Good-Bye, Good-Night, Then Mourning, Not Morning - Part Two

My stepmother was next.  I saw her die.  She had breast cancer and was “not doing well.”  I had to go.  I went to see her for what was to be my one last time.  She had hated me all along because I wasn’t the prom queen/junior league daughter she had hoped for.   I was an artist.  I had arrived against my will but dutifully.  I had hidden her bald head under her scarf and picked her up and set her in her wheelchair her family had gotten for her.  To everyone’s surprise, I knew how to take care of a cancer patient.  I had to remind them it wasn’t my first go-round.  But it was time for me to leave her.  The car was packed.  I was saying my last good-bye when she started choking.  I found something to stick in her mouth to keep her from swallowing her tongue.  I looked around and no one was doing anything.  I screamed for them to call the paramedics.  Finally, the sirens, the men rushed in, her family crying all around me.  Finally someone came to help me.  We all rushed to the hospital, one long convoy of family.  I was shoved into someone’s car, her sister I think.  In the waiting room they were in shock, they were sobbing, they were calling other family members.  “This is it.  You’d better come and say good-bye.”  And there it was again, that word that floats around the ones who have time for it.  The ones who die slowly, but suddenly.  Illness can take a long time but the death always seems faster than it should after so long.  I had to get away from the ones who were already beating their breasts and wailing.  But I took a wrong turn or something.  There were no doors.  It was a small place they’d rushed her to.  I walked past a room with an open door and there she was.  They were working on her.  Whatever doctors do, they were doing it.  Her head was turned and she was looking out the door, at me.  I think she could still see me.  No one saw me.  But did she?  I was not ten feet from her.  Then they used the paddles.  I was clear, but I could see.

I don’t know how doctors do it, or EMT’s, or police.  That jolt.  That sudden force of energy into someone’s body and then the wait.  Those God-awful seconds when they wait to see if they have a pulse.  I watched my stepmother’s eyes go blank.  If she saw me, then I feel sorry for her.  She hated me so and I was the last person she ever saw.  I still think about that, obviously.  Her funeral brought me no closure as to why I was so heinous when I never did anything uncaring or disrespectful.

When I lost my baby, I remember feeling quite cold and empty.  People talked to me but it wasn’t me they were talking to.  At least, it wasn’t me who talked to them because I said very little the first two weeks.   A parent isn’t supposed to outlive their child.  What if their child barely had a chance?  He lived.  He died.  I have no picture.  I do have a fuzzy white star that has an embroidered face.  Eyes closed, soft smile.  There is a key on the back that when I turn it, it plays “Twinkle twinkle little star.”  I can’t hear that song and not feel a knot in my stomach.  I wonder if my tiny son will know me if we ever get a chance to meet?

The suddenness of that death rocked me.  Was he afraid?  Did he know to be afraid?  Did he know my voice?  Will he know my voice?  It’s not a grief that is resolved.  It is one that lingers until it is part of the fabric of your being.  My baby died.

“You can have others.”

My mind was screaming, “Shut up.”

My husband died suddenly.  I was not in any way ready for it.  He had (has) a powerful life force.  He was unconquerable.  He was a United States Marine, Force Recon.  He wasn’t a wimp.  He was strong and funny and loving.  When he hugged me I felt safe and loved.  I adored this man in a way I never knew I could love a man.  He was flawed and imperfect and wonderful.  He gave me my smile, my joy, and my belief in loving for eternity.  He had muscles on top of muscles yet he made me think of poetry and flowers and silk sheets.  I know he didn’t want to go.  God had to orchestrate it as a covert op.  He fell asleep and he started dying.  Right now, I cannot describe it as I have the others.  I am distraught and terrified and so lonely.  My life is over.  Not over, over but over in a way that I will never retrieve.  It’s almost as if I don’t want to “get over it” because that might mean he meant less than he did that that is not the case.  He means everything to me.  My grief for him is of the same magnitude as when I lost my baby, yet it is so vastly different.  I lost what could have been in both of them.  I lost a child with the first, someone I wanted so desperately to get to know.  I lost my soulmate with the other, someone I so desperately wanted to stay with me until I died.  His death means I can no longer touch him, hear him, see him, sleep next to him, or feel cherished and loved in the way only he could do it.

I’m a widow now.  I’ve joined a club that has no list of membership, no special uniform to distinguish you, and no dues other than the ones you pay privately to yourself and to that pain in your heart.  It has no clubhouse other than the one you can go to in a utilitarian room that houses your widow’s group but also may host a bridge club, a fund-raiser committee meeting, and so on.  No can look at you and see that you’re a widow.  Widows don’t cut their hair anymore, well, I did but I think I’m in the minority.  They don’t wear black anymore although I find it’s all I want to wear.  We don’t recognize each other if we happen to pass on the street.

Oddly enough, a man recognized my husband, though they’d never met, as part of a select group.  We were on the train going into Boston, the parking is horrible, and we met a man.  He was sitting across from us and he looked at my husband and nodded.  He said one word to him, phrased as a question.  “Vietnam?”  My husband nodded then looked him over quickly, smiled and said, “Semper Fi.”  The man smiled and they clasped hands on each other’s wrists.  The man said, “Brother.”  And the moment passed.  They spoke no further.  It was a singularly mysterious moment, one Marine recognizing another, but I can’t detect another widow if one walks by and no widow has walked up to me to embrace me with that kind of camaraderie.  When I walked into the room for my first widow’s meeting, they all looked like normal women to me, smiling and talking.  I was the only stand out.  I was the only one crying, but I was new.

How do you say, “good morning” to someone who is mourning?  How do you know they are mourning if they don’t tell you?  How do you say “good-bye” when you know it’s the last time?  How do you say good-bye when you don’t know it will be?  Are the good-byes you know are the last ones more heartfelt than the good-night I shared with my husband on that last night of his life?  I don’t know.  I could spend the rest of my life trying to answer these questions and all I would still come up with is, I don’t know.  All I do know is that everyone lives through death, someone else’s death.  I know that it is intimate and can run a spectrum of relief, guilt, numbness, and from feeling nothing to feeling like you died with them.  I do know that nothing you feel or do or say or not say or not do is wrong.  It is your grief to live with, to call for help for, or to sit quietly alone with and really get to know yourself.  Introspection is a powerful tool and there is no better chance for introspection than what grief can bring you.  People may talk to you.  They may talk at you.  Ultimately, regardless of who died, how they died, and why, you will end up alone with your grief to face a world that may not know, or care, that you’re trying to face a life that’s changed overnight whether you were ready for it or not.

Good mourning or good morning.  It’s all the same to me right now and that’s normal.  I’ve been through it before.  As, most likely, you have.   Maybe someday we’ll meet, and surprisingly, we’ll see in each other that lack of a certain spark of joy.   We’ll nod and one of us will say one word posed as a question.  No, not “Vietnam.”  The one will ask, “Mourning?”   And the other will know how it’s spelled.