As I continued crying, she went around the store, her hand on her heart, listening empathically, shaking her head, gasping, stopping to ask, “How many dogs do you have, sweetie?”
“Two,” I cried.
“How big are they?”
“A big one, like a husky. Sixtyish pounds. And a small, neurotic one. Twenty-five pounds.”
The woman went shelf to shelf, read labels, and gathered potions and ointments.
By the time I finished—“. . . and he won’t be coming home because he’s been on life support, and we’re turning it all off on Friday”—she was at the register ringing up antianxiety oils and pills and treatments. She wiped tears from her face as she collected everything and put it in a bag.
“Please come back and tell me how they’re doing,” she said. She hugged me again. “I will pray for you and your husband.”
I took her prayers along with the doggy meds and left.
Sophie and I needed to pick out the clothes we would wear for the small memorial service at Hal and Rita’s. That meant getting dressed. Looking presentable. What does one wear to her husband’s memorial?
My friend Mimi had kindly arranged for Sophie and me to get our hair done. I don’t know how I was able to leave the house, let alone drive somewhere, but I did. When we got to the hair salon, they didn’t have our reservation. They were busy and asked if we could come back tomorrow. I started to lose it. “No, we can’t come back tomorrow, because today is my husband’s memorial. He died!” I screamed, apparently. “My husband died and my daughter and I need to get our hair done. Today!”
Sophie was mortified.
At the small family-only memorial, I sat in the backyard of my in-laws’ house, holding hands with my daughter as Rabbi Hannah eulogized Joel. It was the same spot on the deck where sixteen years earlier, Joel and I had said, “I do.”
I had been a reluctant bride all those years ago. It seemed everyone was divorced. My parents, Joel’s parents, Joel . . . I never fantasized about my wedding day. I loved Joel and wanted to build a life with him, and while I would have been happy to elope, he convinced me to have a small wedding.
“Come on, hun. I want the people we care about to see how much I love you. Marry me.”
How could I resist?
We said our “I dos” under the chuppah in Hal and Rita’s backyard with beautiful and expansive views of the valley. The sixty people who attended tell me it was one of the best weddings they have ever been to. It wasn’t lavish or over-the-top; it was intimate and full of love.
Our first dance as husband and wife was to the Lemonheads song “Into Your Arms.”
But before that, Joel cued up the James Taylor song “How Sweet It Is” to start playing right after we kissed and stepped on a wine glass and everyone yelled, “Mazel tov!” In a Jewish wedding, breaking the glass symbolizes the ancient destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. As Jews, we remember that, even during moments of extreme joy, we should be mindful of suffering.
We would have never guessed how prophetic this tradition was for us.
The view was the same, but the landscape had changed entirely. Sixteen years earlier, Joel and I looked out and envisioned our future together; now I couldn’t imagine a future without him.
Ellie, the arbiter of all things Jewish in my life, suggested that I hold shiva. My dad and Elisabeth encouraged me to do the same. Shiva is a Jewish ritual—a period of mourning where people come together to remember and celebrate the person who has just died. So many people had been reaching out, asking about a service or memorial, so shiva made sense to me. Ellie and my family of friends, along with Elisabeth, arranged everything, and shiva took place at our house a couple of days later.
I wore a dress that first day of shiva; I don’t recall wearing shoes. I sent an email, encouraging Sophie’s friends to attend. I tried to make a movie montage of Joel, something I had started for his fiftieth birthday a few months earlier but had never finished. I wanted to play it on a loop but our reliable computer crashed suddenly. I think Joel was telling me, Don’t worry about the movie, hun. You’ve got enough to do. So I let that go.
My house was full of people. People whom Joel and I loved. People who we didn’t see often enough. It was like a party. My funky yellow dining table was covered with food, along with every surface in my kitchen. There was music playing, thanks to Joel’s best friend, Greg, who took over what would typically have been Joel’s responsibility.
Ellie passed me with a platter of sandwiches. “You’ll have food for days!”
Mimi walked around with a trash bag, picking up after people. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re cleaning as we go.”
Elisabeth gave me a hug. “You just relax, Melissa.” And she moved on to put some flowers someone brought into a vase.
But I was relaxed, and I wasn’t worried. Sophie was running through the house with her friends. Some of her teachers were there. Her soccer coach from years ago, her preschool babysitter, family and friends I hadn’t seen in years.
But people seemed to steer clear of me. Not too many approached. I saw some of Joel’s friends from the softball team he played on when we first got together. I was excited to see them. It had been so long! But none of them looked at me. I finally went up to them.
“You guys!” Two of them had tears in their eyes but tried to smile. One of them hugged me. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “We’re all going to miss him.”
I realized that he was crying. I looked around. My house was packed. There were so many familiar faces! People from yoga, a family we knew from our neighborhood who we ran into on Joel’s birthday trip to Mexico, our neighbors. It made me so happy to see everyone.
But I kept looking for the one face that wasn’t there.
Joel’s.
