And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed (5 page)

I listened to the chattered whispers of phone calls. Everyone was calling someone. Grandparents. Family in Ohio. Family in Texas. College roommates. Employers. Coworkers. Neighbors. People who would call other people who would call other people who would call other people. Everyone repeated themselves, again and again, because no listener could believe the news the first time. Phone calls happened
around me, but I talked to nobody. Except my brother. I held the phone with both hands, frantic to grab on to him. I listened to him cry with me. I whispered, “Please … please, get here.”

My home filled with people and food, food and people. Deli sandwiches on round platters, pasta dishes, salads, and a deluge of lasagnas. (There may still be a lasagna or two in my freezer.) When all else fails, bring food. It’s what we do. And from this side of the bridge of healing, I can tell you: there is medicinal value in a pantry, fridge, and freezer stocked with casseroles, beverages, and desserts.

I found it oddly beautiful how so many people flocked from every circle of my life; here they sat together, talking or not talking, as comfortable as friends. I wondered if death does that—turns strangers into friends. Operating on autopilot, I assumed I should act like a hostess. I greeted people at the door, “Thank you for coming. I’m so sorry you lost your friend.” I gave others my condolences when it was
my husband
who had died. Friends looked incredulous, wondering how I could begin to acknowledge their loss, which paled in comparison to mine. I couldn’t verbalize the truth: it was easier to think about what they had lost—in a friend, a buddy, a coworker—than it was to come anywhere near the raging magnitude of what I had lost in my husband, my life’s companion, the father of my children. If I stepped too close to that cliff, I might fall completely off the edge. In an effort to protect myself, I tried to look like the gracious hostess who could only focus on others, when I was really too terrified to look in the mirror.

Robb had always conveniently kicked off his sandals at the bottom of the stairs after those brief trips to the mailbox or to let out the dog. When my mom had arrived just a breath before the paramedics,
she saw them lying at the bottom of the stairs as usual. She cleared other things away, but not those, assuming he would come down the stairs soon and need them on his way to the hospital. As my home filled with people that day, everyone stepped around them. Nobody was going to move them; that would be a rupture of the life before, and nobody would do that on my behalf. Finally, silently, my mom picked them up, set them aside. They were artifacts in her hands, a cold realization that he would never wear them again.

I spent much of the day in my stairwell, a cocoon from where I could see the activity but remain carefully distant. Dazed and disengaged, I practiced words silently in my mind.
I am a widow. My husband has died. My husband died this morning. I am thirty-one, and I am a widow.
I went upstairs. I stood at the foot of my bed, my hands on the bed rail. The bed was trashed, pillows strewn, sheets wrecked. My sacred space, my marriage bed, invaded by strangers and needles and procedures and death. I called out in a daze, “Mom, could you fix this? Please, just fix this.” I was asking her to make my bed and put the pillows where they belonged, to make the scene a little less terrifying, but my heart was asking, too, for something far greater, far less possible: Please fix everything that has happened. Please find the pieces of my broken life.

There is a team of people who come to the aid of the victims when there is a sudden, unexpected death. First of all, there are the police, firemen, and paramedics, and, second, there is the coroner. These are the officials who step in to handle the crisis, care for the patient, make
the horrific pronouncement, and deal with the countless immediate details. But all these people leave the scene as soon as the official details are complete, and then there are others who arrive to bridge the gap between the emergency and safety.

Enter the victim’s advocate. And her cardigan.

Such a companion is a good idea, especially for people who have nobody else. If there had been no family or friends at my house that morning, I would have felt even more tragically lonely to be in an empty house mere hours after such an atrocity. But my home had quickly filled with family and close friends, and the number only grew as the day stretched on. So I didn’t really need this woman, who didn’t know me at all, to come to my assistance. Especially because she was alarmingly similar to a
Saturday Night Live
character.

In the face of tragedy, there is almost always comic relief. There has to be. The crushing grief would swallow one completely if there weren’t something absurd to break the tension. There simply has to be.

