilated as they placed the casket on the metal bars that would descend her body to its final resting place. Three hundred people, that consisted of family, friends and foe, broke down and bawled to themselves as they went back to the last hour that they shared with her. For some, like myself, a guilty and disappointed sting penetrated my heart. I could not recall my most recent moment with her. Tears broke rapidly down my face. My limbs felt weak, I had no more strength to hold back my wail. All my strength was gone. I had tried to give it to her mother.
At her house, her mother kissed me and squeezed me like I was her daughter. She tightly held me close to her chest with my forehead pressed against her cheek. She pulled back and starred at me. I had always shared similar features with her daughter. Her eyes were glazed with tears and I could see and almost feel her pain. At that moment, both of us wished that I was her.
My blurry eyes watched her past friend, but most recent bitter enemy. The young girl's fingers were weaved and tightly clasped within each other as she vigorously prayed. I cannot say for sure what she was praying for, but I imagine that it was a prayer for forgiveness, or time travel, or maybe even both
Once her family had left the cemetery, the time for her body to cascade into the earth was postponed. It started with her pall bearers. These eight young men wrapped their arms as far as they could around her casket, and rested their faces against the top. As they shed tears, they screamed and screeched her name. Everyone else then realized as well, that they were not able to leave their friend, their loved one, their angel, just yet. A crowd surrounded the casket, some squeezed it with their bodies, others placed a hand on it imagining it was her touch that they were feeling, and refused to let it go. The crowd of teenagers bellowed out her name. Shrieks of “WHY! WHY HER,” still echo in my heart. As if God was bewailing too, rain soaked the teenagers as their mothers and siblings tried to pry them away from her coffin. As they walked away, muffled on their mother's shoulders the teenagers continued to cry out,
"WHY HER, WHY HER!"

In Memory of Adriana by Jen

I am writing this email to those of us who live or have lived in Lakewood and have strong feelings about its limitations. I wanted to write and tell you that we were wrong. The heart of any one human being can be uncovered anywhere anytime. It does not take living in a progressive, liberal city, in a country in the mysterious east, in a cabin in the woods at one with nature. Come closer and let me tell you that all it takes is the true shock that life is not forever, that you and you and you and I are all going to die and we are completely helpless to do anything about it. It will happen, and those of us left behind will not like it. We will feel as if we have been delivered a direct punch to the heart and we will mourn the death of our friends, but perhaps of ourselves too, and the stupid and wonderful short dance we and they are given with life. 

Here’s what:
Remember the beautiful young brother I have? The one who has filled me with incredible pride and pushed me to my absolute limits? The one who at three had me “rubba back?” before he could fall asleep, the one who at 15 made an apartment of my front patio and slept in April snow without shoes, the one who at 22 fell in love with a maniacal angel and forgot which way was up? All along I have known that I needed to protect that brother of mine. I thought to protect him from our parents, judgment and from the “System”. Sometimes I tried to protect him from drugs, sometimes I tried more to protect him from reality. Always I thought he could die, and struggled to protect him from that, too. In my attempt to keep my brother alive, it didn’t register that death could enter in other ways. But enter stage left a car accident in the early morning hours before dawn on April 19th, and the death of my brother’s Maniacal Angel, Adriana Ges.

Now enter a young man, my brother, feeling the crushing betrayal that life holds for all of us. Yes, I give it to you. Yes, I take it away. Somebody quote me that bible quote, please, you know the one: “Giveth, taketh away. The Lord is My Shepherd. Maybe. In the months before Adriana’s death I had gone to battle with my brother over why he needed to leave Lakewood. There was nothing there for him, The people were going nowhere, it was too conservative, he had outgrown it. Anything. I convinced him to come and sleep on my couch and experience The “real” world of  Boulder. Guess what? He told me, Boulder is not real either. And on the one hand I agreed, while also secretly thinking, give it time. What I didn’t know, during all of this, is that my own life had become unreal to me, and that having my brother sleeping on the couch was a way for me of connecting with something long dormant. “Do you want to see my room?” Leroy asks my brother one evening. That night I make Chase eat his broccoli. Something is taking shape here, something far off and too vague yet to know. But something. The first few times my brother spends the night back in Lakewood, we feel strongly the absence of him and his dog, Charlie. Leroy pretends to be mad, trying it on for size. I find comfort in the smell of Chase’s clothes still in the closet. When Chase calls one morning and tells me Adriana is dead, all I can say is “oh, honey.” I am even embarrassed to be using such an affectionate term, But it is the only thing that comes out of my mouth when I open it. Again And again, before, “I’m so sorry” kicks in. It doesn’t matter that I am sorry, of course. Will it bring back his Friend? No. Will it show him what to do with the piece of his heart that has been ripped out? No. Will it provide comfort? Actually, no. Maybe in time, but  not on that first day. On that first day all one can do is look death right in his unbelievable face, as many times as possible, until one fully understands: this is true. She is gone. “It’s such a roller coaster,” my brother says, to describe what it is to go from pain and tears to shock and numbness over and over and over again. In the course of a morning he can only accept in small doses. He is doing well. He continues to do well over the next few days. To my surprise, already on day two we are laughing about Adriana’s imperfections and how much more loveable they made her, in a way. Or more human maybe. Fallible. One can truly love fallible. Nonetheless, in the form that she was known, Adriana is gone. And yet I feel almost as though I can feel her in the ethos surrounding my brother and his friends. In their cigarette smoke perhaps, in their subdued nature, in their uncertain attempts at physical contact. She is gone, yes, but she is more here than she was, too, somehow. 

