I'll See You Again

by Jackie Hance

  “There are some people here to see you,” she said.

  “What? What’s going on?” I asked as about ten women suddenly filled my kitchen. They came from different parts of my life, and I couldn’t imagine how they all knew each other—until I realized that since the accident, they had connected through me.

  “A birthday gift. From all of us,” Maria said, handing me a box. I opened it, and inside was a necklace with the letters EAK in diamonds.

  For what felt like the first time in my life, I truly couldn’t speak. All the exclamations of “Thank you!” and “That’s so generous!” and “It’s beautiful!” got caught in my throat. Overwhelmed, I just looked at my friends in wonderment.

  “Happy birthday,” Maria said.

  The others joined in a chorus of good wishes, and then headed to the door.

  “Wait, can I get you something to eat? Or drink?” I asked, trying to recall my manners.

  But, not wanting to make me endure an extended emotional scene, they just waved and left. I stared at the EAK necklace and then plopped onto the sofa, thinking about the incredible kindness of my friends. Even in the midst of my despair, I recognized how lucky I was to be constantly buoyed by their compassion and goodwill. And their gift had extraordinary meaning. They knew I had EAK bracelets and beads and logos and T-shirts, and the initials were even in my email address. Now I could have this beautiful symbol of my girls around my neck, hanging close to my heart, every day. I spent the next several days writing each of them a thank-you note, expressing the gratitude I’d been too overcome to share.

  With Warren’s cross and my friends’ EAK diamonds, I now had the two most beautiful—and meaningful—necklaces in the world.

  • • •

  I had a thoughtful husband and caring and attentive friends. Comfort and love wherever I turned. The support helped me get through every day, but how could anything fill the hole in my heart? What could possibly make up for what I had lost?

  With the Hance Family Fun Day in May getting closer, everyone I knew seemed so busy with preparations that I worried that their jobs and kids and dinners were being given short shrift. I tried to participate because it was the right thing to do, but my heart wasn’t in it.

  Warren, on the other hand, threw himself into the planning. He and his friend John Power, the landscaper, led a major effort to clean up the Centennial Gardens in town. John brought his crew of some twenty gardeners to clean, weed, and to plant shrubs, and other volunteers joined in. We built a stage on one side of the gardens where bands could play at our event and at other occasions throughout the year.

  “You should come help,” Warren said eagerly, before one of the days of cleanup and flower planting.

  “I don’t want to come,” I said, as always resisting his efforts to make me see the positive.

  “But it’s going to look great.”

  “I’m glad.”

  I stayed home, but throngs of people, including Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, parents and children, and groups of teenagers, showed up to weed and clean.

  “The gardens look amazing!” Warren told me excitedly that night. “In addition to everything else, we’ve given a great gift to the town.”

  I was glad that having a mission seemed to be helping Warren’s mood. It wasn’t doing as much for mine, but I knew I had to keep up a good front for everybody who was doing so much. My public persona was a lot better than what Warren got stuck with at home.

  The week before Family Fun Day, Heather invited a big group of women to her house for a two-night party with a purpose. As always, I tried to keep a smile on my face. But mostly, I wandered around aimlessly both nights while my artistic friends arranged raffle items decoratively in big baskets, wrapped them with cellophane and colorful bows, labeled them, and made a booklet of what was for sale.

  Despite all the sorting and wrapping and packing, everyone milling around Heather’s basement seemed in high spirits. Maybe they felt the euphoria of doing something for a good cause, the satisfaction of creating hope from horror, meaning from misery.

  “You brought everyone together,” one of my friends said as she sorted through a pile of donated stuffed animals. “People are making new friends and working together. Everyone’s having fun. It’s so great.”

  Great, I thought. My girls were dead, but people had made new friends. Was that supposed to be a silver lining? I looked around at all the women working hard and I tried to remember that they were doing this for Emma, Alyson, and Katie. But the noisy chatter in the basement pounded in my ears and the cheerful voices grated.

