Chapter 17
I don’t know why our society seems to think grief is something to be shared when everybody really prefers to view it from afar. The people in my life sat beside me at the service and hugged me seemingly at random, though my stiff inability to hug them in return seemed to put them off. They brought me casseroles and sent cards and flowers, or made donations to the Christopher Reeve Foundation. They left messages on the answering machine telling me to call them if I needed anything, oblivious to the fact I could barely manage to figure out which shoe went on which foot, much less focus on dialing a phone number and asking for what I needed.
In the days and weeks after Adam’s accident I’d yearned for this sort of support, but I guess illness and injury are terrifying in a way death is not. Perhaps people don’t fear catching death the way they do a broken spine. At any rate, when all I wanted to do was sit in silence to mourn, I found myself at the mercy of friends and family who, bless their hearts, meant well.
My mother meant well when she said, “See? I knew you’d be strong.” My father meant well when he said, “It’s better this way.”
They praised my strength, so I was strong. They complimented my composure, so I was composed. They spoke in whispers they thought I wouldn’t hear about how “good” I looked, and how “well” I was taking it, so I was good and took it well. Everyone made a point of being “with” me, yet I was always alone.
Adam’s mother meant well when she moved in and took it upon herself to fire Mrs. Lapp and Dennis. Maybe she thought I genuinely didn’t need them any longer, and she was doing me a favor. More likely, their presence made her as uncomfortable as they always had, a constant reminder just how much care Adam had needed.
She rearranged my kitchen cabinets, brought in my mail and answered my telephone. She helped a lot while doing nothing, buzzing around me like a fly I didn’t have the energy to swat. Maybe like everyone else, she was waiting for me to tell her what I needed.
Katie didn’t wait. She came the week after the funeral, ignored my mother-in-law’s unsubtle protests that she “meant” to get to it, and washed, dried, folded and put away three weeks worth of clothes and bedding. She also mopped my floor, cut and stored my plethora of casseroles into single servings complete with dated labels, and sorted my mail into neat piles with post-it notes on the bills that had to be paid at once.
Then, most gloriously of all, she left.
It was the greatest thing anyone had ever done for me, though at the time I could do no more than nod my thanks. She understood.
“I’ll call you,” she said, and wonder of wonders, she did. Not just once, but every few days. She called to ask me what I needed.
For three weeks I listened to Adam’s mother sob at night when I couldn’t shed a single tear. I said nothing while she ingratiated herself into our house as if by entwining herself with me she could bring him back. I greeted her over the breakfast table and listened to her mourn, her grief solid and all-encompassing and selfish. It left no room for mine. I let her stay not out of compassion, but of the inability to ask her to leave.
Until the Baby Jesus did me in.
I came downstairs from a night of restless sleep, groggy and wanting only the palliation of coffee to get me started. Stubbing my toe on the manger scene sent the cradle and its holy contents skidding across my kitchen floor. The camels protested by breaking. I gave my commentary in a serious of one and two syllable words, mostly ending with “ing.”
Someone had vomited Christmas all over my house. Long unused decorations scattered most empty surfaces. Elves might have been the likely culprit, but for the fact they didn’t exist, and I knew at once it was my mother-in-law’s hand. Rearranging my cabinets and peeking at my credit card bills was one thing; this was an invasion of an even more personal sort. I found her in his bedroom, sorting a pile of clothes from his dresser.
“I needed to keep busy,” was her explanation.
“I’d rather you didn’t touch Adam’s things. I’m going to take care of them.”
“But, Sadie,” Mrs. Danning said, slightly aghast. “I’m his mother!”
I’m not proud to say I lost it. My temper, my patience. Quite possibly, my mind. People often speak in anger and later claim they didn’t mean what they’d said, but I meant every word. It wasn’t the first fight we’d ever had, but it was probably the worst. She wanted to be in the house where her son had lived. I wanted her out of the place where he’d died.
I won, in the end, though victory was bitter. It gave me no satisfaction to tell her I would be the one to decide what would be done with Adam’s possessions, or that she wasn’t welcome to comment on my choices. She was grieving, too, and if I could barely comprehend what it was like for me to have lost my husband, I couldn’t come close to imagining how she felt at losing her son.
“But we need each other!” she cried.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “But I can’t be what you need right now.”
She drew herself up. “Well, if you don’t want me here—”
“I don’t need you here,” was the kindest answer I was able to give her.
When the door shut behind her, I waited, at last, to weep.