She kept hovering over me. Perhaps her intent was to be at the ready, always available should I have a question, raise a concern, need a tissue. But instead of standing nearby, she hovered above my right shoulder. All morning long I kept catching her in my peripheral vision, and I jumped every time. This hovering, silent cardigan woman. Always there. Hovering. (I promise this story is true, neither exaggerated nor hallucinated.) When nobody was near me, when people were making one of the many phone calls or trying to piece together details, she filled the silence by talking to me. About strange things.

Suddenly her hovering presence leaned in close, and she said in
this eerie, quiet voice, “You know, you could have his thumbprint if you want it.”

I looked at her awkwardly over my right shoulder. Not sure what to do with this.

She continued. “My brother-in-law died last year. His wife wears his thumbprint on a necklace around her neck. You could do that.”

What? Thumbprint? Of all the things in and out of my mind right now, this is what she adds? I was so confused that I thought she was telling me to make a decision. I was suddenly thinking about ink pads, wondering if I had one in the house, and how in the world this was my job.

“Well, do I need to get it now?” I asked.

“Oh, no. It’s something to keep in mind. Technology can really work to your benefit. They can do amazing things now.”

Amazing things. Technology. Noted. Got it. Please stop talking, Weird Cardigan Lady.

In another moment she said, leaning in again in her awkward hover, “Do you have pets?”

Pets. Yes. Pets. A pet. We do. I do. He did. I do. “Um, yes. A dog. Molly.”

“Pets grieve too, you know.”

I looked at her blankly. Our neighbors had whisked Molly out of the house that morning, and I truly hadn’t given her a second thought. But apparently Weird Cardigan Lady felt that should be at the top of my list.

“Pets. Okay.”

She continued. “When my brother-in-law died, his cat crawled in between the sheets of his bed and died the next day.”

Did you seriously just say that to me? Did you honestly lean in close and whisper that into my ear? Something about a dead cat between the sheets?

How on earth do I respond to this?

Instead, I said, “Um, I need to get out of this conversation.” I did. I said that. Generally, I think one could say that I’m a girl with greater tact and timing and more clever exit strategies than that. But, honestly, my mind was as broken as my heart, and that was the best I could give her. I need to walk away from you.

At one point when my dad entered the kitchen, Weird Cardigan Lady said, “Hey! Go Broncos! They’ve had quite a season, haven’t they?”

My dad looked at her blankly.

I said, “Your sweatshirt, Dad. She’s talking about your sweatshirt.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t have a response either. Nor should he have had. My precious dad threw on the closest thing to the bed when my frantic phone call arrived, and it happened to be jeans, a baseball cap, and a Denver Broncos sweatshirt. It was a matter of urgent necessity; it really wasn’t a statement of his team loyalty.

My parents tried to dismiss her. Repeatedly.

“We’re okay. We really are. We are believers, and we know that Robb is in heaven. That really is the framework for how we’ll deal with this, how we’ll help her. We don’t know how we’ll get through the next few days, but we do know where he is for eternity. So we are okay. We will be okay.”

Cardigan Lady nodded. “Oh, good. That helps me.”
Well, for crying out loud. I’m so glad. We would certainly want to help you.
She finally left. I don’t remember how or when—if someone escorted her out or if she finally realized she wasn’t necessary. But she finally was gone.

I realized,
If anyone is going to acknowledge how weird that was, it has to be me. Nobody is going to break this emotional tension until I do. And I can. In this moment I can.

I said in an intentionally loud voice, “I would like for all of you to know this: I like every single one of you a whole lot more than that victim’s advocate. And her weird cardigan.”

And the room spilled with laughter. In the midst we laughed.

God bless that woman and her cardigan. She gave me something to laugh about.

On Christmas Eve other families were wrapping gifts and scrambling with the hustle and bustle of the last-minute details of family recipes and stocking stuffers. Not this family. We sat around my dining room table with the funeral director and my pastor, with too many details to discuss: calling hours, funeral plans, cremation or casket, details, details, details. Details one shouldn’t discuss on Christmas Eve. Details one shouldn’t discuss at age thirty-one. I needed to read and sign so
many things. My heart and mind were blank. Empty. Yet decisions awaited, decisions only the widow could make.

