Waiting. What if he’d broken his neck, or his spine? Would he be a paraplegic? That seemed impossible for such an active man—but, I thought, he’d still be Heinz: we’d find a way to live with it. Charged with adrenaline, I paced, went outside, then back in; there was nowhere to flee, no one to fight. That day had dawned into a brilliantly clear blue sky, but now the sky seemed to have gone blank. An hour passed, then two more; we could hear nothing but wind in the trees as we scanned the empty sky. I called emergency services, but the line was busy; when someone finally answered, he could tell us nothing. Did I call Lizzie and Emily in New York, to tell them that Heinz had fallen? I didn’t remember. Apparently I’d called Katie and Tom Benton, who had been at dinner with us the night before, since they arrived at our door. How badly injured could he be? In case we’d have to stay at the hospital overnight, I packed a canvas bag and placed it by the door.
Late afternoon, nearly evening, and no phone call. Seth arrived, looking sober, distraught, behind him, someone with whom he was staying, and two policemen. I don’t remember anything they said, until one of the policeman, perhaps summoning his best console-the-widow voice, said, “God never gives us more than we can handle.” From shock, that triggered fury. How dare you speak of this as a gift from God? What do you know of what I can—or cannot—handle? Have you any idea that our six-year-old son died a year ago? But I said nothing. Unable to utter a word, I grasped with both hands the handle of the door near the deck where I was standing, and wrenched the door off its hinges. After that, I remember nearly nothing: a black hole had opened up and swallowed our life. Other people were bustling around the house; who were they? Sarah, confused, came looking for me, and I comforted her as well as I could, but I felt as if I weren’t present. Mute as a stone, I could neither speak nor cry. If I start to wail and weep, I thought, I’ll never be able to stop.
Just before dark, a call. They’d found Heinz’s body and taken it to the hospital. Now they were preparing to transport it to the funeral home down valley, in Glenwood Springs. “No,” I said, “you are not going to do that. You keep it right there. I’m coming to the hospital right now.” Our friends drove; I could not have trusted myself on the road. Entering through the door of the emergency room, we were taken through blank corridors to a back room in the hospital, built with gray cement blocks, where a black canvas body bag lay on a table. “Ordinarily,” the doctor said, “I’d strongly advise you to see his body, but in this case, you cannot. They found it in fragments.” Unable to see it, I went to the body bag and felt it. Under the slick black canvas, I seemed to feel the flesh of a thigh, and perhaps a lower leg. After some time I finally left the back room, numb. They steered me into a room where I signed a paper giving permission for them to transport his body to Glenwood. But not for cremation, or not yet, although that’s what Heinz had chosen for Mark, and what I’d agreed to allow after our son’s funeral, since it seemed to offer Heinz some slight consolation. But this time, too, I resolved that we would have a funeral with his body present, not a “service of thanksgiving for the life”—nothing to disguise the horror of his death.
Much later, our friend Tom, who had driven me and his wife to the hospital, told me that when others were out of the room, he’d quickly unzipped part of the body bag. “They were right,” he said, “You did not need to see that.” Years later, he told me that when he’d first heard that Heinz had fallen, he knew that he must be dead, since no one could survive a fall from Pyramid Peak, but he hadn’t dared tell me. When we arrived back at the house, realizing that Sarah needed care, her bedtime ritual, some semblance of normal, I seemed to come partly out of a state of shock. For despite the attention others lavished on her, she was wandering through the house, troubled and crying, sensing that everything had changed, all the grown-ups acting strange—her mother distracted, her father not home. Caring for David was simpler; after I fed and held him, walking and singing, he would sleep.
Meanwhile, my whole body remained on high alert. Although most of my brain seemed obliterated, the fraction that functioned felt wide awake, focusing on what needed to be done. What about Heinz’s mother? Suddenly I realized that two policemen might arrive at her door in the peaceful suburbs of Philadelphia, like those who had arrived to tell me. That would be awful; somehow, she needed to have someone she trusted with her before hearing this from the police, or on the news. Should I call? Since I could not speak without bursting into tears and sobbing uncontrollably, I could not say what would tear her apart, as it had me. Like me, she would hear the news alone; how could she possibly bear it? She would need people with her, close friends. So I found the phone number of Heinz’s friend and colleague Gino Segrè, who lived in Philadelphia, and called to tell him what had happened. Would he and his wife drive to Heinz’s mother’s home, after asking her closest friend to meet them there, so that they could support her when she would have to hear it? He would, and they did. Meanwhile, both of the children were crying, needing reassurance. I tried to give it, holding and soothing each of them so that they could sleep.
Finally, at three in the morning, alone in our bed, I kept turning to where he slept. Why wasn’t he there? Couldn’t we stop this from happening? Where had he gone? Sleep had fled: I lay awake, alert, shocked, expecting him to return; it must be a mistake. A tape loop had started in my mind, picturing him falling from Pyramid Peak, a scene repeating over and over, nearly every second, several times at every breath. About an hour later, Sarah found her way to my room in the dark, crying and clutching at me, touching my face, as if to see whether I was there, and whether I was alive; startled, I reacted with shock and anger.
