by Patti Berg
Ginger sighed, pinched off a bit of her muffin and looked at Elena, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to talk your ears off.”
“Don’t stop.” Elena took the young woman’s hand. “What were you about to say?”
“It was nothing. Really.”
“I know you’ve just met us,” Judy said, leaning forward, clasping her coffee cup in both hands. “But we’re good listeners, and we’re here to support each other as much as we’re here for Bible study.”
“Well”—Ginger placed a hand gently on her belly—“this isn’t my first pregnancy, or my second or third.” Her voice quivered as she held back her tears. “I hope you’ll pray for me and Steve and for our baby, because”—she dragged in a deep breath—“because I’ve had three miscarriages. This child’s lived the longest and I love her already and…and I can’t bear the thought of losing another child.”
Several women tried to sniff back their tears.
“I hope you don’t think I came here just so you’d pray for me,” Ginger said. “Steve’s a fireman and he’s away from home a lot, and I’ve been awfully lonely not knowing very many people in town and—”
“Even if you had come just so we’d pray for you, that would have been okay.” Elena squeezed Ginger’s hand. “We’ll pray for you every day, whether you decide to come back or not.”
“But we want you to come back.” Judy smiled. “And not just because your muffins are heavenly.”
Through her tears, Ginger managed a smile. “I make wonderful brownies too.”
“Just bring yourself next week. You need to start resting a bit and, besides, it’s Helen’s week to bring cookies,” Judy said, and then she bowed her head.
“Heavenly Father,” Judy prayed, “Ginger and her dearest husband Steve have entrusted to Your care a life conceived in love. May Your blessing come upon them now—all three of them—and be with them always. We ask that You remove all anxiety from their minds and strengthen this love so that they may have peace in their hearts and home. And we ask, dear Lord, for You to smile upon the baby Ginger is carrying, and bring the child into her arms, healthy and full of love. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
“Thank you ever so much,” Ginger said, looking about the room at a host of women who would be her friends through good times and bad, the way they had been for Elena. “That means so much to Steve and me…and our baby.”
And suddenly it dawned on Elena. “Do you have any family here besides Steve?” If not, someone would have to plan a baby shower. She’d do it herself, but…but she needed to cut things from her to-do list, not add to it.
“We left everyone behind in Kansas, I’m afraid. None of our family wanted to follow us to Orlando, which is probably a good thing because I’m sure they would have hated the snakes and gators and insects just as much as me.”
Ginger took a bite of muffin, her free hand resting on her belly. “Poor Steve, he wanted so much to stay in Florida, but he wanted me to be happy even more, and after the third—”
She wiped a tear from her cheek and forced a smile. “He wanted me to be happy so he began applying for other fire department jobs and, lo and behold, we wound up here in Deerford, which doesn’t—thank the good Lord—have swamps. And I suppose that’s the long version of what should have been a short answer. No, Elena, we have no family.”
“Well you do now. All of us.”
Ginger smiled again, and as pregnant women were prone to do, she once more began to cry. Seven women sprang from their seats to offer her a tissue, then settled down again with the most delicious muffins they’d ever tasted and opened their Bibles.
Chapter Fourteen
THE WIND BLEW A SMATTERING OF GOLD AND burgundy leaves down on Candace’s car as she parked her black Honda CRV at the curb in front of Lila Adams’ home. Would she and the others in the grief counseling group feel more at ease meeting here? Candace wondered. Would they open up and talk instead of staring at their hands, too afraid to share their feelings?
Candace leaned back in her seat, not yet ready to get out of her car, and watched two tabby cats batting at leaves on the Victorian’s front porch, a picture-perfect place straight from a Thomas Kinkade painting, sitting far back from the wide, tree-lined street, surrounded by extensive lawns, lush landscaping and other beautiful homes built in the late nineteenth century.
