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Widowish: A Memoir

Page 18

by Melissa Gould


  I had made some snacks for the girls as they got dressed in the living room. Some of the moms and I were hanging out in the kitchen. There was perfume and makeup and giggles, lots of giggles . . . and then the doorbell rang.

  One of the girls rushed to answer it, thinking it was another friend arriving, but it was Marcos. Her mouth dropped open.

  “Um,” she called to Sophie. “Why is Marcos here?”

  “Hello, young lady,” Marcos said to Sophie’s friend, all smiles.

  Sophie came running out and saw Marcos in the doorway.

  “Hey, Sophie, how are you?”

  Sophie quickly turned to look at me. I steadied myself for her response. She could have started crying or yelling or acting mortified. But she did none of those things. She turned to her friend and said, “Oh, he and my mom are dating.”

  The friend’s eyes got wide. She shared a look with her mother, who was in the kitchen, and got teary-eyed. She mouthed to me, So happy for you!

  Sophie ran to the door. “Hi, Marcos,” she said. “Come in.”

  “I’m not staying long,” he said. “Just wanted to say hi.”

  The next few minutes played out like an episode of Wild Kingdom, where one species (the teenage girls) crowds around to observe a lone member of another species (Marcos). The young girls were in a group whispering and giggling and pointing to Marcos, while he stood there taking it. The girls then broke apart and, thankfully, went back to getting ready.

  By now, Marcos had joined me in the kitchen.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” he said. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and acknowledged the other moms. He knew all of them, who behind his back were nodding their approval and giving me the thumbs-up.

  Every so often, one brave girl would poke her head out and say, “Hi, Marcos!”

  After a few minutes, I went back to the living room to check on things and pulled Sophie aside.

  “You OK with all of this, Smoosh?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s fine,” she said. “Can I borrow your mascara?”

  “Mascara?” I said, feigning shock.

  “Please?” Sophie asked, smiling.

  I gave her a quick kiss and watched as she ran back to her friends, business as usual.

  TWENTY

  Love

  Oh, I think that’s just wonderful!” Hal said over brunch. He and Rita were taking me out for my birthday. Which meant we were approaching the first-year anniversary of Joel’s passing.

  I loved celebrating my birthday. In our family, birthdays are like national holidays. So when Hal called to ask if there was something special I’d like to do, I quickly and happily said yes and made a brunch reservation for Hal, Rita, and myself at a trendy new restaurant nearby. We were toasting another trip around the sun for me, but we had Joel on our minds. It was comforting being with Hal because we both, miraculously, were surviving a life without Joel.

  Losing Joel brought us closer together. We bonded during the countless hours we spent in the hospital, and we had been through this excruciating loss together. We respected each other and the pain, suffering, and, ultimately, survival that we had experienced. We were war buddies. Running mates.

  Once we had our champagne flutes in hand and put in our orders for salmon benedict and chicken-sausage scrambles, I said, “So I want you both to know that I’m seeing someone.”

  Rita’s eyes widened. “Oh, that’s terrific! I’m so happy to hear that.”

  Hal looked stunned at first, but it was a happy stunned. He smiled, looked over at Rita, then raised his glass to me. “Oh, I think that’s just wonderful!” We clinked our glasses, and I cried. Not the ugly, tears-pouring-down-my-face crying that I was so accustomed to, but a soft, mist-of-tears kind of cry because I was so happy that they were happy. I had a feeling they would be. They loved me. They knew how hard it was for me to act as if I had a life without Joel. But they saw me doing it. They saw how I was parenting for two, on my own, and I knew they were relieved when they heard that I had a respite from it all.

  “So tell us,” Hal said. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

  I told them about Marcos. How he used to teach Sophie guitar and was also a working musician with gigs all over town. How he was a do-gooder in the community and also had a teenage son. When I got to the part about him and Joel knowing each other, Hal’s whole face lit up.

  “That’s great!” he said. “Isn’t that something?”