And then I remembered. Joel wouldn’t be walking out of the kitchen with a plate full of food. He wasn’t going to be coming in from the backyard having just gone for a swim. He wouldn’t be walking through the front door with the dogs from a walk.
He would never be coming home.
I hate the word dead. It’s so cold and final. I rarely use it. Joel is gone, Joel died, but I won’t say he is dead. It’s too shocking, too painful.
But that is why people are filling up my house.
That is why people are looking at me with pity.
That is why people are scared of me.
My husband died.
It hit me hard. My heart was pounding. The room started to spin. I didn’t want to see these people anymore. I started to heave, trying to breathe, but again there wasn’t enough air in the room.
I went into my bedroom and closed the door. I got under the covers in all of my clothes, and the weight of the world came with me.
I miss you, hun.
Where are you?
When will I see you again?
I let myself cry, and after a while, I was able to steady my breath. I clung to Joel’s pillow and liked that it felt wet from my tears. It was proof that this was real. I needed proof because it was all too hard to believe.
My body relaxed. I thought of Joel, I tried to see him smiling and laughing, but all I could do was see him in the hospital. He was tired. So tired. He was suffering. I ended his suffering. Now mine was beginning.
Who will end mine?
I felt deflated and not just alone, but lonely. My house was full of people—people who would all be leaving. Going back to their own homes with their spouses. They’d share their disbelief that Joel had died.
He was young. He had more life to live. It’s so sad!
They’d express their concern for poor Melissa . . . and poor Sophie.
My house was full of love and sadness. I had never seen so many people under my roof.
None of them knew what I knew. That Joel was in bad shape long before he went to the hospital. They didn’t know how anxious Joel felt going to bed at night because waking up every day he was met with uncertainty over how he would be feeling. Would
he be able to get out of bed? Would he be able to concentrate at work? Would he be able to safely get Sophie to school? These are the thoughts that kept him awake at night.
“I won’t use it!” Joel said angrily when I told him I had applied for a disabled parking placard for him earlier that year.
“But you need it! There’s no shame in it.”
“I can still walk,” he said. “You act like I’m incapacitated.”
“Not at all! But if you have this disease, let’s take advantage of the perks. Closer parking, especially living in LA, is a perk!”
Joel didn’t want to give in. Not just to me and the argument that I was making, but to the MS. Early that summer, we had gone to a concert at the Greek Theatre. It’s a beautiful outdoor venue that feels uniquely Los Angeles. It is tucked away in the mountains in an “Old Hollywood” neighborhood. Parking was a pain in the ass because of traffic, plus it was ridiculously expensive. For years we would park about a mile away in the hilly neighborhood that surrounds the Greek and walk up the residential streets to get to the theater and back.
When we were leaving the concert that night, after hours of standing and sitting and moving, the walk back to the car was too much for Joel to manage. What normally took twenty minutes took over an hour. We had to stop frequently so Joel could rest. In what seemed like an everyday occurrence, Joel’s legs becoming more like stilts and nearly impossible to bend made the walk that much more difficult. By the time we were in the thick of the neighborhood, Joel sat on someone’s front lawn, completely spent.
“I hate this,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I kissed him. “Don’t worry. I need this. I didn’t exercise today!” I said. I then trotted up the street a few more blocks to where our car was parked. I tried to make light of the situation, but I knew it was killing him. Joel felt emasculated.
“What kind of husband am I if I can’t even walk my wife to our car?” he asked, getting into the car.
“The best kind,” I told him. I reached over and squeezed his hand. It offered him no reassurance. He felt completely defeated, but I felt strongly that if we could keep things “normal” and continue to do the things we loved, it might help Joel feel better. Even if it was something as mundane as convenient parking.
It didn’t occur to me as we drove home that night, my mind racing, worrying about my husband and his health, worrying about our life and our future together, that it would be a life without him in it.
“Sissy?”
I opened my eyes and pulled down the covers to find my sister.
“Are you OK?” Holly asked. “Shiva is still going on.”
But I wasn’t ready to talk. I wanted to stay in the cocoon of my bed. It was warm and comfortable. Joel was there with me. I felt him.
“I’m just going to stay here,” I told Holly. “Maybe forever.”
“You can do that,” she said. “But Sophie is looking for you.”
Sophie!
I jumped up just as she appeared in the doorway.
“Mom?” she said.
There was my girl. My beautiful girl with her thick brown hair and her daddy’s green eyes. They were full of tears. I lifted back the covers.
“Come.” Sophie ran into bed and got under the covers with me. Like me, she was fully dressed.
“It smells like Daddy,” she said as she settled in.
I wanted so badly to believe that, but it had been a month since Joel was in our bed.
“It does,” I said, stroking her hair. “Smells just like him.”
My sister left the room, and Sophie and I stayed like that for a long time. I gave her tickles. I stroked her hair. I kissed the top of her head as we both snuggled with Joel’s pillow and cried.
“I miss him,” she said.
“I know you do, sweetness,” I said. “Me, too.”
I could hear people in the house. I tried to imagine what Joel would think of all of this. We were known for throwing great parties. It’s a good one, I told him. You’d be so happy.
