The boys and I had long played a game in which we’d mark certain important moments in our lives. If something unique happened, whether happy or sad, I’d say to them, “This is something to put in your memory bank and lock it in!”
When the R.E.M. song began to play, I said, “Okay, this is one of those things. Put it in your memory bank.”
The snow was more of a deterrent to our drive than I had anticipated, so by the time we arrived, we were more than a half hour late. Everyone was waiting for us.
But Brian refused to get out of the car. I understood exactly how he felt; I didn’t want to get out of the car, either. He couldn’t comprehend the reality of attending his own father’s funeral. All the men in my family had been born under the astrological sign of Taurus, but Brian was the most stubborn of the three of them. He was also enormously sensitive, with a tendency to hide his emotions. He had learned well from his parents.
I could tell when I looked in his eyes that he didn’t know how to handle that his whole life had changed. How could he, at the tender age of seven?
I didn’t want to go inside without Brian, but my dad persuaded me. “You’re already so late. You’ve got to get in there.” Reluctantly, I left my youngest son in the car with my brother, who would try to convince Brian to go inside.
When I walked in, I looked around the funeral home’s surreal interior. It was very colonial, which felt so wrong for Larry. He’d absolutely hate this, I thought. He must be rolling over in his grave.
Several people at the funeral were annoyed that we were late, but I felt like saying, “Fuck all of you!” Almost no one there had any idea of what we’d been through. So many people showed up from my sons’ elementary school, middle school, and high school. People from work. People from Larry’s business. Distant family members. Acquaintances I didn’t know well. Larry had been so popular that there had actually been a line to get inside.
They were all there with the best of intentions, but I wasn’t prepared for so many of them. I didn’t think, Look at all these people who care about us. Instead, I thought, Oh, my God, look at all these people!
The truth is that the community was stunned that Larry had died. They’d had no idea that he was ill, even though some must have suspected it as he’d started to look less than healthy.
Some of the kids’ teachers and coaches were exceptionally nosy and seemed put out by our secrecy. “What on earth happened? You never told us that your son’s father was sick!”—as if I’d been obligated to tell them. One of Little Larry’s coaches even took my son into another room and had a conversation with him without my permission. I had no idea what he was saying to my little boy. I felt that I’d lost control of everything.
But I had to tell people something, so I just told everyone that Larry had died of cancer. It wasn’t a lie, although it was far from the whole story.
In my grief, it was more exhausting than ever to play my usual role. Thankfully, my parents were very protective of me in those moments, doing their best to shield me from the endless prying.
The reality is that the funeral was a beautiful outpouring of love for my husband, but for me that day, in my traumatized state, it seemed like a freak show. I couldn’t take in the compassion and love that people were trying to express. Everything had been so personal between Larry and me, and suddenly I felt exposed.
I’m told that I fell into the arms of some people and told them how much it meant to me that they were there, but I have no recollection of this. Even now, my memory of much of that day is a blur.
Debbie’s husband, Vince, who loved Larry, was the perfect person to give the eulogy. Since Larry had been such a laid-back guy, he’d sometimes just say “Fuck it!” if he couldn’t control, fix, or change a situation. It had become a running joke between Larry and anyone who knew him. At one point during the eulogy, Vince said, “You know what Larry would say . . . ,” and everyone in the funeral home held their breath, hoping that Vince wouldn’t say something so irreverent out loud. He didn’t, but they all knew exactly what he meant, and everyone shared a bittersweet moment of humor.
When Brian finally came inside with my brother, he immediately climbed onto my lap and refused to move. I was just as traumatized as he was, and it was comforting to have him in my arms.
Brian was afraid to look at his father’s body in the open casket. He closed his eyes and covered his face so he wouldn’t have to see. He’d never been to a funeral or seen a dead body, so I can only imagine how frightening it must have been for him.
When everyone else had exited, including Little Larry, who was with my parents, I persuaded Brian to go up to the casket with me, just the two of us. I took his hand and said, “Let’s go say good-bye to Dad. I know you don’t want to do this, but this is the last time you’ll get to see him. Someday, in your heart, you’ll be glad you did.” He trusted me, so he walked up with me and bravely looked at his father. I was so proud of the courage he showed in that moment. Little Larry then came back in and joined us. Suddenly, we were three instead of four.
Just a few days after the funeral, I had to contend with more questions about the circumstances of Larry’s death. When had he been diagnosed with cancer? Why did it kill him so quickly? At least the cancer story was mostly believable because we’d already told some people about the tumor in his spleen. It explained why he had been in the hospital months before and why he’d been scheduled to go into the hospital for surgery during the week following his death.
Still, people were surprised by how abruptly he’d died. Even Dr. Marton, who knew more about Larry’s condition than anyone, was surprised by it.
Soon, however, I discovered that there was more to his death than even I had known.
There had been a dramatic scene at my house the day after Larry died when his sister showed up talking about her husband, Sully. “Larry contacted Sully that night and wanted him to buy some dope,” she insisted on telling me. I wanted to lunge and choke her. Luckily, I was surrounded by family, who intervened.