She and Dean had driven up and down this street time and time again when they’d first gotten married. They’d dreamed of living in this part of town, even in a fabulous Queen Anne–style house, although she might have painted their home a semidark seafoam green with all the gingerbread and trim painted a creamy white, rather than the pale salmon, wine, black and white of Lila’s.
In the summer, she and Dean would have sat out on the porch, drinking lemonade or iced tea; and from Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day, the house would have been aglow with twinkling lights and a giant star mounted on top of the roof to show all their friends the way to their home. Candace sighed. She and Dean would never live in a home like this, not now. What little money they’d saved for a down payment on a bigger and more beautiful home had been spent instead on a funeral and was now paying for grief counseling, which seemed senseless.
She didn’t want to forget Dean.
She reached across the car, wanting to slip her hand into his and feel the calluses worn into his skin from doing remodeling work on the only home they’d been able to afford, but his hand wasn’t there. Only thin air. No comfort. No smile.
Candace wrapped her arms over her stomach, willing away the desolation, wishing for sweetness to fill her again. Tears slipped down her cheeks, the lump in her throat swelled and every muscle in her body tightened with grief. She allowed herself to sit in the empty car, crying until she had no more tears. Until her chest hurt.
Until she realized that there was no one in that car who could give her comfort—no one but herself. But there was a grief counseling group inside.
“You can share with them, Candace,” Lila had said. “They, too, are dealing with the loss of a loved one. They’ll understand what you’re going through.”
The car’s engine was still running and for one moment she thought about putting the car in drive and leaving. She could go shopping for an hour, long enough to make her mom think she’d gone to her counseling session, and arrive home just in time to watch Charlie Brown, to eat heavily buttered popcorn, made the way her mom and the kids—and Dean—liked it.
Oh, bother! Just go inside and get it over with.
Candace turned off the engine, threw open the car door, climbed out and marched up the cobbled walk and around the house to the back door, remembering the instructions Lila’s receptionist had given her on how to find the meeting place.
The gentle atmosphere and light strains of Chopin wrapped around her the moment she stepped into the reception room at the back of Lila’s home. After hanging her coat on a Bentwood rack next to a large potted palm, Candace opened the door marked Group Session Inside and, swallowing back some of her fear, walked across the hardwood floor to sit with the small group of women she’d met a week before. No one said a word. One crocheted. One read. One stared at her hands.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come after all, Candace thought, but she’d made it this far.
She sat in one of the mismatched chairs, hers decades old but comfy, gathered around an Aubusson carpet, decorated in a mass of mauve, sage and cinnamon swirls, with open-winged doves at each corner.
It must have cost a mint. If Candace had been wealthy, she might have bought one just like it.
As she waited for Lila to show up, Candace studied the room, afraid to look straight in the eyes of the women around her. Everything was warm and comforting, so different from the clinical atmosphere of Lila’s office. Framed prints hung everywhere, mostly pre-Raphaelites like Rossetti and Hunt—romantic, heroic and beautiful. She could get lost in the paintings, if the group was as quiet as it had been last week.
At seven on the dot, according to the tall and ornate grandfather clock sitting in one corner of the room, Lila walked in, carrying a plate of cookies—snickerdoodles, it looked like—which she set on the coffee table just a few feet in front of Candace. It was a stunning table, at least four feet square, made from a stained-glass window mounted atop a sleeping stone lion. Was this one of the pieces Lila had told Candace about during one of their sessions, made from bits and pieces she’d found at salvage yards?
Lila had so many talents, among them taking lost and forlorn items and making them useful again, giving them new life.
Could she do the same thing with the people gathered together tonight?
Lila sat directly across from Candace, a picture of perfection in flat black ballet shoes, skinny charcoal pants and what looked like a terribly expensive cashmere sweater in the same color. Her hair was a luscious brown, in a pixie cut. Oh what Candace would give to have a face structured like Lila’s so she, too, could wear her hair in a non-fussy style. Totally wash and wear, so she could spend more time with the children in the morning, talking with them a bit, making a big breakfast before rushing off to work.