There’s an expression I heard once that goes something like, if you act as if then you will create the reality. So if you acted as if you were successful, you’d become successful. If you acted as if you had a social life, you’d have a social life. If you acted as if you could survive the loss of your person, you would.
When Joel was in the hospital and his death was looming, my as if was a phrase I would repeat often to myself. I now said it in a whisper to Sophie.
I held her under the covers, my mouth close to her ear.
“We’re going to be OK,” I said. “We’re going to be OK.”
TEN
Only Child, Only Parent
In the dark weeks that followed, there were beacons of light shining a path for Sophie and me to follow. Jillian and Ellie had set up a meal train to alleviate the burden of making dinner every night. Friends of mine from New York sent me restaurant gift cards. Another friend sent us gift certificates for manicures. Others offered to come over and do our laundry or walk the dogs. People were thinking of us, sending us their love, and we felt it.
One day a package came in the mail from a fellow writer friend. In it were two copies of Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief by Martha Whitmore Hickman. One for me, one for Sophie. Each page contained a meaningful quote, an anecdote, and a short meditation.
Every night before lights out, Sophie and I would read the day’s page out loud to each other. I would often cry. Some passages resonated, others not so much. We would follow the reading with a memory each of us had of Joel.
“He hated cilantro,” Sophie might say.
“Daddy loved taking you to school every morning,” I might say.
And so it went. Every night for almost a year. I was adamant about it, and if for some reason we went to sleep at different times or were too exhausted to stay up an extra five minutes, I made sure we would read the night we missed the following night, too. The ritual of it—reading, reflecting, sharing our memories of Joel—was crucial to my healing.
Otherwise, I kept acting as if things were normal, and it’s because of Sophie that I was able to pretend they were. She had a schedule; she had school commitments. She needed me to keep her on track, the same as it had always been. I was able to get her to school on time, to make her meals, to help with homework . . . I was able to focus on her, instead of how alone and scared I felt.
I seemed to cry every day, all day long and well into the night, but I feared Sophie wasn’t crying enough. Is she shutting down? I wanted her to have peers to talk to, but we didn’t know other kids who had lost a parent. Her teachers and the school counselor welcomed her back to school and were sensitive to her situation. So were her fellow classmates and friends. They were so sensitive, in fact, that none of them even mentioned what happened. It was confusing. She was afraid of what people might say, but they said nothing. Which in some ways was worse. She was in eighth grade. The brink of adolescence. In middle school the goal is to be just like everyone else. But Sophie was now “the girl whose dad died.”
“It’s so weird,” she told me over dinner one night. “Other than the twins who wanted to talk to me about their goldfish dying, no one ever mentions Daddy.”
“They just don’t know what to say,” I offered.
“But it’d be easier if they said something instead of just ignoring it.”
I had heard about a grief camp for kids who had lost a family member. Not necessarily a parent—it could be a sibling or a cousin or even a grandparent. It took place over one weekend in the summer, but applications were due in the spring. Sophie absolutely refused to go.
“I think it would be really good for you to meet other kids in a similar situation,” I said.
“Maybe if I had a friend to go with, but I don’t want to go alone.”
I often thought how things would be different if she did have a sibling. It was in these moments when I wished more than anything that she did. Someone to commiser
ate with and share in this tragedy with. Someone who was close in age, someone on her level, so she didn’t feel like the only thirteen-year-old in the world who this had happened to.
I made an appointment for us with Cheryl, a therapist I had started seeing earlier in the year when the MS was at its worst. If Sophie wasn’t going to go to a grief camp or a grief group, then I wanted her to have someone other than me to talk to.
As we sat on Cheryl’s couch together, I mentioned my concern that we were grieving so differently. I explained why I felt it was important for Sophie to have someone to share her feelings with. Cheryl listened to me while also keeping an eye on Sophie, who sat quietly, staring at her hands.
During a pause from my soliloquy, Cheryl looked at her and said, “You know, Sophie, I don’t usually talk about myself in here, but I want to share something with you.”
Sophie looked up at her, her expression unchanged.
Cheryl continued. “I lost my father when I was the same age as you.”
Sophie gasped and sat up in her seat a little taller. Even though some of her grandparents had suffered the loss of a parent in their childhoods, hearing it from this stranger, who had a nice office, and was a kind person, was reassuring. I saw a flash on Sophie’s face, a reckoning that perhaps this was something that she, too, might survive. Sophie quietly started to cry. I squeezed her hand.
Because Cheryl was my therapist, we agreed it would be better for Sophie to see Julie, a therapist in training who was still working on getting her certification hours. Julie was young and pretty, with long dark hair and big brown eyes, and she had a tattoo. Sophie liked her immediately. Cheryl was Julie’s supervisor, so I knew Sophie would be in good hands.
Jillian came over every Monday. “Melissa Mondays” she called them. She’d bring lunch and help me sort out medical bills and my finances. She called the repair man when my washing machine broke and offered to go with me to the social security office to make sure that Sophie and I received death benefits (an oxymoron if there ever was one).
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