Stepping Back from the Ledge, page 5
I remembered this story when my sister and I thought about what sort of flowers we wanted at her funeral. Would irises be the most appropriate? But we also knew my mom loved flowers straight from her garden—she loved when flowers looked less orderly, and more wild. So we asked that friends bring flowers to the funeral from their own yards or someone else’s yard. As the church began to fill for the funeral, roses and mums, prickly red lantana and yellow branches of the palo verde lined the church in vases my sister had collected from her house and our mom’s house.
My boys had dress shirts, but no jackets, and Theo wore his gray lace-up Vans, something my mom would have liked; we hadn’t had time to buy new dress clothes. Lucy wore a new watercolor floral dress, a leftover Easter dress that had been on the clearance rack at Target. She held tight to Fred, a stuffed dog that was recently handed down to her by her biggest brother, Henry. He had carried it since he was three. Theo was only seventeen months older than Luke and the two were about the same height, but Luke reached out for his older brother’s hand.
The prayer cards for my mom had St. Francis, patron saint of animals, on them, of course, for all the times my mom brought her dog, Moe, with her to mass for the annual blessing of the animals. The card read, “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast” (1 Pet. 5:10). I tried to persuade myself to believe that after all this suffering, God somehow now would take care of my mom, that she would indeed be strong again. Or at least she likely believed this, and that is what mattered, not what I thought. Maybe the priest hadn’t exactly said this, but the Bible verse did.
I stopped in the bathroom to grab tissues before the service and saw my aunt, the one whose cabin we stayed at every summer in northern Arizona while growing up, the place we learned to fish and cross-country ski, where we skipped rocks and built a secret fort overlooking Mormon Lake, the place my mom and stepfather got married. My aunt resembles my mom with her blue eyes and her thin long arms. She seemed to be the best substitute for my mom, and I reached in for a hug. She put her stiff arms on my shoulders and told me to make sure my children didn’t say hello to her mom, my children’s great-grandma. “Stay away,” she said. “Just stay away.”
I was confused, and started to cry, not understanding what she meant by it. I reminded myself of something my psychologist had said: Everyone grieves differently and we must all give others grace. I just wanted to get a tissue and return to my family who was waiting in the lobby of the chapel. We walked up the center aisle to my grandma, who sat in a pew in the front row in the middle of the church, directly in front of the altar. I wanted to ask my grandma what happened to my mom, what she knew, the parts of my mom’s story she understood, her truth—not right then, but one day. Right then, I just needed a hug and somehow thought my grandma’s hug could fill in for my mom. I reached in, and my grandma looked at me, my husband, and our four children, and waved us off.
I didn’t understand, but my grandma had lost her youngest girl, my mom, her Lucy. Maybe everyone was so sad that they couldn’t deal with anyone else’s emotions? Was it just too much to process on their own?
I learned later that my grandma blamed me, as did my mom’s sister and her brother. My mom had told them that I had told her about the abuse by her husband. They saw how upset she was, how fragile she was, how much she struggled with this news. Instead of being angry on my behalf at my mom’s husband, they were mad at me. I should have carried that with me, they believed. I was selfish to tell my mom and I had only told her to make myself feel better, they said. To free myself. They thought I shouldn’t have told my mom when they thought she wasn’t strong enough to hear it. They knew more than I did at this time, how my mom was doing, how much she was struggling, things I didn’t know. Guilt wrapped its way around the grief.
We took a pew behind my sister and her family on the right side of the church facing the altar. My grandma and my mom’s brother and sister sat in the pews in the front row in the middle of the church, which filled with neighbors I hadn’t seen since I was a child: patients my mom helped recover from heart attacks in her work at the hospital, friends and former co-workers from the newspaper in Phoenix where I had worked, my dad and his family, and so many people I had never seen—more evidence that you never fully live in the world your parents do, especially when you are grown-up.
The service was about to start and I hadn’t seen my mom’s husband. I was both afraid to see him and also worried that he wasn’t there. Was he sick? Did he not have a ride? Should we have made sure he had a ride there? I turned around and scanned the church, looking for him. Part of me thought that after the service, I needed to tell my mom’s husband that I forgave him, that I was sorry about my mom. I just wanted to make everything as good as it could be. I couldn’t apologize to my mom, but I could talk to him. More than anything, I hate when people are angry at me, and I hate being angry with people. It makes me feel anxious and sad. I would rather apologize for something I didn’t do than have someone be mad. I would rather tell someone I forgive them and start over than feel angry. Maybe if I told him that I was sorry, he would say he was sorry; maybe I could find some sort of redemption through this, I thought. Maybe sitting in this church pew made me think he could find redemption, that I could find peace—that my mom was gone, but we didn’t all need to suffer.
The priest I had talked to the day before walked to the front of the church in his white robe, starting the funeral, and my mind drifted, already worrying about how I was going to capture my mom during the eulogy and then realizing I wasn’t even listening to the priest. Ten minutes into the service, my mom’s husband wobbled in alone, walking down the main aisle of the church as the priest was talking. I watched as my grandma scooted to the side, making a place for him to sit next to her and my aunt who put her arm around him.
