When I mentioned it to my sister, she said, “I love him, too! I meant to tell you, I started watching him every Sunday morning. I love Joel!”
We laughed about this. It validated how strange and random this new discovery was.
Not much else held my interest. There’s a phenomenon known as “widow brain” or “widow fog.” Anyone who’s suffered a traumatic loss is likely familiar with this. It’s caused by grief. It leaves you feeling dull, confused, and forgetful.
I’d get home from taking the dogs on a walk. I’d still be holding their leashes but had already unlatched the dogs. Or was I holding their leashes because I wanted to leave for a walk with them? I couldn’t remember if I was coming or going.
Or I would send Sophie a text asking her what she wanted for dinner. But by the time I got to the market, I would forget. I’d stare at her response on my phone for five minutes in the produce section, chicken. But I didn’t know what chicken meant.
I was always distracted. I moved slower than usual. I wasn’t processing.
I could no longer read, even though I was an avid reader and always had a stack of books on my nightstand. My book club, which I had started and led, fell apart. A passage from our grief healing book was just about all I could manage. That and the inspirational bite-size nuggets I received via email from the Other Joel every morning. Even the TV shows that I used to watch with Joel became difficult to bear. They reminded me of him and made me too sad to watch in his absence. Plus, he wasn’t there to explain the obvious: Wait, Don Draper wants to leave Sterling Cooper? or OK, remind me why Jon Snow was sent to the wall.
I blame my widow fog for my increased enthusiasm over The Real Housewives, too. I was already a fan of the New York and New Jersey casts, but suddenly the ladies from Beverly Hills piqued my interest. And then Atlanta. It was such mindless entertainment, like, truly mindless, that I could actually take it in. If I missed a feud or a confrontation or some dialogue between the women, it really made no difference. All of this “unscripted” drama was a salve to my real-life drama, which wasn’t actually that dramatic. It was just that my husband had died. That’s all.
I took comfort where I could find it. I found it with Joel Osteen. And also, Iyanla Vanzant. Oh, how I loved Iyanla! This was before she had her own TV show, fixing the lives of fractured families. The Iyanla whom I loved spoke “universe” and spirit. I first saw her on the Oprah Winfrey Show, of course way back in the early days, and I loved her then. But I rediscovered her when Joel died. I was in my neighborhood bookstore, searching, searching, searching for something that could help me with my grief. I had my journals, which I wrote in consistently, but I needed to hear someone else’s voice, someone else’s perspective, someone who had walked a similar path.
There were a few books on “young” widowhood with cheeky titles, but they did nothing for me. I couldn’t relate. I was selfish in my grief, maybe even a little self-centered. No one experienced my grief because they weren’t married to Joel. They didn’t know what it felt like to have the man you love make you coffee every morning when he wasn’t even a coffee drinker. They didn’t know what it felt like to be married to a person who not only made you laugh out loud every day but also left Post-it notes with sketches around the house that declared his love for you, calling you beautiful, with drawings and doodles of connected hearts, just because. They didn’t know what it felt like to feel love on that level, every single day.
Something on the bookstore shelf caught my eye. Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant. Strangely, I found it in the cooking section.
I was still tortured by cooking every meal, and I wanted to find a user-friendly cookbook. It was challenging cooking for two. It was there that Iyanla’s book found me. It must have been accidentally placed there, and I took it as a sign.
I sat down in the middle of the aisle to read the prologue. I learned that Iyanla’s daughter had died. I tucked that book under my arm and found another of hers, Yesterday, I Cried, in its rightful place in the self-help section. I bought them both.
Iyanla wrote about lessons learned from hardships, about the abundance of opportunities to heal our broken hearts, and that wisdom can be found in our buckets full of tears.
Her writing was different. It was personal. I felt connected to it. I could read a paragraph a day, and the words were so resonant that that was enough for me. I added Iyanla to my healing arsenal that now included Joel Osteen and The Real Housewives.
I didn’t know that I was “healing,” but I knew that I was broken. Knowing that God, love, the universe, or spirit had me, helped me move slightly easier through the world.
“Mom?” Sophie asked me one night after she shared her memory. (Daddy wanted me to watch The Graduate with him. It was his favorite movie.) “Where do you think Daddy is?”
I was lying next to her, stroking her hair. “I wish I knew. But I think he’s feeling better, wherever he is.”
“Why do you think that?” She wanted to know.
“I just do. I think our bodies are temporary. And his body was so sick. Now that he’s not in his body, he must feel better, right? I just have to believe that.”
“I think he’s here with us,” she said.
“You do?”
She nodded yes.
“That makes me so happy,” I said. “Even when you and I are apart, Daddy will still be with you, and with me. He’ll always be watching over you and protecting you, like an angel.”
I told her this every night for months. I don’t know that Sophie took it in the way I meant it. I sometimes think she just said what she thought I wanted to hear just so she could go to sleep.
I visited a psychic the spring after Joel had died. The appointment was made months earlier. Maybe it’s a phenomenon only in Los Angeles, but similar to getting a reservation at a great restaurant, the best psychics in LA book up months in advance.
