by Sukey Forbes
They monitored her blood continuously, and the level of oxygen reaching her brain wasn’t good. I continued to sing, and I continued to hold her hand, but I became increasingly aware of the nagging internal voice telling me that—best case—the little girl who’d asked for extra hugs last night was never coming back the same as before.
Conscious. Unconscious. Rational. Emotional. There was no longer any part of me that could hide from what was happening. I stopped saying, “Please don’t go.” My mantra became simply, “I love you. I’m here. I love you. I love you.” She shouldn’t have to linger just to comfort her parents, not if she didn’t want to. I wanted her to know how much she was loved. The rest was up to her.
The police had found Michael. He rushed in looking dazed and terrified, and I was immensely relieved, for his sake mostly. He stood over her bed and did what I could not bring myself to do, which was to stare directly into her face, bloated from the fluids and the CPR. He leaned down and kissed her and whispered a few words of comfort, but then he was so overcome that he had to step back out into the hall. The doctors and the nurses briefed him. There was nothing but bad news.
He spoke with Anne, who was on the line from Maryland, and when he came back into the room he asked for a priest to say last rites. The best they could manage was a protestant chaplain. She arrived and began to say prayers at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t listen. I wanted her to go away. My body was already numb, and now my mind started going numb as well, overwhelmed by a kind of white noise. More and more I was floating up above the reality inside this hospital room. My child wasn’t dying. Why was this stranger mumbling at the foot of the bed? She wasn’t even a Catholic. She was annoying to me; was she at all helping Michael? He seemed oblivious to her presence.
When I came back down from my out-of-body moment, the doctors were still taking turns pounding on Charlotte’s chest. I saw Michael standing in the doorway. My husband who was always so in command looked small and fragile and utterly broken. He looked at me and held my gaze as he said haltingly but resolutely “Call it off. Stop it.” He was talking to the doctors.
They stopped the CPR and stepped back from the bed. A nurse turned off the monitors. Another removed the IV and clipped the oxygen tube. Then all the medical personnel began to drift out of the room until it was just the three of us—Michael and me and our dead child suspended in a killing silence.
I was so cold I was shaking all over, but otherwise I sat utterly rigid, listening as the hum of the fluorescent lights became unbearably loud. Michael crumbled and started to weep. He threw himself completely into his grief with no inhibitions. He climbed into the bed beside our little girl and began to sob uncontrollably.
I had no idea what to do, so I stayed exactly where I was, sitting rigid next to Charlotte, holding her hand. I watched, detached but envious of my husband. He had such immediate access to his tears as he lay there and cried and held her and stroked her hair.
I became fixated on the warmth leaving her body. How could I keep her warm? Should I lie on top of her, too? Wrap her in more sheets?
After a while it became clear to me that the body lying there was only that: a body. Charlotte—her soul, her essence—had moved on. Just as I was unsure of the exact moment that life left her I was also not sure of the moment her soul slipped out of her body. They did not seem to leave at the same time. It was only as that realization began to settle in—that both had left her body—that I could let go of her hand.
A nurse came back in and Michael got to his feet and pulled himself together, but he didn’t return to his usual posture. The strong and confident Michael of yesterday was gone. He looked diminished, shattered and defeated. He looked the way I thought I ought to feel. The only feeling I could access was a physical sense of having been eviscerated. I felt as though my innards had been removed and I was an empty vessel, devoid of any feeling or emotion that could connect me to humanity. In those first few moments I was an automaton moving in circles and waiting for the next directive.
“I’ll go see about Beatrice,” Michael said. Then he added, “I’ll call the family.”
I sat waiting for the bolt of lightning. It never came. There was no drama. My world had simply stopped.
The nurse turned to me and asked if we wanted footprints. I said yes.
Handprints? Yes.
She went to get the paper.
I still had no idea what to do, or how to act, but when the nurse came back I told her I wanted a cast of Charlotte’s foot. I don’t know why the thought popped into my head, but she had such beautiful feet. The nurse said it wasn’t such a good idea.
“I want her pigtails,” I said. The nurse handed me a pair of scissors.
Slowly, painstakingly, I cut off the little sprigs of blond hair and put them in my bag. Then I lifted up one of the pigtails Charlotte had put my own hair in that morning, and brought the scissors up to cut that off as well. The nurse reached up and took the scissors out of my hand. Neither of us said a word.
I closed my eyes and stroked Charlotte’s face, tracing the outline of her nose, her ears, running my fingers over her brow line like a mother inspecting her newborn, or a sculptor trying to get the details exactly right. I was trying to imprint her features in my memory. I was very aware that this would be the last time I would ever touch her.
It was at this moment of total stillness, of no sound but the buzzing of the lights, when Maria, our Peruvian nanny, came in, understandably very upset, and threw herself onto the bed next to my daughter’s body. I was aware that her grief and shock, so emotionally expressed, had the effect of relegating me and my unwanted stoicism even further to the margins. In the welter of complicated feelings, I had the unwelcome one that she was acting like the proper mother and I was acting like a mere bystander. The Forbes steeliness came to the fore, though, and instead of screaming at her I calmly asked her to go help Michael with Beatrice, to go with him to pick up Cabot at summer camp, and to drive them all home.