  “When can we meet him?” Rita asked, excited.

  The conversation continued. There was no judgment. No criticism.

  If anyone was watching us from across the room, they’d observe the two of them, a couple, sitting on one side of the booth, while I sat alone, across from them, an empty seat next to me. It looked like someone was missing. But Joel was with us. We all felt it.

  When I called to invite Joel’s mother, Nancy, to a pub near her house to hear a friend of mine play guitar one night, she immediately said yes. Nancy was always open to a new experience and meeting new people.

  “I just want to let you know ahead of time, the person who’ll be performing is a man I’ve been seeing.”

  “I figured,” she said, laughing. “Why else would you be inviting me? Otherwise, it would just be about the food.”

  When Nancy showed up, Marcos had already started performing, so she sat with me and we watched him.

  “He’s so handsome!” she said. “I love his nose.”

  This made me laugh. Nancy was always one who marched to her own rhythm. I appreciated that she didn’t balk or wince or take any issue whatsoever that Marcos and I were a couple. When he took a break and came over to our table, Nancy stood up and hugged him.

  “I know you’re a good person or Melissa wouldn’t be spending time with you.”

  “Thank you,” Marcos said. “I think she’s a good person, too.”

  “Of course she is!” Nancy said. “It’s very nice to meet you, Marcos. Really nice.”

  My in-laws have embraced Marcos fully. I went from being their daughter-in-law to something even closer. A daughter-in-feeling. Hal and Rita invite Marcos to family dinners. Nancy shows up for his gigs, usually in the front row, and oftentimes she’ll bring her friends.

  I don’t know that we’re a modern family, but we’re a unique family. A motley crew kind of family. The kind of family that people, when they meet us, can’t quite figure out who belongs to who, unless Sophie is with us, and then it’s an easy: “These are Sophie’s grandparents, I’m her mother, and Marcos is my boyfriend.” It still seems complicated, but for us, we are simply family.

  I threw myself a birthday party that first year. It was a birthday celebration and a let’s-get-together-and-remember-Joel party. I wanted to celebrate life, knowing that it can sometimes be cut short. I bought a new dress, ordered food from my favorite restaurant, stocked up with plenty of booze, and gave Marcos the job of bartender. I could tell he was nervous. Marcos is a confident man, but there was some unspoken pressure about this gathering. It would be the first time that many of my friends, and Joel’s, would be meeting him. In my house, the one I shared with Joel, in the same kitchen where Joel and I had hosted so many events.

  “Sweetheart,” Marcos said when he arrived with ice and limes. “Just put me where you need me, and I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”

  I took him in. He was not the man I thought he was those few years ago when I met him outside his house for Sophie’s guitar lesson. He was so much more.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you. Thank you.” I kissed him.

  “For what?” he asked.

  “For being here. It can’t be easy for you, and I appreciate it. Thank you. I love you.”

  I half expected him to say you. But that wasn’t our thing, or my thing anymore.

  We kissed and he said, “It’s all good, baby. Love. L-O-V-E. Love.”

  “Love?” I said.

  “Yes, sweetheart. Love.”

  And that’s how love became our shorthand. Our cal
l and response.

  The doorbell rang, Jillian was the first to arrive. She saw Marcos in the kitchen and did a double take.

  “I thought he was Joel for a second,” she said, pulling me aside.

  “I know,” I said. “I think that’s going to happen a lot tonight.”

  She looked around. “Does the dog like him?”

  “She’s not barking,” I said.

  “Then it’s fine. I’m happy for you. Happy birthday!”

  And that’s how the night went. It was weird. We were all doing double takes. But Marcos went with it. Friends were curious about him. Some interviewed him over cocktails; others made small talk. He lit the birthday candles on my cake and carried it over to me to make a wish. My friends stood around and sang. My wishes were so different this year than last. When Joel was in a coma, I wished for him to be free. That year, and every year since, I wished for Joel to stay close.