I was not new to the world of psychics. In fact, one of the best readings I had was when I was in my early twenties and living in New York City. I had only just had the thought that I may want to try my hand at screenwriting, when the psychic my friend told me that I must see had an opening. I was looking for some direction—Should I stay in New York and work in advertising, or should I consider going back to Los Angeles and attempt screenwriting? Would I find love again in the city or back in my hometown? I believed that Katherine might have the answers.
The doorman in Katherine’s opulent eastside building showed me to the elevator, which took me up to the penthouse. Her assistant led me to one of the bedrooms, where a card table was set up next to a king-size bed that was covered in satin pillows of all shapes and sizes. At the card table sat Katherine—blonde, big, friendly. Think Texas. But this was New York City, and Katherine was all business.
I was there for five minutes when Katherine, without knowing anything about me, said, “I see you in these big warehouses. There are big cameras and lights, too.”
“Really?” I said.
“And something about foxes. Or a fox. Fox and . . .” She was searching, concentrating; her eyes closed. “Fox, fox. They keep showing me a fox. But also, lights, big lights, movie lights.”
I was trying to figure out what she meant. Foxes? My mind came up blank. The closest thing I could think of were the deer we’d sometimes see on weekends in the Hamptons. But I stayed quiet. Then Katherine’s eyes opened, and she smiled and looked at me.
“Fox,” she said. “And Disney. You’ll be working for them. Writing. I see pages, lots of pages everywhere, so much writing! That’s what they’re telling me. You are a writer!”
I didn’t quite understand who “they” were. But I took what she was saying as the confirmation I needed at the time. I am a writer!
Or at least, I would be a writer at some point in the future.
Sure enough, when I moved back to Los Angeles later that year, my first employer was Disney. Followed by Fox. Later, Disney again. I
don’t remember much else from that reading with Katherine, but clearly it didn’t dissuade me from believing that some people have a gift, a gift that allows them to tune into a frequency that relays messages from somewhere beyond. This is what I was hoping for when I drove to Beverly Hills to meet Candy, the psychic I waited almost five months to see.
“Come in,” Candy said. “We’ve been waiting.”
Candy’s office was in a big building in Beverly Hills. The other occupants seemed to be doctors. Candy sat at a desk full of family photos and trinkets. She had more framed photos on the walls; some were of her posing with celebrities.
She gestured for me to sit across from her, and she smiled warmly. She had a full figure and an enthusiastic energy.
“Yes, oh my God, he’s been waiting for you!” She started to laugh and looked up like she was talking to the air. “She’s here, she’s here. Oh my God, he’s so happy!” She looked at me and asked, “What did you bring me?” She had a vague accent, somewhere from the Middle East, I thought. Israel or maybe Iran.
I reached into my bag. Psychics sometimes suggest bringing an object or a photo of the person you hope to connect with. It helps them channel or receive information. I handed her Joel’s watch—a gift from his father years earlier that Joel had worn every day. I also brought some photos. She looked at one of them.
“This is him?” she asked.
So far, all I had said was hello.
“He was sick. So sick. I thought he was older . . . Now I’m confused.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s my husband.”
“So young!” she said. She got very serious staring at his picture. “He went very quickly. He was waiting to go.”
I started to cry.
“It’s funny because my client before you, she’s been waiting for a man to come into her life, and your husband was here waiting for you. She was so disappointed, but I knew he wasn’t here for her. She was hoping because this man, your husband . . . His love is . . .” She searched for the word.
“Strong. His love is very strong for you. I thought he was older because of the sickness.”
She continued to concentrate. She stroked the photo with her index finger.
“He couldn’t move?” she asked. “Not the coma, I mean, in life.”
I hadn’t said anything about a coma.
“He had MS. So, yes, moving was difficult,” I answered through my tears.
“Ooh,” she said as if she had finally gotten an answer she was looking for. “He can move now, my dear. He’s so happy; he has his legs. And his bike. Did he like to ride a bike?”
Before I could answer, Candy smiled and giggled a little.
“Oh my God, he’s stroking your face right now. He loves you so much.”
I put my hand on my cheek. I closed my eyes. I could picture Joel standing there, his hand on my cheek, my hand on his hand.
“Who is the boy?” she asked.
“What boy?”
“Do you have a son?” she asked me inquisitively.
“No,” I said, suddenly nervous. I wanted to hear more about Joel. All of this information was coming at me so fast. I wanted her to slow down.
“There’s another man. With a son. I can’t believe this!”
Candy started laughing again. “You are blessed, you know this? This man with a son. He loves you, too.”
I looked at her as if another head were growing from her neck.
“What man?” I said.
“Someone you know,” she continued. “But it won’t last long. That’s what your husband is telling me. But he doesn’t mind. It’s OK.”
What the hell? Another man? Who has a son?! I don’t want another man. I just want Joel!
“I don’t think I want another man,” I said.
She shrugged. “What can I tell you? He’s coming.”
Candy tilted her head as if she were listening. “Maybe this will make sense. Your husband wants me to tell you . . .”
I sat up taller in my seat, leaned in a little closer.
“‘I approve,’ he’s saying. He approves.”