  I tried to ignore the screaming voices in my head telling me to run away. I couldn’t do that. I had to stay and participate. I would honor the feelings of the people who were trying so hard to do something good.

  By the time we finished, we had 120 baskets. It had been a lot of work, but it also meant a lot of money we could raise.

  “How are you doing?” my friend Deana asked, coming over as I stood staring at the booklet where I was supposed to be writing down basket numbers. So far, I hadn’t written a thing.

  “Just fine,” I lied.

  “Are you sure?” Deana asked. Deana’s children were the same ages as my girls and she had thrown herself into the planning. “This is probably harder for you than you realize.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m okay.” I felt my smile wavering. “I guess I’m just getting tired.”

  I tried to look enthusiastic. It was all so nice and generous and good. But even a million baskets wouldn’t bring back my girls.

  Please get me out of here . . .

  • • •

  There was no way I could get out of May 22. That I survived the whole day without collapsing, screaming, or sobbing in public is a testament to strong will and modern medicine. I had already learned how to make myself go numb in order to get through any ordeal. And with thousands of people expected to show up for the festivities, “getting through” was the best I could hope for.

  The morning was all about the races, and the sheer number of people who showed up—more than 1,200—was overwhelming. We started with a Peewee Race for children under seven, who ran over a bridge and got medals and cupcakes when they finished. Even I had to admit it was cute—most of them walked away holding their award in one hand and a cupcake in the other. Next was a one-mile Fun Run called “Emma’s Mile” that attracted loads of kids, from ten-year-olds to teenagers. Then a 5K race with close to a thousand runners and walkers, cheered on by live music from a teen band.

  After the medals (lots of them) were given out, we regrouped for the afternoon, and for the first Hance Family Foundation Fun Day.

  We had 250 volunteers, and around 3,000 people showed up at the now-beautiful Centennial Gardens. I wandered around saying hello to the girls’ friends and classmates, their teachers and camp counselors, neighbors and storekeepers and people I knew from around town. This whole community of friends and family had mourned together in the face of our tragedy. Now, in the place where the girls had lived their short lives, people who had been so deeply affected by their loss wanted to find hope again, and they rallied around out of goodwill and genuine feeling. However much pain I felt, as I looked at all the familiar faces, full of kindness and purpose, I recognized the triumph of a town that could make such an effort to memorialize the girls.

  There was so much going on that I couldn’t take it all in. We had live music and games, face painting and mini-manicures. The New York Islanders hockey team had sent their mascot and arranged for games like slap shot. Children played on the “bouncies” that had been donated and took pictures with teens who had dressed up as fairy-tale characters. They made pictures in “Aly’s Art Gallery” and hung them on a line with clothespins for everyone to see, then got costumes in “Katie’s Corner” for dress-up games.

  “Emma’s spirit, Alyson’s joy and Katie’s innocence shone through on every face in the crowd,” Bernadette wrote later on the foundation website.


  By every measure it was a smashing success.

  And yet I couldn’t have been happier when it was over.

  Eighteen

  July. A whole year since the accident.

  People gathered protectively around me as the day approached, but, oddly, it was the ordinary days that were harder to get through.

  I wrote a letter to my friends on July 21:

  “People often ask me if I feel better than I did a year ago. The answer, simply stated, is ‘no.’ My mind is much clearer, but with clarity comes a lot of heartache and anguish. I have cried every single day since the accident. Holding it in would be much worse, so I always allow myself to cry. I know what it is like to see life go on around you and not be able to get out of the quicksand that you feel you are drowning in.”

  For the previous twelve months, I had started many sentences with “Last year I went with the girls . . .” or “Remember last year when the girls and I . . .” Now I couldn’t say that anymore, and I couldn’t believe how much time had gone by since I had seen my girls. Instead of the passing time healing the wounds, it just cut them deeper. I missed Katie’s hugs and Emma’s wisdom and Aly’s smiles. When we still had our normal, daily routines together, I counted our time apart in minutes and hours, not weeks and months. And even those minutes had sometimes seemed like forever.