  Five days later, on the day that marked one year since Joel’s death, Sophie and I sat on the beach in Malibu and ate his favorite candy. We shared some funny memories of him and reflected on the year. We cried looking at photos in an album I had made, amazed that we made it this far without him.

  “I don’t know how I should feel,” Sophie said. “It’s like I miss Daddy, but I don’t feel sad all the time. Sometimes I think I should.”

  “I don’t think Daddy would want you to be sad all the time. In fact, I don’t think he’d want you to be sad at all.”

  “Of course, I’m going to be sad, Mom. My dad died!”

  “I know!” I said. “And he loved you so much!” I tried to formulate another sentence, but I didn’t know what to say. So I went to my usual. “I think you just need to feel your feelings, whenever you have them, you know? And whatever you feel, even if it’s not sad, that’s OK. Even on a day like today.”

  People kept asking me what Sophie and I were going to do that day, on the anniversary. It put pressure on us. Like with Father’s Day and Joel’s birthday and our wedding anniversary. I’ve come to learn that my feelings are unpredictable. It could be a Tuesday in January, and I’ll feel inconsolable. But when Joel’s birthday comes around in August, I could be feeling cheerful. There’s no rhyme or reason to grief. It hits you when it hits you. I tried to convey this to Sophie, although that day at the beach, at year one, I was still learning this myself.

  “I think we just need to honor Daddy every day. However we can. And however we feel, we feel.”

  “I feel lucky,” Sophie said.

  “About what?”

  “That you and Daddy . . . you loved each other. So many of my friends’ parents don’t anymore. But that’s a memory I’ll always have. That you and Daddy were happy together.”

  “Yup,” I said. “We were. We were a happy little family, all of us.”

  “We still are,” she said.

  I smiled at my girl, locked her arm in mine, and the two of us sat there on the beach and stared out at the ocean, together.

  TWENTY-ONE

  God Laughs

  Sometimes I imagine Joel on the basketball court. He’s sweaty, running, happy. He moves easily. He makes a block, grabs the ball, dribbles it down the court, and shoots a basket, scoring one for his team. I don’t know where this is, I can’t make out the other players, but the sun is shining, there is a slight breeze, and Joel looks and feels healthy. He is moving, he is happy, he is free.

  I have finally been able to leave the hospital. I can now envision Joel as he was, and how he might have been if not for the MS, if not for the West Nile virus.

  I discuss this with the two widows sitting next to me at Allison’s house. It’s a relief to remember my husband free of illness and distress. They understand this completely. We are comfortable speaking this language of grief and healing, and we speak it freely.

  “Were your husbands athletic?” I ask.

  “Dan played some sports in high school, but as an adult, he was more of a runner. It was his thinking time,” one of them says.

  “And Mike wasn’t really into sports. He was into cheesecake. Is cheesecake a sport?”

  We laugh, the three of us, and I excuse myself to talk to Allison in the kitchen.

  “Such a great turnout!” she says.

  “I can’t believe it!”

  We both take in the group gathered in Allison’s living room. About ten widows, and three widowers.

  “I think we can get started soon,” I tell Allison.

  She nods yes, and we turn toward this group we’ve assembled.

  Had I known when I was younger that this would be how my life ended up, I never would have believed it. But then again, I wouldn’t have believed so many things:

  That Joel and I would end up married didn’t seem possible until he came to Seattle and found me.

  That we would have only one child when we wanted so many wasn’t expected either, but our family ended up being perfect exactly the way it was.

  That we wouldn’t grow old together never crossed my mind.

  I never expected to be a widow in my midforties.

  I also never expected to fall in love with my daughter’s guitar teacher.

  They say if you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans. I may have never uttered my plans out loud, but She is laughing anyway.

  When I meet up with friends whom I haven’t seen in a while, and they ask how I’m doing, I’ll usually start with, I miss Joel. It’s hard not to cry in those moments. To this day, so many years later, I still say to those closest to me, Can you believe it? That this is my life? And they all say the same thing . . . No. I can’t.