She did leave, reluctantly, and for the first time the silence was complete.
So what do I do now? I was waiting for a sign, but none came. I knew that, eventually, the orderlies would come and take Charlotte down to the morgue. I’d already made the distinction between saying good-bye to my daughter and saying good-bye to her physical body. But then a wave of horror overtook me—the image of this person I loved being placed in a refrigerator with an identifying toe tag dangling off of her delicate six-year-old big toe.
Her clothes lay jumbled in the corner, and I reached over and picked up her sweater. I wanted her to be warm. But another part of me kept thinking, “Charlotte’s not here anymore.” It was only as I felt her body become cool and rigid that it became possible for me to leave. But not yet. This was my last chance. I climbed up onto the bed the way Michael had, but I still couldn’t look at her. I didn’t want her distorted face to be the last image I would have of her. I lay beside her and began to sob like Michael, but I felt like a bulimic putting a finger down my throat to purge. For the past three hours I had been in crisis mode, locked in my head, trying to be the responsible parent, on hand to watch over and comfort her and do whatever needed to be done. Now I was howling like a wounded animal, but it didn’t feel like me. My WASP psyche was so at war with itself, not wanting to make a spectacle, not wanting to disturb anyone else in the hospital, yet desperate to fully feel and fully express the pain. Even the sobs from the now absent Maria seemed to indict me. Eventually I lay there in silence, pulling her to my belly with my arms around her, aware of the beating of my own heart and wishing that either mine, too, would stop or hers would start. Pleading to no one in particular that we could go back to the innocent and perfect state of hearts beating in unison when she had been floating in the protection of my womb.
I was still there beside Charlotte’s body forty-five minutes later when Michael came back from bringing the kids home from camp. We
didn’t have much to say to each other, but after a while we joined hands—the three of us—and Michael and I said the Lord’s Prayer. I spoke the words as earnestly as I could, but, again, it didn’t feel like me. I did it for Michael.
Later, as we left the hospital, I went by the nurses’ station to thank everyone individually. It became a receiving line, seven or eight people in a row. Some of the staff could not make eye contact. Most of them were crying, but not me. I felt very conscious of that. These people looked at me with great sympathy, and yet I was saying to myself, “I am a freak. They are crying. Why am I not the one crying?” The internal monologue had begun. “I’m not doing this right. How do you do this right?”
• • •
My brother Jamie, Charlotte’s godfather, was waiting at the house when we arrived, along with Maggie Taylor from next door. She came over and gave me a hug. I knew that Maria was giving Beatrice and Cabot their dinner, and I also knew we had to tell them soon.
“I can’t go in there,” I said.
Maggie said, “Let’s take a walk.”
Jamie said he’d go back and stay with the kids while Maggie and Michael and I set off along the winding road that resembled a country road in Vermont, trying to collect our thoughts, trying to figure out what we were going to say to the kids. We said very little to each other, and the fact that my feet were stumbling forward was the only assurance I had that I was still conscious, still alive. Then I noticed the sun going down over my neighbor’s big maple tree, and I felt an urgent impulse to tug it back up, or, like Superman trying to save Lois Lane, to make the earth spin backward. I didn’t want this day to end, because this was the last day that Charlotte and I would ever be together. Charlotte was alive on August 18, 2004. Charlotte died on August 18, 2004. The fading of light into darkness has always seemed solemn and melancholy to me compared to the brightening promise of a sunrise. Never has the darkness lurking beyond that sunset seemed more frightening and empty. How could I turn the page on this day and how could I live in a tomorrow that would not have her in it?
When we came back up the driveway, Charlotte’s godmother, Kim, one of my oldest school friends from Dana Hall, stood waiting for us. She lived in California now, and I wondered how she’d gotten here so fast. She’d been in New Hampshire with her family, she told me, and my sister had reached her by phone. She’d left her six-week-old infant with her mother up in Rye Beach to be with me.
Kim and I walked arm in arm into the mudroom, and I remember looking up on a shelf and seeing a pink cowgirl hat we’d bought for Charlotte on a trip to Nevada. The bizarre thought that crossed my mind was, “We have another daughter. Thank god we don’t have to get rid of all our girl stuff.”
I went upstairs and closed the door and called my friend Sarah back in California. She was a dear friend who just happened to be a therapist, but my urgency in reaching out to her was based more on the experience that we now shared. Three years earlier, her son Wyatt had died of a brain tumor.
“It’s Sukey. Do you have time to talk?”
“Are you okay?” she asked me.
“Charlotte just died. You’re the first person I’ve called.”
“Oh, god . . . Oh, sweetie . . .”
I gave her a second to absorb the information. But I needed advice.
“How do I tell the kids? I don’t know what to say to them.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m just so sorry.”
“How do I tell them? What’s the best way?”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Don’t beat around the bush. Watch their reactions and try to respond. But there’s no way to sugarcoat it.”