  Katie will be in kindergarten all morning, I used to think. What will I do with all that time?

  Now I had to reorient myself and think in terms of years.

  Years without my girls.

  I went to one meeting of a grief-counseling group for parents who had lost children. The mothers there were supportive and full of hope. But their devotion unnerved me.

  “Your children stay with you forever,” said one woman, who described a lovely ritual she had enjoyed that year on Mother’s Day.

  “How long since your daughter died?” I asked her.

  “Twenty-two years next month,” she said.

  I felt my heart sink.

  Twenty-two years?

  I couldn’t imagine two decades of living in pain without my girls. I wanted to run screaming from the room. Looking around at the mothers whose children had died ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, I felt myself gripped by fright. They seemed placid and peaceful—but they still attended this grief group.

  Maybe it never gets better.

  • • •

  Warren wanted me to believe that our lives could get better, and after the lesson of Key West, he suggested we spend some of the summer by the ocean.

  “You can’t be depressed on a beach,” he said hopefully, remembering my comment.

  Melissa had decided she could never return to the beach club where we had been last summer, and she rented a house in the Hamptons. Warren and I stayed there for a while and then shared a house with Isabelle and Mark on Long Beach Island. Coddled again by the sound of waves and water and warmed by the sunshine, we made it through.

  While we were at the beach, my mother stayed at the house in Floral Park, ostensibly to dog-sit our old wheaten terrier, Oliver. Mom had been depressed and struggling this year, so devastated at losing her grandchildren that I couldn’t expect her to be able to comfort me, her daughter.

  Looking after the dog gave her a purpose, and she eagerly offered to stay at the house when we escaped to the beach. Maybe being surrounded by the girls’ familiar things gave her the comfort that it sometimes did me.

  Early in the week, she called me at the beach to check in and see how we were doing.

  “I guess you’re okay with the swing set coming down,” she said, just a slight edge of anxiety in her voice.

  “What?” I asked, my voice rising in a shriek.

  “Oh, um, you didn’t know? I assumed you did. Your friend is here taking down the swing set. He said Warren wants it down.”

  I hung up and ran hysterically over to Warren.

  “The girls loved that swing set!” I screamed, remembering when he had bought it for Emma’s first birthday. “And we still have kids coming over to the house who play on it!”

  “We have to take it down,” Warren said. “It’s getting old and could be dangerous. We can’t risk someone playing on it and getting hurt.”

  I couldn’t decide if “dangerous” was just an excuse for Warren to get rid of a memory he found painful to see every day. But he was insistent, so I let it go.

  My mom’s call prepared me, so when we got back from the beach, I braced myself to face a gaping hole in the yard. But our landscaper friend John hadn’t just taken down the swing set—he had started a beautiful rock garden and waterfall to replace it. I immediately thought of the little Japanese rock gardens you put on your desk to help you relax. In the same spirit, this natural memorial exuded a sense of peace. For the next several weeks, John and Warren worked on the project together. When it was done, I still missed the swing set, but the tranquil garden created a corner for contemplation and calm.

  • • •

  As Year Two got under way, my once-wonderful life seemed to recede farther into the past. Birthdays, first day of school—we’d been through this cycle once, and everyone expected the second go-round would be easier. But it wasn’t. It was like being adrift at sea in a rowboat—steady waves pulled me farther and farther away from the beautiful shore I had left behind, and I couldn’t yet see any safe ground on the other side.

  Psychiatric manuals give people a year to recover from grief. My year was up with no recovery in sight. No protective scars had formed over the raw grief, and if anything, each day got harder and harder.

  Whoever writes those manuals doesn’t have a clue.