  What was so surreal in the early days of losing Joel is now simply reality, but still just as hard to fathom. Managing my grief has gotten easier, but I’m still grieving. I don’t think that ever stops. It just gets easier, since time, I’ve learned, is a miraculous healer.

  While Marcos and I have no plans to live together anytime soon, we have discussed it. Things seem to work for us as they are, as unconventional as our relationship is. We agree that maintaining separate homes could be the key to our success. One time when we spoke about the possibility of living together, Marcos said, “You’ll bring your books and your music. We’ll have a shelf for Joel . . .” He accepts that Joel occupies a huge space in Sophie’s and my hearts, and that the shrine I have of Joel is coming with me wherever I go. I love him for that.

  The shrine that sits on the shelf of my walk-in closet consists of a sealed bowl with some of his ashes. A photo of Joel taken at the Dodgers game the day he caught that fly ball. Next to that photo is the actual baseball, which is sealed in a see-through plastic box and has the date of the game in Joel’s handwriting on it. There’s another photo of Joel, Sophie, and me, all hugging our dog Lucy, from a day at a park. A purple magic fairy wand filled with stars and sparkles that Sophie liked to play with when she was a baby is there, too. I see these things every day. I make sure to take them all in.

  It took some time, but Sophie and Marcos have forged a meaningful relationship. He is respectful and understanding of our memories of Joel, and Sophie appreciates it as much as I do. Marcos accepts that there is no replacing Joel, or even filling in for him. He provides unconditional support for our mother-daughter dynamic duo.

  When Sophie had trouble passing her driving test the first time around, Marcos took over teaching her to drive and took her to the DMV for her next driving test. I stood at home pacing, staring at the clock, imagining every worst-case scenario.

  “Sweetheart?” Marcos said when I picked up the phone. “She got the lady in the Hawaiian shirt.”

  “Oh my God, no!” I yelled. There were rumors that this particular DMV was an easy pass, unless, of course, you got the Hawaiian shirt–wearing lady as your tester.

  Marcos laughed. “It’s OK,” he said. “She’s in line now.”

  “What line?” I asked, my heart pounding outside of my chest.

  “The line where they take the picture. For the licens
e. She passed.”

  That Marcos didn’t begin the conversation with the good news was typical. But it didn’t matter. I sighed with relief and fell to my knees in tears. When we hung up, I picked up my favorite framed photo of Joel. “She did it, hun. Our baby girl is driving now. If you’re not sitting with her every time she gets behind the wheel, I will kill you!”

  I started publishing essays about my widowish journey online and in local newspapers. I began hearing from so many people. My story had resonated with them and their emails had common themes:

  “No one understands my story.”

  “My parents want to help but the only widows they know are in their seventies.”

  “I’m still young enough to get married again, maybe even have more kids, but no one wants to date a widow.”

  Many of them lived in Los Angeles. A few of them asked if they could meet me. They didn’t know of any widows their same age. They wanted to share their stories. So I called Allison. “I think we need to do something about all these young widows.”

  “Yes!” she said. “Let’s plan our first meeting. I’m happy to volunteer my backyard if everyone brings some food. We’ll make it a potluck.”

  “With wine!” I said.

  “Absolutely!” she agreed.

  I was nervous sending out that first email. There were so many people on the list! Many lived close by, some were friends of friends. I wanted to strike the right tone, make sure people knew that it wasn’t a bereavement group but a social gathering among people who understood . . . I barely hit send when the replies came back fast and eager. People were so thankful. They wanted to connect, to meet and embrace this strange widowish world that we all inhabit.

  I hold Allison back before we head into her living room. I give her a quick hug.

  “Thank you!” I say.

  “You’re welcome,” she says. “But for what, I don’t know.”

  “For calling me that day. For reaching out. I didn’t think I would call you back, but I’m so glad I did.”

 

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