Who told our friends? Had I called them? I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t think to ask. But soon friends unexpectedly arrived: our friend Lizzie, and our children’s other godparents, Sharon and David, from New York; Richard, my high school boyfriend; and Linda, my college roommate and longtime friend from California. Nick Khoury, Heinz’s closest colleague at Rockefeller, arrived with his wife after a day of hectic travel, having heard of the accident on the news while on a canoe trip in the Canadian wilderness. And to my surprise, three colleagues from Princeton, John Gager, Al Raboteau, and Jeff Stout, miraculously appeared the next day, like heroes. A science writer who loved Heinz had written an obituary in the New York Times that I saw much later, accompanied by a beautiful photo; other people later told me that they’d seen a notice in Time magazine.
For days I could not sleep, except perhaps in momentary snatches. So long as I stayed awake, I could imagine that what happened was only a nightmare from which, surely, I would wake up. When for moments I dropped off, I’d spend them with Heinz, alive and fully present, then wake with sudden shock—was it still true, had it actually happened, that our world had shattered when his body shattered on the rocks? A funeral: What to do? Three endless days and nights after Heinz’s death, unable to sleep, slightly fortified by the presence of close friends who drove me down to the Episcopal church, I went with them to arrange for a service. Nothing but music, I insisted, and the simplest prayer book service, like our marriage, except that we’d leave time for people who wanted to speak to do so. Friends in town offered to invite people to their nearby home afterward, to eat, drink, and talk—yes, thank you; we’d need that, too.
Right after meeting with the Episcopal priest to make the arrangements for the service, and for his body to be brought in a simple coffin—no euphemisms, it’s about death—we drove out to the Trappist monastery at Snowmass, where our friend Brother Theophane, whose monastic name means “God manifest,” silently stood waiting, tall, bent, and bearded. I walked into the chapel with Theophane, who lit the large single candle reserved for prayer for the dead, and we sat together in silence. His presence, sitting motionless in prayer, opened a deep well of quiet.
After more than an hour, for the first time in three days, I felt some of the vigilance drain out of my body. Enveloped by that silence, I slowly allowed myself to move into it. When that happen
ed, I somehow felt as if I could speak to Heinz. Internally I cried out, “So how do you feel about this?” Of course, I expected no reply. If asked, I would have said that any hint of a response could only be projection. But quick as a shot, I heard a voice—internally, not out loud—saying, “This is fine with me; it’s you I’m concerned about now.” Too shocked and angry to register astonishment, I said—internally, again—“Fine with you? You leave me here with two babies, and it’s fine with you?” When I realized what I was saying, I was completely taken by surprise. How could this be my own mind talking back to me, when I could never have come up with what I’d heard? What had happened was by no means fine with me then, nor is it to this day, nearly three decades later. What startled me most is that, unexpected as these words were, they did sound like something that he might say. I did not know what to make of it, and I left the monastery shaken with wonder.
On the day of the funeral, I went downstairs in the house, surprised to find a friend who’d just arrived from New York ironing a blouse for me to wear. Sarah and David would stay with our neighbor Alice, who would bring them to the gathering afterward. Walking into the small church, I noted that the coffin had been placed below the altar, the windows above opening onto trees and sky. We took our seats in the front row, as friends from the Center for Physics, from the town, and from all over packed the church. Lizzie later told me that she saw me holding on to the metal coffin throughout the service. I do not remember that, nor, as others later told me, that the Trappist monks had come, and sat together in a row near the front, dressed in their work clothes, jeans, flannel shirts, and boots instead of the white wool monastic robes that would have made their presence conspicuous, perhaps because they had taken a vow that ordinarily requires them to stay at the monastery.
The service went as planned, until the officiating priest began to preach—which I’d specifically asked him not to do—urging the congregation not to be angry with God. Angry with God? Doesn’t he realize that many of these people are physicists, that most of them have never been in any church—that he’s talking condescending nonsense? As he droned on, I became so angry with him that I crouched down and held myself fiercely in place, praying that he’d stop before I’d leap up and throttle him. Finally he caught my eye and quit. Then friends stood and spoke, words that I do not remember, but welcome words, spoken through love and grief. Last of all, Seth, who’d said that he wouldn’t be able to speak but offered to make music instead, surprised us—and himself—by walking down from the loft where he’d been playing the flute. Standing in front, next to the coffin, he told us about the wonderful day they’d had, climbing to the top of Pyramid Peak, eating lunch in a meadow while looking out over the glorious mountains and valley, talking and joking before they started their descent. When Seth finished speaking, there was silence; we all sensed that the service was over. We embraced, cried, laughed, hugged, and talked, and swarmed over to the lavish garden where our friends had prepared a simple and lovely feast.
