by Jackie Hance
“You two will never split,” she said, as she often did. “You have all this drama and bickering, and then you’re fine again. And as soon as the smallest thing happens, your first reaction is ‘I’ve gotta call Warren and tell him.’ ”
True enough. Warren and I called each other at least five times during the day—sometimes to say hi or check in, sometimes with a funny story or question. Often he had barely left the house before he thought of something to tell me. Once we were talking on our cell phones and I realized we were still close enough to see each other. I had giggled and waved at him—but we still kept talking.
“Don’t all couples do that?” I asked Isabelle.
From the funny look she gave me, I guessed not.
The next week, Dr. O’Brien cancelled our usual session because he was sick.
“I have a whole list I want to go over,” I moaned to Warren when I called him at work—for the fourth time that day—to say he didn’t need to rush home. Dr. O’Brien had urged me to start keeping a list all week of issues that bothered me so we could handle them calmly during a session, rather than my erupting over each one during the week.
“Okay, we’ll go over the list ourselves tonight,” he said.
He got home from work late and I said, “Are we still going to talk?”
“I thought we already talked,” he joked.
“Very funny.”
“Come on, sit down. Let’s go over your list.”
I pulled out the sheet of paper on which I’d written the little concerns that had cropped up all week, bugging me. I worried that without Dr. O’Brien, we wouldn’t get anywhere, but we started at the top and talked about each one rationally. An hour later, we’d gotten through the list and Warren smiled.
“We just saved one hundred twenty dollars,” he said.
“We can actually do this,” I said, proudly tossing the finished list into the wastebasket. “We can talk to each other.”
“Yup, we can do this,” Warren said. He leaned over and kissed me. “We’ve done a lot of things these last couple of years we never thought we could. This one’s easier than most.”
Thirty
One day in late March, Bernadette drove me home after a morning run, and as she dropped me off, another car came whizzing by.
“Watch out!” she called as I stepped out of the car, unaware of the danger.
The car swerved around me and I turned back to Bernadette and grinned. “You don’t have to worry about me,” I said. “Apparently, I’ll never die.”
Bernadette threw her head back and gave a long, long laugh.
I make no serious claims for my own immortality, but I spent two years hoping to die and never did. Now I felt great relief in enjoying life again. The worst had already happened. It did not kill me. I learned that we are all stronger than we would have imagined.
When my dad died, at age fifty-six, he seemed so young, and I mourned his too-brief stay on this earth. Now, in comparison, it seems like he had a full life. Maybe in the face of death, time always seems fleeting and transient. Religions all try to help us come to terms with the uncertainty of death and to give us the hope that the sweetness—and pain—of this life will somehow pay off in an eternity yet to come. I don’t know if that is true or not, but by the time Easter came, I was at peace with religion again and willing to take the comfort it offered.
Melissa and Brad had invited us to Easter dinner again, and we liked our new tradition with them. Throughout the winter, I hadn’t bought anything new for Kasey. Friends had been generous and she already had more pretty clothes than one baby could wear. Odd as it was for me to admit, I didn’t get a thrill anymore out of buying a cute new dress or sweet stuffed animal. Things no longer mattered very much. The years I had spent trying to convince Warren that we needed a bigger house seemed long, long ago. I liked where we lived. I could no longer remember why I had been so desperate for a new couch; as I sat relaxing on it with Kasey, I realized the one we had seemed just fine. I had a table in my living room covered with photographs of the girls, and that gave me a pleasure that no upholstery, house, or cute-as-a-button onesie could match.
On the other hand, I’d always taken pleasure in shopping, and letting myself feel that lift for my new baby was part of accepting her. When Kasey was five months old, I saw a monkey-in-a-box in a toy store—and bought my first gift for her. I felt the guilt I always did about being disloyal to her sisters.
How can you buy something for her and not for Emma, Alyson, and Katie?
But I had a new message for that shrill, guilt-inducing voice in my head.
Leave me alone!
Wanting to buy something for Kasey was an auspicious sign, not cause for contrition.