She opened her palms and raised her eyebrows as if to say, There you have it.
Two things were made clear to me that day.
1. Joel really was still with us. I could go home to Sophie and tell her. I was so excited! Daddy’s really with us! I would say, He’s here!
And
2. Psychics are nuts.
TWELVE
I’m a Widow
Sissy?” I said into the phone, unable to catch my breath. “I miss Joel!”
“Oh, sissy,” Holly said patiently. “I know you do.”
It was our wedding anniversary, my first without him. We would have been married seventeen years. I was sobbing uncontrollably in my hotel room and had been for hours. I was in Chicago visiting my friend Jennie. Sophie was on a school field trip to San Francisco that weekend, so the timing worked out for me to get out of town. I did not want to be home without Joel on our anniversary. I thought being away with one of my best friends, in one of my favorite cities, at a fancy hotel I decided to treat myself to, would help. But grief doesn’t care about any of those things. Just like MS, it travels with you no matter where you go, no matter how far, no matter for how long.
Jennie and her husband had planned to take me to dinner. They were downstairs in the hotel bar waiting for me.
“I’m not sure if I can make it,” I had cried into the phone an hour earlier to Jennie. “I’m a mess. I can’t stop crying.”
“OK, I totally get it. We’ll wait in the bar, and if you feel like you can pull it together, great. If not, no pressure. Just keep me posted.”
I thought I would spend my anniversary walking down Michigan Avenue, stopping at a cute café for lunch, buying something nice for myself, and reflecting on my seventeen years with Joel—more if I counted our time together before we got married. Instead, I had left the hotel without an umbrella, got stuck in the rain, got lost trying to find a nice day spa where I could get a massage, and ended up back at the hotel early, soaking wet and sobbing.
“Of course you’re feeling sad,” Holly said. “Joel’s not there to celebrate with. It’s terrible. It’s hard to believe.”
“I miss him!” I wailed. “I don’t know if I’ll ever stop crying!”
My sister stayed on the phone with me. I was afraid to hang up. I thought my tears would envelop me, that I might drown.
I kept twisting my wedding ring around my finger, hoping that my memories of Joel—younger, healthy, alive—would come back to me. I tried so hard to remember my wedding. Our life together. The way he smelled. But five months later, I could still only remember Joel in the hospital. Barely alive, waiting for me to give the OK so he could die. The only smells I could conjure were the hospital smells. The only memory of us being close was holding Joel’s limp hand in mine, trying to avoid the tubes in his veins. I could not get out of the hospital, as hard as I tried. I could talk about Joel and recall certain events spent with him, but they were dulled. I kept waiting for my memories to become vibrant and real again.
Holly and I eventually hung up. Jennie sent her husband home, and she came up to my room. She, too, was patient. She had lost her mother when she was young, so she understood what grief was like and that it was unpredictable.
After crying for hours and hours, I forced myself to change my thinking. I can cry anywhere at any time. You’re in Chicago, go do something fun, I told myself. That’s what you’d do if Joel were here.
So Jennie and I went down to the hotel restaurant and got some food. I got a fancy cocktail, and we toasted Joel. My tears had subsided. I was breathing again. I slept well that night, but I woke up with a grief hangover. I wasn’t quite myself. My widow fog was clouding my weekend, but it was time to get back home.
On my way to the airport, I made a stop at a sandwich place that Joel had loved to go to when we were in Chicago. I went for Joel. But now I was late for my flight. I had never
seen O’Hare so packed. One of the luggage screeners was broken, so the security line was taking an extralong time. I watched Jennie drive away, and started wheeling my bag to the end of the line when the tears started again. I stood in that security line and realized I would be there for two hours and my flight was leaving in one.
I noticed a gruff TSA officer pacing the line. His belly hung over his belt. His hair was thinning, but his bushy mustache made up for it. He was making sure that we, the travelers, were staying in line and following the rules. A few people were understandably annoyed. They tried to get his attention. Some of them, like me, were afraid of missing their flights. Others were simply aggravated by the bureaucracy of airport security. It was tense. I noticed all of this going on around me, but I just stood there crying. Bereft. Tired. Empty.
The TSA guy must have noticed me. He approached me with . . . the only word I can come up with is caution. I think he was afraid of a woman in tears. Not just tears, a flood on her face.
“Why ya cryin’ so hard?” he asked me.
I looked at him blankly. I saw him. I knew he was talking to me. But I couldn’t respond.
This had happened to me once before. Joel and I were on a ski trip with friends in Lake Tahoe. After a day spent mostly on my ass, attempting to learn how to snowboard in a blizzard, I had had enough. I had fallen one time too many and was done. I couldn’t move from weariness. Ski patrol had to come and get me and bring me down the hill on one of their little red sleds. Joel, of course, accompanied me down. He was worried. In all my years on skis, nothing like this had ever happened.
We got to the first aid hut. The nurse started asking me questions:
“Can you tell me what day it is?”
I heard her question, but I was too tired to answer. I stared at her blankly.
“Do you know where you are?”
I simply couldn’t talk. I felt Joel squeeze my hand.
“What is your name?”
I half smiled. It was the best I could do.
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