We were both crying now. “I never should have had three kids,” I blubbered. “I think I was overwhelmed. Maybe God’s punishing me, you know? I just wasn’t a good enough mother.”
“Stop it. Don’t beat yourself up. You’re trying to take the blame. That’s what children do when they’re trying to make sense of something they can’t possibly understand.”
“I’m not a child.”
“Just don’t go there.”
We talked for another moment, and she said she would fly east as soon as she could. I thanked her for her help, and then we hung up. Restless, I paced in a few small circles but in no particular direction. Then I went back downstairs.
We asked my brother to be with us when we told Cabot and Beatrice because we didn’t know what was going to happen. Was I going to fall apart? Was Michael? I just felt we needed all hands on deck. We gathered everyone together and then we simply went in to the living room, sat down, and told them. My brother was silently crying the whole time, big tears streaming down his cheeks. Jamie had so much more access to his emotions than I did. It was almost as if he were experiencing the feelings for me. Empathy and feeling the pain of others has always come easily to me and I have no problem expressing emotion that is one step removed from me. Perhaps my brother and I share that. I imagined that if the tables had been turned and it had been me in Jamie’s shoes that I might have the same access to the reservoir of sorrow. But this was too close.
Beatrice, only three, sat on Michael’s lap, staring out as if we’d said we were having chicken for dessert. But Cabot was seven. His first response was, “You’re lying. That didn’t happen.” He began to cry only when Michael started to cry.
“This can’t be true,” Cabot went on. “Why couldn’t the doctors save her?”
“She had a special problem with fevers,” I said. “You and Beatrice don’t have that problem. You and Beatrice are going to be okay.”
Then we all just sat there holding hands—Michael looking helpless, the kids looking bewildered, and I still feeling as if I were outside of my body, watching from the ceiling.
That night, when I put Cabot to bed, he said, “Give me a tickle massage.” I rubbed his back and combed my fingers through his hair the way I had done each night since he was tiny.
I felt his little body relaxing, and then he asked me, “Who will I play all our Charlotte games with?”
“I’ll play them with you,” I said as I nuzzled his ear.
“No. You don’t know them, and I can’t teach you because they were our secret.” My throat closed up and I was unable to speak. Drawing him in to me, I spooned his back and lay with him, silently weeping for his loss of his adored sister until eventually he fell asleep. I was able to weep for his pain, but not for my own.
My own question was, “Where is she? Where has my daughter gone?”
My husband and all his relatives would tell me she was in heaven, but I just wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I’d never be content until I had a better answer.
5
Reeling
That night, doped up on the Ambien for sleep and the Valium for anxiety that our doctor had prescribed, Michael and I struggled toward whatever rest we could find. Our house had an odd layout that required us to go through Charlotte’s bedroom to reach our own and we weren’t able to handle that, so we’d spread an air mattress on the floor of our upstairs sitting room. Before I finally nodded off, I wondered just how much Ambien it would take to sleep and sleep and sleep until I could one day wake up and be healed. Magical thinking had me wishing it could be that easy.
It seemed like only moments later that the midmorning sun woke me, sharp and bright, reflecting off the Tuscan yellow walls. A bird chirped merrily outside the window, and I remember thinking, “Shit. I’m alive.”
During that first moment of awareness I thought about the weather, the mid-August in New England “makes you want to live forever” freshness and crispness, the perfect days of bright sun and no humidity and just a hint of autumn. This had always been my favorite time of year, and now I knew that I would always associate it with Charlotte’s death.
I heard voices rising from the first floor, and my heart fell. It must be real, then. Yesterday had really ha
ppened, and now there would be people, and I just didn’t have it in me to face them. But then again, I had to.
Michael and I put on the same clothes we had worn the previous day and staggered downstairs, clinging to each other. I heard my cousin Beth’s distinctive and comforting laugh. Beth always knew what to say or do and her laughter was a great vehicle for putting others at ease. She lived in Los Angeles, and I wondered how she had gotten to Boston so quickly. But then from the stairs I could see into the kitchen and it was filled with people—my mother and brother, Anne and Harry, Betty and Harry Senior—all with grief-stricken faces. Then I remembered the calls Michael said he was going to make after he’d left Charlotte’s side. There had been night flights, early morning flights. This was definitely real.
Everyone stood as we entered the kitchen and there was a kind of group hug with murmurings of consolation, and all the while I was thinking how much I did not want this attention. I had already put on my game face, and now I was busily thinking about how I was going to be able to comfort these loved ones. Action was the only way I knew how to respond. They all seemed so shattered, and there was something about their sorrow that frightened me, because it confirmed just how awful this was. But I knew that part of their healing process was to be there for me, and so it was my obligation to perform for them, or so it seemed. My mother pulled me aside and said, “You’re okay. Just do what you have to do.”
Anne was cooking scrambled eggs for everyone, with Julie and Gracie helping serve. She asked me if I was hungry and I shook my head. From that moment on, about every half hour throughout the day someone would ask me if I wanted to eat something, and as often as not they would hand me a banana. Occasionally I would take a bite, then invariably spit it out. It was like trying to eat cotton.