“You get the hell out of here, and don’t ever come back,” my father shouted at her. While the thought had crossed my mind the night before Larry died, I didn’t want to believe it.
Then, a few days after Larry’s death, I found a spoon in the kitchen silverware drawer. It had been Little Larry’s spoon when he was younger. But now, it had telltale burn marks on it. It was a small, deep spoon—perfect for cooking heroin. And I knew that Larry’s sister might have been right. Larry could have gotten high the night before he died.
Rage burned through me. The feeling of betrayal was all-encompassing. This is how you leave us? I thought. How could you do that to your children?
As angry as I felt, I was also heartbroken that my husband had given up and that the truth was even uglier than I had realized. Anger, grief, love, exhaustion—I felt the gamut and broke down in a crush of tears.
I had to concede that Larry must have felt the gamut too. He’d been dying a painful death. He must have thought, I’m not going to waste away in a hospice bed with sores all over my body, just waiting to die. If he’d gotten in touch with his brother-in-law, it meant he’d wanted a sure thing—someone he could count on to get the dope for him. And he’d had to do it when I wasn’t home. It was his window of opportunity—the only way out, as he saw it. He was tired, he was dying, and he didn’t want to fight anymore. He was done. Oh, God.
Of course, I can’t be sure of what was going on in my husband’s head; I can only speculate based on what I knew about him. And I’m sure no one knew him better than me.
Besides the secrets, the grief, and the anger, I felt enormous guilt that I hadn’t been there when Larry died. How could I ever forgive myself for what my boys had endured? If only we’d been able to arrange for our better life in Florida, as I’d planned. Larry could’ve stayed warm there and been cared for when I had to work.
When I found the spoon, however, my instincts were once again to be secretive and to protect my hus
band’s memory. I immediately hid it away and kept it to myself. In fact, I hid it away for years. I believe I got rid of it many years later, but to this day, I’m not sure.
So I had yet another secret to keep—Larry’s overdose or fatal shot the night before he died.
Since it had been so exhausting to keep up the pretense for so many years, you’d think I would have let Larry’s secrets go after his death. After all, he wasn’t around anymore for me to protect. But I was still the guardian of his memory and the shield between my sons and the awful truth.
There was something more that kept me holding on to the secrets, however. They were the only connection I had left with my husband. I just couldn’t give that up.
Simply put, Larry’s secret had become my secret. His story was my story.
Once my sons and I settled back into our lives, we had to find a way to keep living—without Larry. None of us knew how to begin or how to go on, but I suppose that’s true for anyone who experiences a shattering loss. Somehow, you have to force yourself to get out of bed every morning and place one foot in front of the other.
I felt I had to put my own grief on a shelf in order to be there for my sons emotionally and physically. Both of them were devastated, but because of the difference in their ages, each experienced it in his own way.
Little Larry once said to me, “Daddy died on Valentine’s Day. What happens if I ever fall in love? It’ll always be a very sad day.” I didn’t know what to do but hug him. It was true that his Valentine’s Days would always carry that memory.
Then he asked his grandfather, “Who’s going to teach me how to shave?” Of course, my dad said he would teach him, but my heart twisted into a knot at the knowledge that my boys would miss such important father-son moments.
Neither of my sons became disruptive at school, but they both hated the attention they got from everyone because their father had died—especially Brian. He went from being the cutest little boy with big eyes, a dynamite smile, and a sandy-blond bowl haircut to a boy who didn’t smile anymore.
He felt like an outcast, different from all of his classmates because they had fathers. “I’m not playing sports anymore because I don’t have a dad. If you’re on a team, you need a dad who goes to the games,” he said. He believed his life couldn’t be normal anymore.
I was especially concerned because Brian wouldn’t talk about how he felt. Little Larry tried to be strong and supportive. I felt I had to do something to help them through it, so I started reading books about how losing a parent affects children. One of the books mentioned art therapy to help kids express grief nonverbally. I found an art therapist for them and also continued to take them to see our therapist, Pat, since they knew her and she’d known Larry.
Once, in the car on the way to art therapy, Little Larry said, “We’re really okay, you know.”
“Yeah, we are,” Brian chimed in.
It was a long drive once a week to get to the art therapist’s, and they knew it was stressful for me. But I said, “No, you’ve got to process this. You need therapy to be healthy. Someday, you’re going to thank me for this.”
While I can’t quantify how much it helped them, I’m certain it did. And in that time following Larry’s death, the three of us became a unit. We made a pact with one another that we’d stick together forever. We’d talk about what our lives were going to be like: “Someday you’ll both get married, and I’ll have grandchildren. Won’t that be cool?”
I kept pictures of Larry all over the house. We talked about him a lot, including what it would have been like if he’d lived. The boys imagined that his business would have become more successful, and we would have moved to an affluent town to live in a huge house that Larry built for us.
Like I had when my husband first left me with Little Larry, I made sure we found fun activities to do together. We continued to go to museums, playgrounds, and events whenever we could.
About three weeks after Larry’s death, I went back to work. My company had been very understanding about my absence; no one had pressured me to return. But I wanted some semblance of normalcy. Plus, there were financial concerns.
