Mom is exhausted in New York, waiting for Ben’s baby, who may not appear for a while as the due date seems to have been miscalculated.
Cecily and I take a walk together. Her dogs run ahead, and one of them starts barking at something in the driveway. As we approach, I hear a soft chirping sound.
“Oh no!” Cecily says. “It’s a baby bird. It must have fallen out of its nest. Oh my God, I can’t look!” She covers her face.
I shout to the dogs to leave the baby bird alone. As I lean down to see if it’s okay, it suddenly bursts into action and flies off into the woods, and I hear a much louder chirping. I can’t see the bird now, so I turn around.
“I think it’s okay,” I tell Cecily. “It flew off into the woods, and I’m pretty sure I heard its mother.”
“Phew,” Cecily says. “Wow, Cinda, you’re so brave. I can’t handle things like that, you know, injured animals.”
Later, I reflect on how I used to react the way Cecily did, how I would flinch and not want to see any blood or pain. My instinct today was to run up to it and offer myself. No fear in that moment, but a new willingness to see beyond blood and injury and threat and look straight into the experience.
The desire for another baby is strong today. I’m imagining all the attention I’d get and the joy it would bring. I feel like such a victim most the time around the subject of our reproduction, a sense of defeatism. Then the rebel in me gets activated, saying, You don’t have to lie down and take it. You’re young; you can still have another one. Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and go for it! Make your own destiny. Don’t pity yourself and forever say, “We ended on such a sad note.”
August 21
Maud and Grace arrive for a few days. And with no imminent birth in sight, Mom and Ralph return from New York, bringing my stepbrother Johnny and his family. Ten-month-old Arthur is adorable, good medicine. Yet every time he smiles, I feel a stab and think, We missed that one with Theo. I remember how in the early days after Theo died, I concentrated on all the pain he avoided and the pain he spared us by dying so young. Now my heart begins to let in all the small moments of joy we’re missing. How he would have changed before our eyes, growing into himself day by day, a beautiful unfolding. Little Arthur’s beaming at me burns its way through me bit by bit.
August 24
I’m drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream when I hear the phone ring. Mom answers it, and I hear her greet Caroline. I go upstairs and get Dicken, telling him it’s his mom.
After a ten-minute conversation, Dicken hangs up the phone and shakes his head. “Giles went to a hospice this morning,” he tells me. “He was delirious, trying to pull out his drip, and had to be sedated. I’m going down to the library so I can get online and buy us tickets. I need to get over there!”
He grabs the rental car keys and heads out.
*
Dicken comes back half an hour later. He is distraught.
“I was about to book us tickets when I remembered, I don’t have my bloody passport here!”
“Oh my God. Are you sure?”
“I remember putting it back in the drawer at home. I didn’t think I’d need it. How could I be so stupid?”
“You’re weren’t stupid, honey,” I say. “We weren’t planning to fly internationally. You couldn’t have known.”
“But I always bring my passport. This is the first time I decided not to, thinking I could get by with my license and not risk losing the passport.”
I wonder if he did this subconsciously, if it was his way of not looking reality in the face. But I don’t say anything.
Dicken calls Tom back in Oregon and asks him to FedEx his passport so we can all fly over as soon as possible. We’ll have to wait at least another day and a half.
In bed, Dicken and I talk late into the night.
“I can’t believe Giles is going,” I say, “will soon be gone for good.”
“It would be nice if he can hold on, but it sounds unlikely,” Dicken says.
“Did Becca say how the kids are doing?”
“They said goodbye …” Dicken’s voice breaks. Then, “They’re at the Aldeburgh Festival today. Becca didn’t want them to miss it.”
“We were all there together last year, remember?”
“Yes, I’m glad we did that with Giles.”
“Giles and Theo too.”
“Yes, little Theo too. How amazing.”
August 25
I toss and turn most of the night. In the wee hours I get up to pee and run into Dicken, who is coming back from the bathroom.
“The baby was born,” he whispers. “Your mum just told me.”