I felt sick. What was happening here? I was so sad about my mom, yet I still felt hurt by this. I was angry and confused, without the ability to understand every emotion I felt. I was angry that he was late for his wife’s funeral and also angry that he was there at all. And suddenly I was OK with angry. I didn’t want to say I was sorry to him, didn’t want to forgive him, didn’t want to look at him or be near him.
The priest never used the word suicide and didn’t even allude to it during the service, nor did I expect him to. He talked of the usual themes of God calling us home. My sister and I, neither having spent much time in church in years, had resorted to Google to find our readings. When the priest had asked my sister if she had a suggested passage, Lisa told him she would get back to him. We both went on a hunt, wanting to find something that didn’t feel too biblical, while acknowledging it actually had to be a reading from the Bible. We had teased each other with picking verses with names she wouldn’t know how to pronounce, and settled on a verse known as one of the more poetic verses in the Bible, one that acknowledges grief and doesn’t really provide an answer. This one felt honest, and didn’t leave everything up to God, which neither of us were ready for.
My sister stood in front of the church and began: a reading from Lamentations.
My mom’s sister and brother stood at the front of the church and told stories of when they all three were kids, taking turns in the story telling as if they had rehearsed it.
Theo, eleven, had asked if he could read something at the funeral. I had told him yes, thinking he would likely forget he asked, or see all the people and decide against it. But on this day, he wanted to speak and I walked with him to the lectern at the front of the church. He stood next to me and from the front pocket of his corduroy pants, he pulled out a piece of notebook paper folded five times into a tiny rectangle and slowly opened it. He rubbed his hand over the paper to smooth it out. His elfin handwriting in pencil filled eleven lines.
“My grandma,” he began, in a voice louder than I expected.
He looked up toward his little sister, snuggled into her dad, and back down to the paper. He grabbed my hand. “She would ride the roller coasters with us, not because she wanted to, but because she wanted to make her grandchildren happy,” he said. “She read The Hunger Games along with me so I wouldn’t be scared. We all loved her very much.”
He stayed next to me as I told a few stories about my mom, about how she always looked after us, about how she seemed constantly worried that someone was cold, and how she had knitted caps for her grandchildren when they were babies, even the summer babies in Phoenix, of how she collected socks for the homeless so their feet wouldn’t be cold.
It was thirty-four degrees the morning my mom was found in the canyon. She had on a lightweight jacket.
“Mom,” I said, “you weren’t alone. You weren’t. And I hope you were not cold in the end.”
Theo and I walked back to our pew and sat down. The rest of the service was a blur, but I read the program—if that’s what you call it—and Henry read a traditional verse from Romans that’s often read at funerals about hope and trust in the Lord. We took Communion during the song “Here I Am, Lord,” and I do remember squeezing my sister’s hand as she walked back to her pew. I whispered, “I will raise you up on eagle’s wings,” which made her smile. She and I had discussed how the song had become an anthem at Catholic funerals and that we couldn’t have it at our mom’s service. We teased each other that whichever of us died first, the other would insist the song be played at her funeral. It almost made me want to eat healthier and start running again.
The last song began, the recessional hymn, and it was supposed to be the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” my mom’s favorite song. Instead, the music director led everyone in a gospel-like song called “River of Hope” with clapping, most of which was offbeat. My sister and I looked at each other, confused. Then we realized my aunt and grandma must have changed the last song, and all we could do was laugh. It was as if none of this could possibly be happening. It all seemed too absurd for reality. Had our mom really just died and now people were clapping and singing this song we had never heard? It may have been that we were so uncomfortable, so in shock and just tired and so sad, that all we could do was laugh.
As each person left the church, my mom’s best friend, Ellen, handed them a piece of dark chocolate, my mom’s favorite treat. It sat in my mouth taking forever to dissolve, like a Communion wafer. During the lunch and reception after the funeral, I fidgeted with the foil from the chocolate, folding it into a thin strip, as tiny as I could do with one hand in the pocket of the dress that Mom had bought me for my birthday the previous month.
That afternoon after the funeral, I was supposed to stop by my mom’s house to see if there was anything there I wanted. My sister had told me to pick it out and she could box it up and send it to me. When I pulled up to the house alone, I saw the cactus garden my mom had just written to us about planting, the desert willow trees where she had hidden Easter eggs for my kids, the pear tree we had planted for Mother’s Day two years ago, and then the big white pickup truck. The truck belonged to my mom’s husband and its presence meant he was there. I couldn’t go in, couldn’t even turn the car off to stop and park. I didn’t want to see the house again. I drove away, and left the next morning for Ohio.
When we got home to Cincinnati, one of John’s family friends, a priest, called to check on me. We still had a landline and I pulled the cord with me as I sat on the kitchen tile to talk by the back door. He told me how sorry he was, wanting to know how I was doing, how the kids were. I didn’t know him well, or really at all, but I knew he was close with John’s family and they had sponsored him while he was in the seminary at Notre Dame.