I hear the story of how she went skydiving for her twentieth birthday, not two weeks earlier. Everyone turns this story over and over in their heads. We want to find the connection between this and her death. Between this and her life. Skydiving. Throwing caution to the wind. What does it all mean? Someone help us find the answers. The answers don’t come, of course, but the frantic questioning is replaced with a reverent attitude towards the unknown. “This happened for a reason,” Adriana’s mother says. “Don’t ask me what that reason is, but I know there is one...”  For a mother to have the courage to say something like this shakes me. Sacrifice. She is not talking to me, but to my brother, but I truly examine her for-now-relaxed face, and she looks to me the most comforting woman I have ever seen. I don’t know if I want to hold her or crawl onto her lap. Something. That something again. Something taking shape. Something ancient.

At the funeral my brother is a pall bearer. I watch him sometimes in the Church, when I am not watching the myriad other twenty-something year-olds trying to come to terms and relate with religion, with ritual, with the casket in the front that contains that once-body of their dear friend. My Brother reminds me for some reason of a cross between our father, also dead, and a prestigious and perhaps stoic Native American Indian. He sits so erect, his expression so placid, his bearing so strong. I feel both as though I hardly know this person, and also that this person is the one who has been imprinted on the insides of my eyelids for numerous lifetimes. I recognize him absolutely, but not at all.

The funeral procession is unbelievably long; it seems almost illegal. And yet still somehow I manage to get us lost. We arrive at the graveyard out of sorts, having discussed in the car anything from Johnny Depp and Hunter S. Thompson to the viewing of Adriana’s body the day prior. The atmosphere in the car was exploratory, in a way, whereas at the cemetery there is a tense heaviness. I feel immediately inappropriate, for being late and in a different mind space, for not knowing what to do with my umbrella, for not being able to control Charlie on his leash. What do you do when there? Is the feeling of wanting so badly to help, to make a situation better, and yet you can’t? I link my arm in my brother’s, knowing it is awkward, hoping it is okay. I see a mother grasping her son in his pain, not giving him the space necessary even to grieve. But she too is trying to help. We are all doing what we can, at any given moment, to improve the life of others. We just don’t necessarily know how.

Meanwhile Adriana’s parents leave in a limousine. The kids, her peers, and a few older people remain. And there is the sensation, almost palpable, That something is supposed to happen. That we are supposed do something. A friend of Adriana’s lays her head down on the casket and begins a wail that grows In volume and intensity, and finally takes on the words, “I don’t want Her to go down there [be buried], I don’t want her to be gone. I don’t want Her to go down there.” Now loudly. “I don’t want her to be gone. Adriana, You’re my best friend. I miss you so much.” Now crying. And more. I have the feeling right in that moment that Adriana’s friend, Brittany. Is the conduit for the entire group? That it was up to her to put into words the desperation, fear, hopelessness and love of all of these young people wondering how to act, how to behave, wondering what happens now that Death has touched their lives, and they can never go back to being as innocent as they were before. Eventually a cemetery employee sends us all away, so that the body can be buried. At first he attempts diplomacy. “Please return to your cars. The Cemetery staff needs to get on with their work.” But leaving is not an easy task, and soon he adopts the demeanor of a high school truant officer. “Return to your cars, now.” So with slight delay we return to our cars, viewing Adriana’s casket One last time from the passenger side window. It is a grey out, it is drizzling, it is the perfect day for a funeral, and yet the entire thing remains surreal. We return to Adriana’s house for the wake. “We didn’t expect so many...” Adriana’s mother apologizes, and yet there is an element of gratefulness in it too. When my brother introduces us formally she embraces me. “I’m

sorry we had to meet under such circumstances,” she offers. The eternal Mother. I, who supposedly don’t smoke, sit in the backyard and smoke cigarettes for a while and observe. The people gathered here are the people from whom I had wanted to take Chase away. Each one greets Chase with a smile, a hug, a touch on the arm. They are family. They accept and love each other. Does that mean they are going nowhere? Or rather does that mean there is? Really nowhere more to go, after that? On my way out my brother shows me the videotape of Adriana skydiving. Even on video, it is hard to imagine that person could be dead. The wind is whipping her clothes, the smile on her face is so vibrant. The tape has been set to the song, “Freefalling”, by Tom Petty. Adriana flies through the air, There is nothing on the television screen but her exuberant beauty back dropped by sky and clouds. I myself fall in love with her, with life, with every single person around me.

Adriana Helena Maria Ges. My brother once told me that she cried when she read one of my stories. Now I write one all for her, and cry myself. I feel such strange gratitude for her, as though she gave me this enormous Gift. A Gift that she was so excited to give that she couldn’t wait, and unwrapped it herself.