And yet, I found no tears. Where had they gone? I knew myself not incapable of crying, for I’d wept when they put him in the ambulance and later, at the hospital when he didn’t wake from the stroke that killed him. Yet, surrounded by people who were judging my grief like it was some measure of my love, I’d been stony-faced and dry-eyed. Three weeks since Adam’s death, and I slept, ate dressed and bathed, spoken and been spoken to…but I had not cried.
I tried, standing with one hand against the front door for support. I let out a sigh, long and slow, giving myself permission to let go. It was like anticipating a sneeze, or perversely, an orgasm. I could feel the sorrow lodged in my gut and the tears waiting in the backs of my eyes, but neither would come out. I imagined tugging it, like a hook caught in a fish’s throat. Yes, it would rip me apart when I pulled it free, but at least it would be gone.
I waited for a long time, and there was nothing but the pain of wanting something I couldn’t seem to find.
My world had many different colors. All of them were gray. Depression is insidious and masks itself as fatigue, aches and pains, general malaise. It would have been easy to let myself fade into the gray. To stay in bed when I knew I should get up, to wear the same clothes instead of choosing fresh. I could have allowed my grief to consume me.
I don’t pat myself on the back and brag about how wonderfully I pulled through. If anything, my refusal to give in to sorrow was as much a mistake as wallowing in it would have been. Maybe if I’d allowed myself a few weeks of wallowing I’d have been better off, but the problem with looking back when you should be walking ahead is that you usually end up walking into something that hurts.
So I got out of bed. I showered. I dressed. I ate sensible meals, when I thought of it, and oatmeal or toast when I didn’t. I saw my patients, who, if they noticed my consideration of their problems had become considerably less warm and fuzzy, they didn’t complain.
Day by day the need to weep leached away until I wondered how I could ever have thought tears would make me feel better. Week by week I set about recovering my life, getting back to the business of working and paying bills. I expected the holidays to be hard, but all I felt was relief. No tree. No decorations, not even the ones Adam’s mother had tried to put out. I didn’t have to cook a meal and I could accept my parents’ invitation without worrying what to do about Adam. I was a guest all season long, dining out on the premise of my sorrow.
It was marvelous.
There were some eyes that cut away, uncomfortable in the presence of my loss, but for the first time in four years, I was able to talk about Adam, and I did. With my parents. Katie and her husband. With once-a-year acquaintances at the holiday parties and dinners. It felt as though people were able to pity me without feeling awkward about it. Adam had died. They could relate to that. They could offer their condolences, pat my shoulder, nod sympathetically in understanding when I spoke of him. Death was somehow less embarrassing than disability.
Death is also only briefly fascinating to anyone not right next to it. Eventually, the parties ceased, the calls and cards stopped coming. The world moved on with everyone else in it, leaving me behind.
Dennis invited me to dinner one night, and I went. He took me to a little place I’d driven past a dozen times but never been to. The food was good, the conversation better. It was good to sit and talk about Adam without the burden of supporting someone else’s sadness. Dennis was smart enough to listen more than he spoke.
“I miss him,” Dennis told me after dinner, in the parking lot. “He could beat my butt at chess like nobody else.”
“He was so glad to have you to play with. I could never learn.”
“I feel guilty,” Dennis said suddenly. “Maybe if I’d been there—”
“I don’t blame you, Dennis.”
He wiped his eyes, and I tasted bitterness that he could find tears while I had none.
“He was a good man.”
“Yes,” I said. “He was.”
“I just feel so guilty.”
“I feel guilty, too,” I told him. “But not because I think I could have done something different or because I left him that day or anything else.”
Dennis’s earring gleamed in the parking lot lamp as he tilted his head. “No? That’s good, though, Sadie, because those things weren’t your fault.”
“And it wasn’t your fault you were on a trip and we had to leave him with someone who fucked up, either, Dennis.”
The strength in my voice seemed to surprise him. He nodded, his features rearranging in relief. “Yeah. I know. But still—”
“I know.”
“At least he’s not in any pain,” Dennis said. I’d heard the platitude a dozen times, if not more. “He’s free.”
So was I, but I couldn’t say that to Dennis even though he might have understood. He hugged me, a big, broad man who’d been part of my life for years and now no longer was. He meant it as a comfort, and it was, but more for him than me. Then we parted, Dennis unburdened and I with a bigger weight than before.
Seeing Mrs. Lapp again was easier, because she merely enfolded me into her smothering embrace and rocked me back and forth for a few minutes. Then she clucked over my eating habits, bragged about her grandchildren and showed me photos of the trip she’d taken the week before.