“Oh my gosh!”
“They had a girl.”
We go back to bed for a few hours.
*
We wake to the sound of Maud’s voice. She’s got the phone in her hand. “Dicken, it’s Becca for you.” My face must register shock and fear, because Maud says to me quietly, “I think everything is okay. She sounds fine.”
Dicken pulls his boxers on and goes downstairs. I hear him say, “Oh, Bex,” and begin to cry. I rush downstairs, expecting the bad news. But he doesn’t signal anything to me, and they keep talking, so I assume Giles is still hanging in there. At one point Dicken says, “That’s how it was with Theo.” For a split second I wonder if he did die, but I tell myself, No, Dicken is just talking about the experience of being with someone before they die. I imagine Giles alive, hanging on, with his friends and family around him, loving him. Tomorrow we will fly there and see him ourselves, and tell him how much we love him.
I go into the living room, crying a little from seeing Dicken so moved. A few minutes later, I enter the kitchen and see Dicken, now off the phone, weeping with Mom and Maud. He looks at me and says, “Giles died last night.”
I burst into tears and we hold each other. He recounts what his sister shared with him: “Becca was with him, along with Charles, Giles’s father. Giles’s breathing changed and Charles told Becca that the end was probably near.” Dicken pauses, wipes his nose with his sleeve. Mom, Maud, and I are all huddled close to him, listening intently. “After he died, Becca stayed with his body all night, then helped the nurses wash him, saying it was like washing a gladiator’s body, with all the scars and holes from his many surgeries. Becca said in all those years of fighting the cancer, he never, ever complained. A true hero.”
In a fog, we gather our belongings, try to eat some breakfast, and set off for Albany, where we rent a car and drive to Boston. Soon we’re on the flight to Heathrow via Iceland.
I find myself unable to believe that Giles is really gone for good. It doesn’t seem possible, even with the warning of his gradual decline. The end came so fast—merciful for him, I hope. Just last Monday, he was setting off for their week in Aldeburgh, signing up for the tennis tournament as always. And now he’s gone. Utterly gone. No more laughing with him. No more curling up to watch a movie. Just last year, he and I were walking back from lantern night in Aldeburgh, arms around each other, his breath slightly sweet from beer, reminiscing about all of his magical summers there. We said goodbye that night and I never saw him again. I spoke to him on the phone in the spring, talking about Theo. That was our last conversation. I wrote him a goodbye letter in the early summer, then didn’t send it because I’d heard from Becca that he wasn’t talking about death. I figured he didn’t want the bare truth acknowledged so openly.
I’m very sorry I didn’t encourage Dicken to go over sooner. He certainly regrets that, and the timing with the passport. But I suppose we have to trust the unfoldment, just as under the grief and anger and stunned shock that he is gone, we have to trust his life and his death.
I keep thinking about what Caroline wrote in an e-mail yesterday: We shouldn’t talk about “life and death,” but “birth and death,” and all of it is life.
August 26
We finally arrive at Becca’s after a five-hour crawl through bank holiday weekend traffic. I am in
tears as we get out of the car, and Becca comes out to greet us, waving bravely, the absence of Giles glaring. As we embrace, she says, “We’re okay,” in a very sober voice.
Olivia, Becca and Giles’s daughter, comes out looking worried but not in pieces. She points to her head and says, “I have lice, that’s why my hair is greasy. It’s an herbal oil treatment.”
“Come in, come in,” Becca says. “I’m just making some pasta for supper.” She trips as she climbs the steps into the house.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Oh, fine,” Becca says. “It’s these moccasins I’m wearing, they’re Giles’s. I couldn’t find my own shoes. Fergus! Where are you? They’ve arrived. Come and say hello.”
We sit with Becca and the kids as they eat their pasta. After dinner, our boys join their cousins in the TV room while Becca tells us the whole story of Giles’s swift decline—his terrible night, sitting on the side of the bed shaking, his arms outstretched, not quite making sense; then on his back tossing and turning, saying, “Jesus!” over and over in a distressing tone.
