by Jackie Hance
“Mommy, can I go with you?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, smiling to myself. The trip would take longer, but it would be more fun with her along.
“Mommy, can I go, too?” Alyson asked, jumping up from the sofa.
And before I could say yes, Katie had piped in, “Mommy, me, too!”
So we’d all headed out together and left Warren in peace to enjoy a baseball game on TV. At our favorite market, the girls had grabbed for one of the portable scanners. They liked the high-tech shopping method of selecting a product off the shelf, scanning it, and then dropping it in the bag. The personal devices were meant to make shopping quicker, but with Emma, Alyson, and Katie each clamoring “My turn to scan!” at every item, a jaunt through the aisles took forever.
But how could I complain? The grocery store was like a giant playground for us. Sometimes Katie liked to ride on the end of the shopping cart, but generally the girls wanted to help. That day, as usual, I gave them little tasks.
“Can you go to that case and get milk?” I asked—and then watched as they raced off together to decide on the perfect carton.
At some point, Alyson and Emma dashed to the end of the aisle to pick out the spaghetti they wanted. I got distracted with something else, and when I rolled the cart to where they should be, they had disappeared.
“Emma? Aly?”
No answer. I panicked.
“Emma and Aly? Where are you?”
Fright ripped through me like a thunderbolt. I searched frantically but no little girls were playing by the pasta. I was just about to raise an alarm for help when they veered back around the corner of the aisle, giggling at the surprise treat they’d found for me.
“There you are,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Did we do something wrong?” Emma asked, worried.
“Only that I couldn’t see you,” I said weakly, pulling them close in a double hug. My heart had been pounding so hard at the fear of losing them that I could hardly breathe. It had taken me a few minutes to recover my high spirits.
Now I knew that if I stepped into the supermarket again, I would be looking for the girls to reappear around every corner. And they never would. It wasn’t worth steeling myself against the haunting memories just to buy a loaf of bread.
Going into any public place also meant worrying about the stares and whispers of strangers and casual acquaintances. I’m still not sure it really happened, but I imagined that people who recognized me from TV news reports gaped at me in shock and curiosity. Did they hope I’d cry? Did they want me to be courageous? Maybe they just wondered what somebody looks like when everything that matters has been ripped away. Some people would come over and touch my arm.
“Oooh, Jackie. How are you?” they’d ask, with that look of sadness.
I appreciated the sympathy, but I always wondered whether people thought poorly of me as a mom. I didn’t want to have to defend myself to strangers or offer an explanation to try to counter what they’d read in the newspapers. In an odd way, I was embarrassed, horrified at being linked to the sordid events of the “Taconic Mom.” I wanted people to acknowledge the girls and remember them, but I didn’t want anyone to focus on me.
“I’m praying for you,” people often said.
“Don’t pray for me. Pray for the girls,” I always replied, rushing away.
Still, I understood the fascination. The worst had happened to me. For years, I had been just like every other mom in our town dashing around with her kids, and now I was the walking embodiment of every parent’s bleakest nightmare. From being an ordinary woman, I had become a marked woman, with a metaphoric scarlet letter: T for Tragic, or L for Lost Everything.
When a tragedy of this magnitude occurs, people instinctively scramble for reasons why it could never happen to them. If someone whose very existence has been devastated by disaster is really no different from you, that means you’re vulnerable, too. Finding an explanation (however false) for what the other person did wrong makes you feel more in control of your own destiny.
One day when I was out walking the dog, a woman I barely knew walked by and stopped in her tracks on seeing me.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said, bursting into tears. “If I were you, I couldn’t go on.”
Never had admiration been so misplaced. She saw me as some hard-shelled other who had been chosen for tragedy because I could cope with it. But I was just another mom, exactly like her. I didn’t want to go on. I still thought of killing myself every day, but that took courage, too. I had no maps or guideposts. Nobody had written a book I could read on how to behave. I was simply an ordinary woman thrust into a situation far outside what any of us expect or imagine.
You are me, I wanted to tell her. I am you. This could happen to any of us.
My life stood as scary proof that you can do everything right—follow all the expected paths of college, marriage, children, community—and still be shattered. Being a good person doesn’t protect you from the randomness of life and death. My children were innocent victims. Warren and I had done nothing wrong—certainly nothing to warrant pain of this magnitude. Strangers could look at me with derision or disdain or doubt, but that didn’t change the fact that tragedy had landed on our household for no obvious reason.
• • •
I suppose people felt safer about their own futures if they could list all the ways I was to blame. Vicious blogs appeared online, postings by people who didn’t know me or any real facts. Their opinions should have been meaningless, but I couldn’t stop reading them. Warren would find me sobbing at my computer at 2 a.m., crushed by some callous comment from an anonymous attacker. Warren eventually took down the Wi-Fi in our house and shut off the Internet. But it was too late. The cruel remarks were already ingrained in my mind:
She must have known Diane was an alcoholic.
She never should have let her kids go in that car.
Somebody could have stopped Diane after Emma called crying.
Rationally, I knew the answers to all of those “should-haves.”