“Samuel and I are going to New York City next week,” she told me. “We’re going to see a Broadway show!”
I smiled at that. “Samuel’s agreeing to this?”
“He’s never been to the city,” she said. “We’re taking a bus trip with our church group.”
I’d met Samuel Lapp many times when he came to retrieve his wife from my kitchen. He was pleasant but silent, and wore faded bib overalls and a plaid shirt on every occasion I’d ever seen him. I couldn’t quite picture him watching a Broadway musical.
“Sounds like a lot of fun,” I told her.
I’d actually wanted to ask her if she’d consider coming back to work for me. Cleaning my own house and cooking my own dinner didn’t hold any new appeal for me. Hearing her rhapsodize over her upcoming plans, I knew I couldn’t do it.
“I’m busier now than I ever was when I worked,” she said, pushing a slice of homemade shoo-fly pie toward me across her broad kitchen table. “I’ve been waiting for years to retire. I’d have done it a long time ago, but…”
She looked up, her eyes kind and a bit embarrassed. I poked my pie so I wouldn’t have to look at her. “I appreciate everything you did for us, Mrs. Lapp.”
She tutted. “It was plenty good, most of the time, even when he was grexy.”
I smiled at her use of the Pennsylvania Dutch slang. “He could be very grexy. And now you can go to New York with Samuel. Or any other place you want.”
She nodded. “Well, Dr. D, forgive me for saying so, but…so can you.”
I wanted to answer that, but I took a bite of pie, instead. The conversation turned to television, the weather and sundry other safe topics. I ate three pieces of Mrs. Lapp’s pie and left with a sick stomach.
“You call me if you want to talk,” she said from the doorway as she waved goodbye.
I promised I would, but we both knew I wouldn’t.
Katie didn’t stop calling to find out what I needed. Just like when we were kids and she knew when to bring me the second half of her grape popsicle, my sister knew how to comfort me. Her gifts now were expensive wine and chocolate and an armful of chick flicks, but they were as welcome and sweet as her grubby, half-eaten popsicles had once been.
She settled on my couch with a loud, indulgent sigh and kicked off her shoes. She’d cut her hair and wore makeup, and though she wore track pants and a t-shirt, they were stylish. She didn’t look as tired, either.
“You’ve lost weight,” I said.
“Damn straight!” Katie grinned. “Now that I’ve gone back to work part-time I can afford to pay for the gym. So when Lily’s at preschool, I take James and get a workout in. Then I work while they’re both napping.”
I kicked off my own shoes. My sweatpants were far less stylish than my sister’s but that was nothing new. What was new was that I didn’t compare myself to her and feel dowdy.
“I’m glad you could come over. I’ve been wanting to watch Moulin Rouge for a while.” I leaned forward to sift through the movie choices.
“Yeah…”
I looked up at Katie’s hesitant reply. “What? We could watch something else.”
She shook her head, her expression one I didn’t know how to read. “No, that’s fine.”
I sat back. “Well?”
She bit her bottom lip, then let out the giggle she must have been trying to keep inside. “It’s Mom, that’s all.”
“What about her?” I wanted to be worried but Katie’s laughter meant there wasn’t a problem.
“She…told me I had to come over.”
This made very little sense to me. “What do you mean by that?”
Katie snorted another stream of giggles. “She told me I had to come over and spend time with you. That she was…worried about you.”
For a moment I sat, silent. Then I started giggling, too. “No way!”
“Yes!” Katie guffawed. “She absolutely did!”
We laughed for a few minutes, until I shook my head. “Wonder of wonders.”
“So, I told Evan I had no choice, I needed to be there for my big sis, or my mom would have my hide.”
“And he couldn’t complain about that, huh?”
“Evan going against Mom? He knows better. And look at this.” She held up her cell phone with a laugh. “Turning it off. Evan’s going to have to just learn to deal with the poop explosions on his own.”
“That sounds scary.” I poured wine and opened the gold box of candy.
“It’s good for daddies to learn how to take care of their babies,” my sister said. “Especially when they think they can’t. Besides, Lily’s a big help.”
I laughed, imagining my niece’s “help.” “Poor Evan.”
“He’ll be fine.” Katie sipped wine slowly, an expression of bliss on her face. “I haven’t had wine in…years. My god, I’m so glad to have my boobs back. I love my children, Sadie, but holy hell, I’m going to be glad to have some of my life back again.”