In a decided tone, not to be argued, I said, “He will be cremated.”

Everyone looked at me, astounded by my confidence in the decision.

“He told me.”

I spoke as assuredly as if Robb had stepped away from a table and asked me to order on his behalf when the waitress arrived. I knew what he wanted. “He has told me a dozen times in the last ten years. He said, ‘Tricia, when I die, don’t waste any money on the casket or the grave site. Just have me cremated, and scatter my ashes over my Rocky Mountains.’ That’s what he wanted. That’s what I want to do.” Hence, the decision was made.

I would later discover that when one’s lover is cremated, when dust returns to dust, there isn’t a place to visit him ever again.

The funeral director placed before me a pricing list. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the uneasy presence of the funeral industry. It is indeed an industry, and everything has a price. Thankfully, everyone approached me with class and respect, but these were no less services rendered.

At the top of the page, just in case our timing were different and we were here to plan ahead, there was the option to “lock in today’s pricing.” Except there was no apostrophe in
todays.
My eyes went straight to the typo. That possessive noun needed an apostrophe. With my pen in hand, I corrected his pricing sheet. An instinctive edit on my part. Even in my grief, I know grammar. My brother looked at the gracious funeral director. “I’m sorry, sir. My sister’s a writer and editor. She can’t help it.”

Turns out, on a shaky and uncertain day, there is humor and comfort in the rules of punctuation. I always suspected that could be true.

Though not a snowflake arrived on Christmas, the day of my husband’s funeral coincided with winter’s first snowfall. Thick snowflakes fell in silence, covering the city with inches of white. How fitting. He loved a good, thick snowfall nearly as much as he loved Christmas. How fitting as well that Robb’s memorial service would be decorated with poinsettias, Christmas trees, and a canopy of white lights.

As bridesmaids tend to the bride on her wedding day, my girlfriends assisted me as I prepared for my last date with my husband.

On my birthday six months before, he had taken me shopping at Ann Taylor, instructed me not to look at price tags, and kept our little boys entertained while I tried on every dress that caught my eye. I had chosen a simple black one; it had a thin, shiny belt wrapped around the smallest part of my waist, a scooped cowl neck, and a hemline just above my knee. He loved it, two thumbs up.

On this, my last night with him, I chose the black dress and a simple strand of pearls, also a gift from him. In my bridal room ten years before, there had been a feverish excitement over the joy of the day. In my bedroom on that snowy night, my girlfriends whispered basic instructions to me, dressing me from head to toe. I silently obeyed in catatonic, numbing grief.

With one last look in the mirror, I remembered the missing piece. “Please be where I think you are. Please be where I think you are,” I spoke aloud as I searched through my top dresser drawer. I found it:
the handkerchief I carried on our wedding day. A friend had embroidered my monogram and our wedding date onto one corner of the lacy linen. She had said at my bridal shower, “This is in case you cry on your wedding day, and perhaps you’ll have a few other occasions in your life when you’ll want to carry it again.”

I tucked it into my hand, standing tall, and taking a confident breath. With a bold, supernatural confidence, I said, “Let’s do this thing.”

Despite the weather warnings to stay inside and off the roads on this blustery night, every seat was filled in the church sanctuary. Guests joined us from every walk of life, from every corner of the country. Memories scrolled through my mind as I spoke with them, as if all the guests wore placards on their chests. I would later learn that two paramedics slipped into the back row, arriving just before the service began and leaving before it ended. We sang many of Robb’s favorite songs, told stories of who he was and how he loved, served, and laughed. My brother escorted me to the stage, and I greeted the crowd. At my husband’s funeral, I spoke with a full heart, a full voice, and words that were infused with supernatural confidence. I would later listen to the recording and wonder who that woman was, unable to recognize my own strength.