Larry had come close to completing the home renovations, but I had no way to finance what was left unfinished—two bathrooms and a few other areas. Meanwhile, I had credit card bills, medical bills, and some remaining business debts from Larry’s company that I had to address. The town we lived in had an inadequate public school system, so I struggled to afford to send the boys to their Catholic school.
Still, going back to work was tough. I was barely holding it together, and finding it difficult to eat or sleep. When the days were finished and the boys had been fed and put to bed, I cried. Whenever I was alone, I was crying. Larry had been the center of my universe for 15 years, and being without him just didn’t seem possible.
I was so paralyzed with grief that the only thing that kept me going was my love for my sons. If it hadn’t been for them, I probably would have sat on a park bench and watched life pass me by. My mind constantly raced with all sorts of thoughts about what was going to happen to us, what I could have done differently, how screwed up my life was, and on and on.
Time passed, but I couldn’t imagine that the grief would ever end. I felt caught in a web. Happiness felt utterly unattainable. In spite of all the times in my life when I’d felt alone, I never felt more alone than after Larry’s death.
I was only 39. How am I going to make it through another 40 years of this life? I wondered. I was obsessed with the fact that my pain would never subside and that I would live like this the rest of my life. If I were 70 and lost my husband, I wouldn’t have to live that much longer without him.
Still, I never let anyone see me hurting. So hardly anyone thought to ask, “Hey, Kathe, are you okay?” Of course, I often didn’t ask for help, either. Thankfully, my parents did help, and Debbie was always there for me.
What I missed the most was that when Larry knew I was overwhelmed, he would put his arm around me, hold me close, and pat me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay,” he’d say. It was something I’d longed for throughout my childhood. When I shared this with my parents, they smiled and hugged me tight. How many people get a second chance at their relationship with their parents? It was certainly one of the blessings in my life in the midst of all the sorrow.
As wonderful as those moments were, they were only a temporary respite from the emotion that threatened to overtake me every day. I had huge mood swings and desperately wanted a sense of peace.
I tried bereavement groups, but there I was, the 40-year-old sitting with 60- and 70-year-olds. No one could relate to me, and I couldn’t relate to them. When I shared my story, I had to keep everything so general: “My husband got cancer. He was sick.” Feeling that I couldn’t tell the truth kept me isolated from everyone in the group.
Since sleep was elusive for a long time, I started to get up at four or five in the morning to take walks. Before long, that evolved into running, even though I had never been an athletic person. Eventually, I was running five miles a day—in the rain, in the sleet, and in the snow. I got special picks for the soles of my sneakers so I wouldn’t slip in winter weather. With music playing in my earbuds, my mind stopped racing. It was the only way I found escape, and it was my way of feeling strong and in control of my body. I suppose it also helped me to release endorphins.
Over time, people in the community got to know my routine and waved at me from their cars on their way to work.
At the same time, I continued to advance in my career, gaining credibility in my industry. The new visibility at work meant I had to lead meetings, trainings, and seminars. My kids were my biggest fans, often helping me prepare for my presentations. They’d test me on what I had to learn and assist me with PowerPoint.
But when I led meetings, I felt uncomfortable with everyone’s focus on me. I worried about whether I was making sense. A voice in my head would start in on me: Who the hell do you
think you are? You’re sitting here like you know exactly what’s going on, but you aren’t shit because nobody knows who you really are. You’re just a loser who survived the last 15 years of your life, who lived with a drug addict, whose husband had HIV. You’re an imposter, a fake, a phony. People are looking at you like you’ve got it together, but you know the truth: you’re nobody.
My inner critic would hammer away at me, causing me to short circuit and lose my train of thought. As a result, I’d sometimes pause in the middle of my presentations and hope that someone would chime in and take over.
I convinced myself that if my colleagues, bosses, and clients knew the truth about me and my life, they’d look at me differently. I also worried that I was mentally ill, just like my parents. My therapist had diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of Larry’s drug use and illness, but therapy wasn’t providing me with any relief. I couldn’t comprehend the enormity of the sadness I felt, and the PTSD could send me into a panic so easily.
I recall lying in a hammock in my backyard one day and looking up at the sky. I started to have a conversation in my head with the universe. What will it take to make this hurting stop?
Yet, even with my self-doubts and emotional difficulties, I was promoted to vice president of sales at my company. Me—the girl who never thought she was smart enough or good enough! My father was immensely proud of me. “My daughter was once on welfare, but now she’s a vice president!” My life was one big contradiction.
The boys and I tried to do the best we could to keep going, but every major life event was painful. When the kids graduated from different grades or received awards, their dad wasn’t there. Someone in the family would get married, and Larry wasn’t there. I’d receive an accolade at work, and my husband wasn’t there to hear about it. I hated being solo. I missed my friend and partner.
After a couple of years, my friends said I should think about dating again. Who’s going to love me? I thought. If I started dating someone, it would be hard enough to be a fortysomething widow, but how could I tell a man that my husband had had HIV? That was a recipe for getting rid of a guy, not attracting one. Who would want to have a relationship with a woman whose husband had died of what was seen as a highly contagious plague?
Unlocking Secrets Page 10