the magic of 8

From a pretty young age, Caemon enjoyed counting. At first, like any child, he wasn’t entirely sure of the order of numbers, but we could get him to count to three or four, and by the time he was two and half, he was at least counting to ten on his own with relative ease, and if he was feeling cooperative, even higher. But then Caemon’s sense of humor kicked in, and his counting became less predictable. He would be counting along with something in a book, “1…2…3…4…” and somewhere in the sequence, a little glint would appear in his eye, and regardless of where he was in the counting, he would insert, “Eight!” and then dissolve into uncontrollable giggles. There were times when he would count all the way to ten only to jump back to eight.

The number eight quickly became his favorite. When asked his age, Caemon would occasionally reply that he was eight. When asked how many of something he wanted, his sly smile would creep across his face, and he would respond “Eight!” Eight was his go-to number. It was his running joke, particularly with me. He and I would count teaspoons of vanilla or cups of flour, or we would count for the sake of counting, and he would never count seriously (unless he thought I wasn’t paying attention). He always jumped to eight. It made me laugh every time. It made him giggle his infectious, beautiful giggle. It’s no surprise that I came to love the number eight too. Sometimes, when counting with others who didn’t know the joke, he would pull his usual trick, familiar glint in his eyes, and he would always look over at me to make sure I heard the joke, even if the person present wasn’t aware that he really did know how to count.

I will admit that when I count things now, I sometimes shout “Eight!” in my mind to conjure up that silly boy who loved so much to laugh, to make his moms laugh.

After Caemon died, Jodi and I received a number of books and pamphlets on grief, many of which suggested that in the early stages of the grieving process, the bereaved often look for signs of their deceased loved ones; I was no exception. Throughout many of those early days, I would find myself looking for signs of my son, messages he might have left. Unfortunately, I’m also an insufferable skeptic, so the search was often a little frustrating. The morning after Caemon died, I awoke to find a bright green syringe cap in my bed, one of Caemon’s favorite types of caps (he collected various caps in the hospital and knew what each cap belonged to). I tried to explain it away, but ultimately couldn’t. I didn’t know how it got there, so I let myself have that one. My boy must have left it. In the months following, I would find piles of dimes around the house. I don’t know why they were always dimes, but they were. Jodi thought he was leaving these for me, so I agreed to believe, all the while wondering why there were so many dimes and how a spirit would go about moving such things and whether I was just getting sloppy about putting away my change. But in my heart, I wanted them to be from him, so they were, and I left them in their places (after all, I wouldn’t want him to think I didn’t appreciate the occasional thirty or forty cents). There have been a multitude of other signs, some of which my doubtful mind has explained away, some of which I’m still trying to figure out.

It should come as no surprise then that my latest wave of “signs” has been a series of eights. On the anniversary of Caemon’s death—or perhaps the next day, I walked up to our front door to find a purple foam 8 on our welcome mat. It was the sort of foam sticker that Caemon loved crafting with at the hospital playroom, and while chances are it came in on the shoe of a friend whose kids had been working on similar crafts, I couldn’t help but hope Caemon had left it for me just hours after I had wished I could feel him close, had actually wished that he would give me some indication that he was around somewhere. I brought it in and put in on his altar, and it inadvertently became the first of a growing collection.

Most of the eights I encounter aren’t concrete. I will pull out a handful of pretzels, and there will be eight (Not a message from beyond, I will tell myself). I’ll watch Jeopardy, and the answer to a question will be eight. An important event will fall on the eighth of the month. These eights are not signs, not communications, but I notice them, and more often than not, they trigger a replay of my son counting, eyes glinting, and his sweet voice exclaiming his favorite number.

But there are some other tangible eights. My latest findings were on the beach on the Mendocino Coast. Jodi and I were vacationing there, doing some beachcombing and thinking a lot about our son. Caemon loved the beach. He loved “playing buckets,” watching the waves, getting his toes wet, digging them in the sand. And he also loved his special jar full of treasures we had found together at various beaches throughout his short life—shells, rocks, sand, tiny sand dollars, even leaves. He would empty the jar on his bedroom floor and handle each item one at a time and then place them gently back in his jar.

On this particular day, as Jodi and I were remembering these magical times we spent as a family, and I was letting the tears fall freely, I looked down at a small pile of stones and shells to find none other than a small white 8 formed from the calcified case of a tube worm. I picked it up, felt a warm feeling wash over me, and placed it in my pocket, but not before I showed it to my wife, who smiled and noted that Caemon was leaving me a lot of eights lately. Another wave came in, and we ran away and then back to find what the ocean had churned up this time. I looked down, and there again was an 8. I gently pocketed the second eight, my tears and the spray of the surf leaving my face a salty mess.

Honestly, I don’t know that my son’s spirit has any control over shells I find on a beach or foam numbers that appear on my doormat—certainly not over answers on Jeopardy. But I know that the number eight has somehow turned sacred to me. It’s the number of my boy’s laughter, the code to his mischievous grin, and turned on its side, it is the symbol of the connection he and I will always share. Some people think their loved ones are around when they see feathers, others butterflies or rainbows. And we do this too—we think of Caemon when we see crocodiles and bees and the color orange. But my son and I, we have a running joke, even in the afterlife, and that has everything to do with the magical number eight.

You can witness Caemon’s counting joke in the video below (around 1:40–note the little look he gives after). Here, he is “reading” There’s a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr. Seuss to our beloved social worker Peggy. This reveals another of my favorite habits of Caemon’s: his memorization of all of his favorite books and his insistence on reading them to his loved ones. This video was taken a few weeks following his transplant when he was finally starting to feel more like himself again–and just a short time before his relapse.