First, we had never seen Diane drink anything more than a single beer or the occasional piña colada and had certainly never ever seen her drunk.
Second, Diane was family, and we trusted and even relied on each other. To people who seemed dubious, I wanted to say: Think about your own sister or sister-in-law. Would there be any reason to worry about her behind the wheel? If I’d had any inkling that something might go wrong, I would have tied myself to the fender before letting my three innocent girls drive away in that car.
And finally, once we realized something was wrong on the drive home from the campsite, we did everything we could to stop Diane. Warren begged Diane to stay where she was. He got all the information he could and raced out to rescue his family. We called the authorities. We asked for help.
We did everything we could.
In the midst of crisis, all you can do is act honestly, openly, and with the purest of motives. That’s what we did.
Warren and I never spoke publicly or tried to defend ourselves. Truth isn’t always a deterrent to what others choose to believe. People wanted to find reasons why we must have been responsible, and their need to blame played into our own irrational guilt. In my darkest moments, I believed I was responsible. My job in life had been to protect my girls, and I had failed.
Fortunately, my friends had a completely different reaction. I’m told it’s common for friends and acquaintances to run away when a tragedy happens—they’re not sure what to say or how to react, and they struggle with the uncomfortable feeling that bad fortune is contagious. But my crowd did the opposite. My friends became superfriends. They rallied around Warren and me, completely supportive and nonjudgmental.
Most of us had children the same age and, since they liked being together, we bonded through their activities. Our lives were constantly intertwined. My friend Deana taught all the children religion, and she and Isabelle and I were Girl Scout Daisy lead
ers together. We had way too much fun helping our littlest Scouts earn their “petals.” Isabelle and I and several other of our friends banded together to cheer at soccer games or gymnastics practice. With sports, Scouts, and religion, and all the kids feeling like one family, we could have been mistaken for a revival of The Brady Bunch.
The moms’ supportive spirits must have set a good example for the children, because they always looked out for each other. For instance, one little girl in our circle didn’t like to be away from her mom. When she found herself alone one afternoon, I saw Alyson stepping in to hold her hand.
“You’ll be okay,” Alyson told her. Seeing that kindness in my girls made me so proud.
After the accident, however, a veil of shock descended on all the families. We heard about some children who started having nightmares; others who refused to let their parents out of their sight. One of Alyson’s close friends sobbed hysterically when the family set off for a vacation, and it took awhile for the parents to realize that she was terrified about being in the backseat of their minivan on the highway.
Since most of our friends had young children, their first instincts must have been to protect them and try to make them feel secure. But they never wavered in their stalwart support of Warren and me. Isabelle made a schedule so somebody was always in the house to answer the phone, make sure we had food, keep us from sinking into the abyss. Or that was the goal.
We sank, but at least the house stayed clean.
“Dude, who are those two with all the enthusiasm?” my laid-back half brother, Mark, asked in wonderment one day. He had happened to come over when two of my friends, dizzying dervishes of energy, spent the day scrubbing, polishing, and putting things away.
Mark didn’t have to clean or organize to be welcome. Even though he was much younger than me and the product of my dad’s second marriage, I’d always been close to him. He lived in New Jersey and now tried to visit as often as he could.
My friend Karen—the whirling dervish whom Mark admired—had moved to another town awhile before the accident and we saw each other less. But now she came back into my life like a much-needed shot of 5-Hour Energy. After signing up on the schedule to be with us on Tuesdays, she loyally showed up at the house every week. One Tuesday, with all that energy, she didn’t want to sit around.
“Come on, I’m taking you out,” she said matter-of-factly.
“To do what?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter. Shopping. A grown-up playdate. We’re getting out of the house.”
For some reason, I numbly agreed. I didn’t know how I would fill the days and weeks that stretched endlessly ahead of me, so to have one taken care of seemed a strange relief.
And not just one—one day every single week. Tuesdays with Karen became an inviolable part of the schedule. Every week, she arrived at my door with a plan for the day. Since she had three children of her own, the exact same ages as Emma, Alyson, and Katie, she could easily have found reasons to skip a week now and then. But she never did. Even during school vacations, she arranged for babysitters so she wouldn’t have to let me down. I felt guilty—I didn’t want to disrupt anybody’s life. But she never gave me a choice.
“I don’t feel like going out today,” I moaned one Tuesday, huddled on the couch in sweatpants, with no intention of moving.
“You’ll feel better once you’re out,” she said brightly. “Get dressed. We’re going shopping.”
“Not today.”
“Yup, today!” She grinned and clapped her hands, a combination friend, guru, and personal shopper. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Karen, like so many of my friends, seemed instinctively to understand how to help someone sunk in depression:
1. Get them moving.
2. Plan something they can look forward to.
3. Insist they engage in the world.
4. Talk to them.
5. Be a constant presence.
Karen’s depression-fighting strategy usually involved retail therapy. We would go to a mall, browse through stores, buy a few things, have lunch. For those few hours, I’d feel like an ordinary person again rather than a tragic freak. I’m shopping for sweaters! I must be just like everyone else!