Someday. Maybe.
“Grief can’t be measured,” Lila started. “It knows no bounds and it can hit anyone, at any time. We’re not here to ‘get over’ anything. We’re here to make peace in our hearts and rediscover the little joys in life.” Lila took a cookie from the plate and leaned back in her chair, calm and cozy, like a storyteller. “We’re here to support each other. You don’t have to climb into a shell. You don’t have to be alone.”
For the longest time, everyone was silent. Then Olive sighed heavily. “I don’t know if I can open up,” she said. “I don’t know if I want to come out of my shell, to talk about Clarence dying. I don’t want to talk about colon cancer or how much pain he was in or…”
“Then let’s start somewhere else,” Lila said. “You’ll probably shed a lot of tears, but our hope is that there will eventually be laughter as we share the sweet memories, cherishing them instead of feeling saddened by them. That may seem like a tall order right now, but we’ll get there.”
Lila smiled gently. “Tell us about yourself, Olive. What do you do—or what did you do—for a living?”
Olive unclasped her hands and attempted to smooth out some of the wrinkles in her long denim jumper. “For over forty years now I’ve been making pottery vases and coffee mugs and bird feeders—with my own unique touches—and selling them at Renaissance fairs and harvest festivals.”
“Sounds like a wonderful life,” Lila said.
“Rather nomadic.” Olive smiled, the age and laugh lines in her face deepening. “At first Clarence and I traveled the country in a Volkswagen van and when we finally had a little money saved up we bought a battered and beaten 1980 motorhome. We—” Olive stared down at her hands. “I,” she corrected, “still have the motorhome; I still travel from city to city, but it’s not the same with Clarence gone. Nothing’s the same.”
Silence again, a silence Candace knew all too well.
Lila didn’t intrude on Olive’s thoughts. Didn’t ask questions. She just waited, her years of working as a counselor, as a police negotiator before that, having taught her when to speak and when to wait.
“I’m no good without Clarence,” Olive said at last. She looked from one woman to another, swallowing hard, her eyes begging them to understand. “I don’t know one day from the next anymore. I don’t know the time, don’t know where I’m supposed to be when, and…” Olive began to cry.
Red-haired Jazz sighed. She looked like a 1940s librarian, a homelier version of Shirley Jones in The Music Man. “I lost my mother five months ago.” Jazz fidgeted with the paperback in her lap. “I miss having someone to care for.”
Verla Parker piped up. “I cared for my Carl for fifty-five blessed years and had hoped for a good ten or fifteen more.” Her jaw then set in anger. “Until that drunk driver swerved into us.” Verla had to be close to eighty, with beautiful white hair that waved about an aged face that might have seen good times but now showed only tragedy. Tight fists clenched the cane she held across her lap. She swiped at a tear. “He wasn’t supposed to die, not before me. I begged him not to die before I heard the sirens, but I don’t think he heard me. He just held my hand.”
Verla let go of the death grip she had on her cane and twisted her plain golden wedding band. “And then he was gone.”
The back door slammed and a beautiful woman Candace had never seen before rushed into the room. Was she a patient of Lila’s?
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, breathing hard, her face red from the wind. Or had she been crying?
The woman dropped an obviously expensive handbag on the floor beside the wing-backed chair she sat in. She wore jeans, furry boots and a thick turtleneck sweater that would have made fairly slim Candace look like a blimp. The stranger, however, looked like she weighed little more than a breath of air.
“I’m so glad you could make it, Megan,” Lila said, then introduced Megan Gallagher to the rest of the group.
“My son called and then I couldn’t find my car keys which is crazy, because I’m always organized, and then…” She took a long, deep breath, then broke down in tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, rising from her chair, “I don’t want to be here.”
Candace clasped Megan’s hand. “Please. Don’t leave. You don’t have to talk. It’s okay to cry.”