“I couldn’t get cell phone reception in our rental house in Aldeburgh, but I finally went up the road in the early morning and found a spot where I could get through, and I reached my favorite nurse. She told me to get Giles into hospice right away. I called all our close friends, and they came over to say goodbye, one by one, the children too, crying. Giles said to Fergus, Oh lad, don’t cry, and held him as he wept.”
“Oh, Bex,” Dicken says, reaching for his sister’s hand.
“Later, he was barely conscious, in a lot of discomfort. He didn’t speak again until two days later, his last words to a nurse who gave him a shot—Ow … Fuck off! Great, isn’t it? His last words …”
We all smile.
“Later, I realized he was uncomfortable for some reason, and I finally figured out it was because he couldn’t pee, so I demanded they do something, and they got him sedated and catheterized. He went downhill fast, his eyes fixed. Soon Charles noticed his breathing had changed and told me he thought he’d die that night. Sure enough, he started to struggle for breath, gasping a bit; a little distressing. Then there were long gaps, and he died. I stayed with him for a long time. In the morning it looked like he was smiling. It was amazing, it really was!” Becca gets her cell phone out and shows us a photograph, and it does look like Giles is smiling. “I’m so glad I got to be with him for so long. His body was like a shell and that comforted me, made me certain his spirit was elsewhere.”
Becca seems amazing. She breaks into tears occasionally, often when listening to music or talking about Giles’s death. She says she’s relieved that the pain and suffering are over for him, and that her stress is gone—the illness stress. She speaks of how well he left things, that he said it’s like leaving the party on a high note: the kids flowering, the business thriving, their marriage better than ever. “He said he would have loved to stay and find out what happens next, but he had no regrets. He felt fulfilled.”
As we go over reading ideas for the funeral, Becca suddenly says to me, “I’ll move on, I won’t live in the past. Giles and I were never clingy. We could always go out on our own, we were always independent, like that marriage reading from The Prophet. I’m just sad that I won’t be able to count on seeing him at the end of the day.”
At bedtime, I settle Jasper on the floor in Fergus’s room. Fergus, about a year older than Jasper, has been upbeat all evening, but moments of dark worry cross his face from time to time. He is chatting now, telling Jasper about some English TV show he loves. I notice the collection of photographs by his bed, and come over to look closer.
“Oh, look at that one!” I gush. “Look how sweet you are, so little in your dad’s arms.”
Fergus smiles broadly. Then an expression of stunned sadness comes into his eyes, and I wonder if he’ll cry, but he quickly turns his attention back to Jasper and asks which Harry Potter recording they should listen to tonight.
August 27
In the early morning, I come out of the bathroom to find Becca standing in the hall, looking upset. “Would you mind getting in bed with me?”
“Not at all.” I feel sad and sweet at the same time.
I slide into bed next to her, and we hold hands.
“I can’t believe you’re sleeping by yourself,” I say. “If it were me, I’d have Jasper or one of my sisters in bed with me every night.”
“You know me, I’m not like that.”
“Are you sleeping okay?”
“For the most part, yes. I’m actually very tired.”
“You don’t even need sleeping pills or anything like that?”
“No, I’m really okay.”
I squeeze her hand and we lie there together for a while. I notice a spy novel sitting on the bed table on Giles’s side, a bookmark partway through it.
Then Becca says, “I miss him, I really do. I’ve had him every day for fifteen years. I hate being on my own.”
And for the first time since we arrived, I see my sister-in-law break down.
*
Becca keeps herself busy in the day, opening cards and letters, organizing the funeral, helping us find photographs for a slide show we’re assembling. It’s almost uncanny how together she seems. I wonder if she was already coming to terms with the loss—no real surprise, three years to slowly grieve and let go—or if they weren’t that dependent on each other emotionally. I know I would be undone, incapacitated. Lost. Desperate. Yet she’s almost normal, able to talk about him, look at photographs and videos, receive mail in his name, all without a flinch or tears.