  Even Oliver seemed to be having a hard time. He was getting old, which meant that soon I’d be losing him, too. Warren had bought him for me as a surprise shortly after my dad died—so he was like our first baby. When Emma joined the family several months later, Oliver seemed mildly offended. At Aly’s arrival, he looked at me like, What? Another one? But he seemed to get used to having the girls around, and Emma adored him. Once when Aly was about four years old, she reached into his mouth to take away food that he’d gotten from the garbage—and he snapped.

  “You have to put down a dog who bites,” the vet said after Aly got stitches.

  But Emma wouldn’t hear of it. Protective of all living creatures, she locked herself in her room with Oliver.

  “If he goes, I’m going,” she announced dramatically.

  Preferring to keep both of them, we hired a dog trainer to come to the house instead.

  “The dog needs to know that the hierarchy in the house is you and Warren, the girls, and then him,” the trainer told us. “Right now he’s treated like a king and thinks he’s top of the heap.”

  A king? Well, maybe I did cook special meals for Oliver. So we took the trainer’s advice and set new rules. Once we established a different pecking order in the family, Oliver’s behavior improved dramatically. He was never aggressive again.

  But he stayed spoiled.

  After the girls were gone, I cooked for him and nobody else. Our sad old dog seemed as lost and lonely in the empty house as I did. Then one day, a year after the accident, Warren surprised me by bringing home a new dog.

  “What am I supposed to do with him?” I asked, unable to imagine rousing myself to take care of a new dog.

  “Oliver needs a friend,” Warren said.

  The little puff of white fur he’d brought home was a Havanese who already had a name tag on his collar that read JAKE W. HANCE.

  “You named him already?” I asked Warren.

  “Not just any name,” Warren said triumphantly. “J-A-K-E—Jackie-Alyson-Katie-Emma. W for Warren. The dog is named for all of us.”

  Oliver did perk up in Jake’s presence. But however thoughtful his name, I didn’t want a new dog.

  I refused to love him.

  “I’ll take good care of him,” I told Warren, “but that’s it. I don’t have any love left to give.”

  Frisky
Jake did everything he could to win me over. He curled up in my lap when I sat crying alone. He ate store-bought dog food instead of insisting on homemade. He scurried onto the windowsill and peeked between the venetian blinds to watch me when I went outside.

  But caring about a dog who had never met Emma, Alyson, and Katie seemed like a betrayal, just like enjoying a garden where they’d never sit held very little joy. I felt hollow inside. Like the Tin Man, I was missing my heart.

  Nineteen

  Life had stopped for me. I couldn’t expect that it would stop for other people, too, but in many ways it had. Friends had put their own activities on hold to sleep at our house and bring us meals and be available at all hours. Now, more than a year later, they needed to let their families return to normal. They still came by all the time, called, and surrounded me with help and support. But the shock had lessened and everybody wanted to move ahead with their own lives.

  Many of our friends’ children were seeing therapists for anxiety disorders that had cropped up after the accident. The psychologists urged the parents to do whatever they could to provide an atmosphere of stability and constancy. Nobody abandoned me or kept their children from me, but I would have understood if they did. I was the monster-under-the-bed personified, the epitome of everyone’s worst fears: a mother who couldn’t keep her children safe.

  Even though I understood others’ need for normalcy, I found it hard to stomach any efforts at life-as-usual. Each seemed another step toward forgetting my girls and abandoning their memories.

  Jeannine sent out invitations for her annual Halloween party, which she had canceled the previous October. It hit me hard. All the anger I normally aimed at Warren got redirected at one of my very best friends. How could Jeannine do this to me?

  “Who’s going?” I asked Isabelle as the day got closer.

  “Just about everybody,” she admitted.

  “Are you?”

  “No, I’ll stay home with you. I’d much rather do that than put on a costume.”

  I felt deeply grateful but didn’t admit it. However much I hurt, I didn’t want to inconvenience anybody.