One day in Lord & Taylor, a tall, flamboyant makeup artist for one of the major companies stopped us as we wandered down the cosmetics aisle and introduced himself as Sterling.
“Ladies, come on over here. How about a makeover?” he asked, mincing around us. “I can make you even more bee-you-ti-ful.”
I shook my head no, but Karen gave me a little nudge. “Go. Do it.”
“Oh yes, let’s do it!” Sterling said. His prancing was already making me smile, so I let him lead me over to the makeup chair. As I sat down, he studied my face for a moment, then showily whipped out his brushes and pots of color.
“Keep it very natural,” I warned him as he started in.
He nodded and, with a grand gesture, started applying cover-up to the dark circles under my eyes. He moved with such exuberance that a scout for the Alvin Ailey dance troupe would have grabbed him on the spot.
“Oh, what a nice life you ladies have,” he burbled as he made broad strokes across my face. “You get to spend the day lunching and shopping.”
Nice life? I looked over at Karen and we exchanged a smirk. He had no idea; it was such a relief.
When Sterling finished, he held up a mirror for me. His idea of “natural” included red lipstick, bright pink cheeks, and smoky eyes. Not my usual look.
“What do you think?” I asked Karen.
“Bee-you-ti-ful,” she said, and we both laughed.
Maybe I didn’t like the eye shadow shade, but Sterling had given me the perfect makeover. I’d been able to forget who I was for a few minutes—and even laugh. I couldn’t imagine a better transformation.
The excursions with Karen gave a measure of consistency to my week, and I looked forward to Tuesdays with an excitement way out of proportion to what we actually did. The jaunts gave Warren some peace of mind, too—for several hours each week he didn’t have to worry about me, and I wasn’t likely to call.
Since shopping with a friend seemed like the definition of normalcy, I felt a surge of satisfaction at taking out my purchases at night. Warren took a different view—particularly when I came home every Tuesday for four weeks straight with a new hat and scarf. To me, nothing is more comforting and homespun than a knit scarf, and my heart was so cold that any sensation of warmth gave me pleasure. Small purchases, but the pretty layers of bright-colored yarn made me happy. I liked the textures of the nubbly knits, and wrapping myself in a snug new scarf gave me a feeling—both literal and metaphoric—of being cozy and protected.
After seeing me unwrap my new knits every week for a month, Warren grimaced when I opened up another shopping bag one Tuesday evening.
“Another hat and scarf?” he asked. “What do you need them for?”
“I like them,” I said, my voice rising.
“Okay, but you’ve bought one every week. How many hats and scarves can a person wear?”
“Why do you care?”
“It just seems like a waste of money.”
I felt ready to explode. “Really, Warren? My kids are dead and you’re going to question me about a hat and scarf? If I want a thousand hats and scarves, who the hell cares?”
“Jackie—”
“I mean it!” I screamed. “My kids are dead. Don’t talk to me about a hat and scarf!”
The conversation ended quickly.
Maybe it wasn’t my most shining moment, but I felt a bit of vindication later that week when the argument came up again in front of the couples therapist we had started seeing once a week. Dr. O’Brien was usually nonjudgmental and didn’t give opinions, but this time, he took my side.
“You have a lot to be angry about, Warren,” he said. “I understand that. But do you really want to fight with Jackie about a hat?”
“Not one hat,” Warren grumbled. “Four wee
ks’ worth of hats.”
But then he let it go, and I half smiled at Dr. O’Brien. I suppose I was grateful I had won that one. But for some reason, I didn’t feel very victorious.
Eight
Doctors talk about depression as a chemical disorder of the brain, which is why antidepressants can often lift a funk. But bad situations like death or divorce or job loss can trigger depression in anyone, no matter how chemically balanced you otherwise may be. I’d battled depression at other times in my life, but nothing like the feeling that hit me after the loss of the girls.
I took antidepressant medication every day, but my doctors reminded me that my own actions made a difference, too. Exercise is a great way to relieve melancholia, and the endorphin rush I got from running always made me feel better. I’d also read articles claiming that if you make yourself smile, you’ll feel happier. It sounds crazy, but there’s a connection between mind and muscle: if your face muscles are pulled into a cheerful expression, your brain starts to think you’re happy.
My brain wasn’t so easily tricked. But I’ve always believed that when you look good, you feel better, so most days, I tried to make myself get dressed and comb my hair. When you’re depressed, wearing makeup and high-heeled shoes isn’t a sign of vanity or wastefulness—it’s a symbol of hope.
Trying to pull myself up from a frightening slump one day, I got dressed in black jeans and a pretty embroidered blouse, dabbed on makeup, and searched my jewelry box for my favorite rings and earrings and necklaces. I already had a stack of pretty bracelets on my wrist that I wore all the time—each of them with the girls’ initials, EAK. Some of them had been made for me—by schoolchildren in one case, and by a woman I didn’t even know in another.
The bracelets were my way of keeping the girls close at hand, and the stones sparkled in the sunlight when I went outside. I made myself go to a local store, and as usual, people stared at me as if I were a celebrity. One woman I didn’t know very well hesitated and then came over.