August 28
In the morning, we attend Sunday service at the local church. Becca and I cry through the hymns.
In the communion blessing, the priest says something about eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. Jasper, who has never been to church, makes a face and says, “That’s disgusting!” Becca, eyes still wet, bursts out laughing and later says she could feel Giles roaring with laughter.
*
E-mail to my brother:
Can’t wait to hear all about Maggie. Everyone is moved that she came so soon after Giles left, that they were crossing the veils at the same time. Becca said Giles was very much like a newborn during his last hours, not quite conscious and unable to swallow anything, but extremely thirsty and sucking on a wet sponge like a baby rooting for milk. His father stroked his hair and said to Becca, “This is my baby.” He and Becca were with him when he died, telling him it was okay to let go, that he didn’t have to fight anymore. They stayed with his body all night, washing it and dressing him in clean pajamas. His midwives, as Caroline said.
It’s a relief to be here, I think because we’re in the field of all the grace that comes in these seemingly unbearable situations, very much like with Theo. I’m also finding grace in the role of supporter, and I feel all the gifts Theo brought shining through me now, especially the gift of being able to walk through a loss of this magnitude. It makes me feel more deeply grounded than I have in a long time, close to Theo and to Giles, and to myself and the mystery of being alive. I can see why people who’ve been through these things feel compelled to serve others afterwards. It calls one into the moment like nothing else and brings forward a strong sense of courage and love.
The kids are amazing, all of them. Their beauty blows me away, each one in his or her particular stage. It makes me excited to get to know Maggie and to share moments of life with her. Please give her a big kiss from us.
Love to you all,
Cinda
August 28
E-mails from Ben:
Hi Cinda,
What a beautiful note. I just read it aloud to P.J., who is nursing Maggie on the bed behind me, and I could hardly get through it for sobbing so hard. In our joy and bliss we have been thinking about Giles and Theo a great deal. Regis, Jean, and Michelle were in the hospital room with us on Thursday morning when the call came from Maudie telling us that Giles had gone
. We all cried for him, as P.J. and I have cried for Theo every day, given our now profound sense of how unbearable the grief of losing a child must be.
Hi again Cinda,
I meant to tell you that had Maggie been a boy, we would have called him George Theodore Miller Macrory. I asked you months ago how you would feel if we used the name, and then we sort of shelved it. But Jasper raised the idea again after you got back from Costa Rica, really cute and so moving. (I had already spoken to him and let him know the names we were planning on—“Oh, Maggie is a nice name!”—and was talking to Kevin when he came back on to suggest that it would be really nice if we used Theodore. What a love!) And we decided it would work out perfectly as above. Alas, we just don’t like the female version so much, but please know how much we have been thinking about your beautiful boy …
Love,
Ben
August 30
It’s the day before the funeral, and we’re working on the slide show of Giles’s life to show at the reception. Going through Giles’s photo albums, Caroline exclaims, “My goodness, Bex, Giles had a girlfriend who looks just like you!”
Becca says, “Mum, that is me.”
We all laugh.
Becca adds, “It’s just like the time we were all watching England play in the World Cup, and Mum said, That’s amazing, that player looks exactly like David Beckham. Giles rolled his eyes in exasperation—it was David Beckham, England’s captain.”
August 31
Becca asks me to drive with her to the funeral, which is deeply touching to me. On the way she says, “Have you thought about working with bereaved people? You’re a natural, you know.”
My eyes tear up. “You know, I’ve been thinking about it lately. I might call a hospice when I get home, see if I can volunteer.”
“The hospice we had was just wonderful.” She tells me the story of Giles’s last days, which I’ve already heard once from Dicken and once from her, but I just listen.
We park the car near the church. Becca takes a big breath and says, “Okay, here we go,” and opens the car door and steps out. She walks so quickly I can hardly keep up. The yard is thronged with people dressed up and looking somber. We walk in and hear a Cat Stevens song playing through the large church. Every pew is filled, the balcony too.
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