I thought I was laughing, but it was the sound of my wineglass shattering on the tile floor. Then I knelt among the shards, my fingers reaching without care toward the glittering sharpness.
“I’m glad to have my life back, too,” I said, each word a fishbone in my throat. “I’m glad, Katie. I know I shouldn’t be glad, but I am.”
Many times I had helped her when she’d fallen, but now it was Katie’s turn to pull me away from the mess. She cleaned the cut on my finger and wrapped it in a bandage the way I’d done so many times to skinned knees and elbows, and she handed me tissues for the tears that boiled out of me at long last.
“You’re such a mom,” I managed to tell her when my sobs had tapered into hitching sniffles.
We made it back to the sofa in the den, and Katie tucked her feet up underneath her. “Yeah, funny, huh? Who’d have thought?”
We shared a smile. She handed me the box of chocolate. “Eat that.”
“Great. Just what I need to feel better about myself. Fat thighs.”
She reached to pluck out one for herself. “Fuck fat thighs, bitch, and eat the chocolate.”
There was no denying the power of chocolate, especially not this premium sort that melted on my tongue. “It’s like…a little piece of heaven in my mouth.”
Katie made devil horns with her fingers. “You said it.”
Devil horns and chocolate. There were some things nobody understood about me better than my little sister. Not even Adam known some of those small pieces of me.
“I miss him, Katie.”
“I know you do. I miss him, too, Sades.” She licked chocolate from her fingers and gave me a serious look. “Nobody expects you not to miss him.”
“I went to the grocery store after work, and I didn’t have to call home, first. I didn’t have to make sure anyone was at home to take care of him. I didn’t have to wonder if he was all right, or if I’d get home and find out something had happened…or get home and have an argument because I’d been gone too long. And I sleep, Katie.” I swallowed more tears. “I sleep all night long. Every night. And I don’t have to wake up, not once.”
Her hand was the rope thrown into the sorrow trying to drown me, and I clutched it.
“None of that means you didn’t love him, Sadie.”
It didn’t feel true, though I wanted it to be. “He could be such an asshole! And I knew it was because he was depressed and upset, but he was so fucking mean sometimes! It was like he wasn’t even the same man I’d married. It was like he woke up from that coma with a different person inside his head.”
“And none of that means you didn’t love him, either,” my sister said. “Because you’re right, he could be an asshole. But he could be an asshole even before the accident.”
From anyone else I’d have self-righteously protected my husband’s memory, but I couldn’t do that with my sister. “Yeah. I know. But he could also be the best man in the world, when he wanted.”
“It’s not your fault that he stopped wanting.” Katie squeezed my hand.
I nodded, more tears seeping from my eyes. “I never got the chance to fix it. I never got the chance to find out if we could.”
“Yeah.” She pushed more chocolate on me. “I know.”
And I knew she did. I didn’t need my sister to tell me the truth, but it wasn’t until her words became the mirror reflecting what I already knew that I believed it.
“Wanting to be able to go to the bathroom by myself and fit into a regular bra doesn’t mean I don’t love my children with every breath I have,” Katie said. “And wanting to take your life off hold doesn’t mean you didn’t love Adam.”
“How’d you get to be so good at giving advice?” I asked her.
My sister smiled. “I learned it from my big sister.”
Then we both cried.
Grief goes away like a cold sore, painful even as it fades, and sometimes leaves a scar to remind you always where it had been. Missing Adam didn’t mean I loved him any more than not missing him meant I did not. Time would mend and mesh my emotions and all I had to do was let it happen.
I made an attempt at moving on. I joined the gym. I cancelled my subscription to the DVD rental service and joined a book discussion group. I filled my time with all the things I’d denied myself for so many years.
They didn’t all bring me joy. In fact, I soon dreaded going to the gym more than I’d regretted being unable to workout. Reading and discussing books took more effort than watching movies. Still, for the most part I allowed myself to enjoy my new life and not let guilt weigh me down.
I could fill my life with activities but I couldn’t fill myself. Something was missing. Something left undone. The feeling of something lacking insinuated itself in the back of my mind like a hole in a snagged stocking, bit by insidious bit.
I thought it was Adam’s room, which I’d left unchanged since his death. I thought maybe I needed to get rid of those final reminders of his life after the accident so I could focus on remembering better things. I stood in the hall, my hand on the knob, and it took me only a moment to understand my problem wasn’t this door I’d kept closed.
It was the door I’d left open.