Megan’s tear-filled eyes looked down at Candace. She glared at Lila. “I’ve got to go.”
Megan grabbed her bag and took off just as quickly as she’d come in, both doors slamming behind her.
“Aren’t you going after her?” Candace asked Lila, her heart beating heavily, understanding exactly what Megan was going through.
Lila shook her head. “She’ll come back. Probably not tonight, maybe not next week, but she’ll come back. We all have to deal with grief in our own way, in our own time. Megan’s just not ready yet.”
Lila picked up another cookie and continued on like they hadn’t been interrupted.
“There is a wonderful eulogy engraved on a headstone in Ireland. It’s nearly hidden by deep grass and a rambling rose has wound its thorny vine and pink buds all about the time-marred piece of granite. Yet”—she smiled at each woman—“you can still read the eulogy: ‘Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.’”
Lila took a bite of her cookie, giving everyone time to absorb the words on the headstone.
“Some of our memories are small, almost infinitesimal,” she continued at last, “memories that crop up when you least expect them to, like…favorite foods. Such a simple thing can trigger emotions—”
“My mother liked liver and onions,” Jazz stated. “No, she didn’t just like liver and onions, she loved it.”
“My grandmother fed Dean liver and onions the first time they met and somehow he gagged it down, pretending to enjoy each mouthful.” Candace laughed. “They bonded over that abominable meal.”
Lila was right. Something as simple as food could conjure up a host of warm memories. It could even bond a bunch of strangers.
“The thing is,” Jazz continued, “I hate liver and onions, but I cooked it for my mother every Wednesday—and now I cook it for me. I don’t know if I do it out of habit or because it makes me feel my mom is still alive, still sitting at the kitchen table.” Jazz sighed heavily. “Maybe I should stop making the liver and onions.”
Lila passed a box of tissues to Jazz. The redhead took one and dabbed at the tears streaming down her face.
“Your feelings aren’t silly,” Lila said, “and don’t let anyone tell you they are. More importantly, don’t tell yourself how to feel. You’re grieving for the loss of that closeness you felt with your mom. You’re missing the time you spent together in the kitchen.”
“But it’s been five months.”
“Experiencing grief and the mourning time that follo
ws involves many changes. There’s no on and off switch for grief. Adapting takes as long as it needs to take.”
Lila picked up the plate of cookies and walked from one woman to the other, helping them help themselves.
“It’s important,” Lila continued, “to accept the fact that we do not get over a loss, but that we learn to live with the loss. It’s one of the journeys in life that we all have to take.” Lila sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. “Your grief is your own. It’s okay to be angry, to cry or not to cry. It’s also okay to laugh, to find moments of joy and to let go when you’re ready.”
Candace held on to Lila’s last sentence all the way home. She felt better than she had in months, as if she’d finally been given permission to laugh and cry without feeling guilty.
She hugged and kissed Brooke and Howie when she breezed into the house, laughed and cried with them and her mom while watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and drank in wonderful memories, little ones and big ones, to hold on to forever. Someday, twenty or thirty years from now, something small, like a piece of heavily buttered popcorn or a photo of Snoopy or Charlie Brown might trigger a memory of this night and the special time they’d shared.
Later, when all the lights were turned out and she’d tucked Howie and Brooke under warm down comforters, Candace went into the room she’d shared with Dean and sat on the edge of the bed.
Gone was the sound of Dean’s footsteps coming up the stairs. She could no longer imagine him sitting down on his side of the bed or the sound of his breathing during the night. Some of the most intimate things that she’d promised herself she’d never forget didn’t come to her anymore. Not during the day while she was at work. Not at night when she was all alone.
Outside a gentle breeze blew, whooshing easily through the near naked branches of the trees. Last fall she’d heard Dean’s voice in a similar breeze; now she only heard the wind.
He was slipping away.
And she knew she had to let him go.