I couldn’t answer, not for myself and not for the kids. I’m not sure I even knew how we were doing; I was just so sad. I told him that I no longer believed in God and didn’t believe in heaven, but he must, and so he must know. I could barely say anything else, but asked, “Father, is she OK?” I meant, is she in heaven?
“What?” he said. “Who?”
“Is she OK?” I repeated. “My mom. Is she OK? Is she in heaven?”
I could hear him take a deep breath.
“I don’t know,” he told me. “The truth is that we don’t know with certainty what is next. I just have faith,” he said. “We all just have faith.”
I told him thank you.
“Take care of yourself,” he said.
I pulled my knees into my chest and cried. Couldn’t he have told me a story, told me she was at peace with a God she believed in?
That first week after we arrived home in Cincinnati, Henry, Luke, and Lucy each received a note in the mail from my mom. She must have mailed them just before she died. Since we had moved, my mom had sent cards and stickers in the past few months, silly presents from the dollar store like satin and felt leprechaun hats and colored beads, stretchy rubber bunnies and plastic eggs, clutter that got caught in the vacuum cleaner, that I simultaneously loved and hated. She sometimes didn’t remember who she sent a card to, and sent doubles to one of the kids, and forgot another. Sometimes she mailed a card every day to each of them. The kids all loved getting mail, racing each other to the mailbox to see if there was a card with Grandma written in block-style writing in the left corner of envelopes and boxes, and checking to see which stamp she had used. Theo checked the mailbox for a week, looking for a card from my mom that never arrived.
My mom’s husband died from a stroke three months later.
Chapter 3
A Cruel Summer
The summer after my mom died seemed the most difficult. May of 2012 was a shuffle of kids’ activities and John keeping things afloat at home, which meant I was, at best, going through the motions of life, of being a mom, of making dinner and doing laundry, of signing paperwork for four children’s lives at school, of showing up at baseball games and lacrosse practice, and going to work full-time as an editor—but John was making all of the decisions. He scheduled the playdates and told me which game was at which time and where. Since our first was born, I had been the one who kept the calendar updated, the one who knew which child needs to see the dentist and which one needs an eye appointment, who needs their annual checkup and who needs a follow-up at the dermatologist. I was the one who remembered that after Tuesday night’s baseball game we need to wash the baseball pants for the second game of the week on Thursday because it’s another home game and that means only the gray pants will work. What I couldn’t juggle in my head, I had in a spreadsheet for the after-school car pool pickup and for ballet, baseball, and soccer games.
Now this fell to John. I could do something if it was scheduled, written on a calendar, and then transferred to a daily list. But somehow it felt impossible at the time to make the decisions and make the list. I would GPS my way to baseball games with addresses in suburbs I had never heard of, barely knowing the street names, but turning left or right when the voice coming from the car speakers told me to. I watched from a corner of the bleachers where I didn’t have to talk with the other moms or anyone, so I didn’t have to force myself to smile or act as if everything was OK, didn’t have to see the grandparents who came to games, wishing my mom were there yet again. Now I’m aware of what grief can do to people, how isolating it can be, and I hope I know how to help others, or at least understand and respect their pain. Back then, if you took the GPS away from me, I couldn’t tell you where I was, much less feel my way home.
Even when I smiled or laughed, I felt so empty.
Life goes on after tragedy or grief, we know this, and being a parent reminds you of this. People talk about how cruel it seems that the world continues, the sun rises, stores open, people walk about unaware of what has happened in your life, and yet, we go on. There isn’t the possibility of pulling the covers up and staying in bed when lunches need to be packed, rain boots need to be tracked down, children need to be walked to school, work needs to be done. There isn’t the option of just staying home or taking time off when you have a job, especially a new one. So I just moved through it, with the momentum of life and its rush carrying me along. And now I think perhaps I was lucky to have all these things to do.
I don’t remember a lot about that summer. I felt so low, and when you imagine how low that was, think lower and that is where I was. It was the sub-basement of feelings. I can remember the feeling of it, rather than the actual details, the feeling of being in a tiny boat with water coming through holes that weren’t even apparent, and the constant feeling of trying to stay afloat. There was no shoreline to see, no thought of even looking for one. There was just the idea that every day felt as if it was a struggle to not drown, and often the feeling that I didn’t even want to try. Now I look back at that time, to look for clues of what I missed, and I find a box of sympathy cards with images of beaches and rainbows, doves and lilies, that friends mailed to me, notes I scribbled to myself in a journal, sometimes of inspirational quotes or sayings (“This, too, shall pass”) and other times just moods (“Rotten. Overwhelmed. Sad.”) and a Mom’s Day letter from Luke in which he wrote how much he liked that I came to all his baseball games and made him dinner every night. (I made dinner!) I read through notes and letters filled with complete love and kindness, grace and comfort, and feel overwhelmingly grateful. But most of it doesn’t feel familiar to me; it’s as if I’m looking at mementos from a life lived by someone else. There are photos—a Blue Jays game on a trip to Toronto, a lacrosse tournament in Columbus, lunch in the park with John, a roller-skating party with Lucy—but I don’t remember being there. The body protects itself somehow, using all its energy simply to live, not to participate or, at times, remember.