A few days later, Father Joseph, the abbot at St. Benedict’s monastery, called to say that the monks would like to offer a mass for Heinz. Touched by their generosity, since they knew that Heinz was certainly not a Catholic, and likely would not have identified as Christian, I went to the monastery with a few friends one clear summer evening. While a friend carried David and held Sarah’s hand as they walked outside among the fields and trees, we walked through the silent corridors into the simple brick chapel. After the usual prayers and readings, we sat in silence. Then, from that deep well of silence that often enveloped the monastery, Joseph spoke, perhaps for two minutes, in words as clear and simple as water. Having heard a child, whom he assumed was three-month-old David, crying in the hall outside the chapel, he said, “At this moment, we all feel like that child, crying in the hall; we don’t understand; we are shaken with grief; we ask for the consolation of God’s spirit.” Afterward, I hugged and thanked him and the others, hugely grateful that their monastic practice allowed for such openhearted grace.
Later that week, I drove into town to go to an exercise class, having decided to do anything at all that might alleviate even the slightest fraction of the agony. But moments after starting to exercise, I suddenly felt faint and sat down. Then, to my horror, I saw that boils had raised all over my body. Hardly able to move, I called Katie, who arrived and immediately drove me to the hospital’s emergency room. When a doctor came in, he surveyed the situation, gave me an injection, and asked what happened. Through storms of tears I stammered out what I could, adding defiantly, “I got through our son’s death; I’ll get through this.” He stopped, and looked at me severely for a few moments. Then he said, “This is what we call acute traumatic stress reaction. Don’t think that having survived your son’s death makes you an expert. Actually, that makes it much worse.”
During those strange, interminable evenings, when Heinz never came home, Seth came over nearly every night to keep us company, often playing on the floor with the children. After I put them to bed, we’d sit and talk. When Mark had died, Heinz and I shared together the grief we both felt. Now that he was gone, Seth and I sought some consolation talking for hours by the fireside, on nights when sleep had fled. We talked endlessly about what had happened during the hike, going over each detail again and again. We knew that Heinz had hiked that same trail many times before and was a careful climber. How, then, had this happened? Seth described how he first saw Heinz fall, how he uttered no sound, wholly focused instead on trying to grasp the ledge with his hands, but could not get a hold; how then he fell down about three hundred feet onto bare rock. He could not see what happened, but by then the men of mountain rescue had told us that his body went on falling for a thousand feet farther. Any sense of safety that I’d ever had shattered with him. I was overwhelmed to realize that the man whose enormous competence and care I’d counted on could have been, himself, so shockingly vulnerable. The images in my mind had never stopped since the accident; every few seconds I still could see him fall, over and over, a tape loop endlessly repeating.
One evening, our close friend Judith Schramm came over, having offered to help me sort out Heinz’s papers, which I suddenly realized I could not have even touched by myself. We sat on the floor of the room he’d used as his office, with windows overlooking the forests and mountains, putting papers into cardboard boxes. The words of one letter he’d written two days before he died remained indelibly inscribed in my mind. Responding to an invitation to speak at a physics conference in Holland, he’d written a note to the colleague who’d invited him, saying,
Dear Professor ——, Thank you for your kind invitation to speak at the physics conference in Amsterdam this fall. Although the topic sounds very interesting, I regret that I am unable to attend at this time. Since my wife and I have two small children, we never spend more than one day apart.
Heinz hadn’t mentioned the invitation to me, and we’d never talked about an agreement like that, which was simply implicit in the choices we made and the way that we’d lived. Although to this day I treasure what he wrote, I wanted to cry out and protest, “But now you’ve been gone for more than a whole week!”
Throughout those nameless days, my temper exploded at slight frustrations. Trembling, starting in my stomach, would spread until my whole body was shaking. On the floor, I’d bend over involuntarily, head to the ground, emitting a strange keening sound I’d never heard before. Sometimes outbursts of sobs began uncontrollably; more often, I’d try to cry, but no tears would come. Although grieving and raging, I hardly dared feel storms of rage, could not bear to turn against the man I’d loved so dearly. He’s the one who died, I thought; he hadn’t intended to die, surely didn’t want to. I kept recalling what Seth told me, how he’d spent the last seconds of his life desperately scrambling to get a handhold. How, then, could we blame him? Nevertheless, huge waves of emotion crashed over us. How could he have abandoned us now—just as we were starting to recover from Mark’s death? Why hadn’t
he thought of us when taking such risks with his life? In snatches of sleep, I’d see him, overjoyed to see him alive; but sometimes, in dreams, he’d turn away, inexplicably indifferent, as he never did in life, leaving only desolation. Years passed before I realized, through the help of someone who’d been similarly bereaved, that sobs without tears are a form of anger. Alone at night, I ferociously fought back tears, unable to cry; yet even when breath, so often stopped and suppressed, turned into bronchitis, then pneumonia, I resisted the tears, still feeling that once they started, they’d never stop.
Finally, raw and desperate, I called a friend, saying, “You know everyone in town; what therapist would you suggest I see?” After she mentioned several names, she said of one, “Her husband died in a plane crash when she had three small children.” “I’ll go to her.” When I did, the therapist, knowing what had happened, opened by saying, “You have no choice about how you feel about this. Your only choice is whether to feel it now or later.” Although her comment helped a little at first, during the next twenty-five years I would keep discovering that how much I was able to feel, or not, and when, was not a matter of choice.
Why Religion? Page 11