So, for Easter, I went all out and bought Kasey the cutest outfit I could find—a white dress with multicolored flowers in deep rose, pale pink, and yellow, and a pink sash with a big bow in the back. The matching hat had the same cheerful flowers and bow. Kasey gave a toothless smile when she was all dressed—even she knew how pretty she looked.
We drove over to the Katinases’ house, and Melissa came outside as we pulled up.
“Oh my God,” she said as I came around and took Kasey out of her car seat.
“I know, it’s cute, isn’t it?” I said, assuming she was exclaiming at Kasey’s adorable outfit.
“Wait until you see,” Melissa said.
We went into the house and she called Abby, who had been best friends with Katie, downstairs. Abby came bounding down the stairs—wearing the same sashed dress with pink and yellow flowers as Kasey.
“Oh my God!” I said, echoing Melissa’s reaction.
But Abby just laughed delightedly. “Kasey is my heart,” she said, kissing her real-life matching-dresses doll. “I love her so much.”
I let Abby hold Kasey, and as usual, she didn’t want to let her go. Ever since Kasey was born, Abby couldn’t get enough of her. She had embraced her as passionately as if Kasey were Katie reincarnated. Melissa told me that one day when she was taking care of Kasey for me, she took her to the bus stop when she went to pick up Abby.
“My cousin’s here!” Abby had exclaimed as she got off the school bus and raced toward her.
Now I looked at Abby holding Kasey and suddenly understood what it meant to be soul sisters. We could all feel the connection that ran from the beautiful little girl to the beautiful baby, their pretty matching dresses making a field of flowers that seemed to link them as one. I had worried about the fact that Kasey had no siblings with whom to share each day, but she would have other attachments, not the same, but equally meaningful. No, they wouldn’t have the same friendship as Abby and Katie, but important bonds can come in many forms. The flowers on their matching dresses were bright harbingers of spring. And who knew what other blossoms would shoot up in the seasons ahead?
• • •
Yet, in the midst of all my determination to be positive and hopeful, I encountered some setbacks. A few weeks after Easter, I was driving home from the supermarket alone and pulled up to a stop sign. Not seeing anyone, I drove ahead. Just then, a car turned into the intersection, plowing right toward me. I swerved and jammed on my brakes, but too late. In an instant, I was reliving the absolute horror that the girls had experienced. The gut-wrenching crash and the car tumbling and smashing over on my head. Blood all over. Smoke. Fire. Sheer terror. I felt my ribs breaking, my face shattering against the glass. My body shook convulsively and blood squirted out everywhere.
I got out of the car screaming hysterically.
A woman ran over to me. “Are you okay? Let me call the police,” she said.
I pictured the EMTs coming and not being able to save me, the ambulance, being rushed to the hospital. Then I looked over and saw my car, standing untouched in the intersection.
“Did you see what happened?” I asked the woman, my heart pounding.
“Close call,” she said. “He just missed you. Very lucky. He drove on. Are you sure you’re o
kay?”
We hadn’t crashed. Nothing had actually happened.
I sat down on the curb and tried to catch my breath. The near miss had triggered a reaction so profound that I felt like I was reliving the girls’ shock—a classic symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. I felt the pain the girls must have suffered and envisioned their fear. I felt my body being tossed and turned. I was sick to my stomach thinking that was what the girls had experienced.
When I got back home, Warren was still at work and the baby was out for a walk with Mr. Hance. I had always avoided looking at any pictures of the crash, but now I went to my computer and typed “Taconic Car Accident” into Google. I had to know what the girls had been through.
But halfway through my search, I stopped myself. I sat back in my chair and pulled back. Why was I doing this to myself? My unconscious mind might suffer a PTSD response, and I couldn’t do much about it. But I still had control over my conscious responses. If I wanted a positive life, I had to take every bit of energy and concentration and strength I possessed to focus on the good.
Still trembling, I turned off the computer and walked into the living room. Jake, my small fluffy white dog, had jumped up onto the windowsill. I went over and scratched him behind the ears, and the two of us stood there, looking out the window, waiting to see Kasey come home.
• • •
Since the accident, I had learned how incredibly kind people can be. But the depth of giving and caring continued to surprise me. One day I mentioned to a TV producer I met how inspired I felt hearing motivational speaker Tony Robbins on television. By complete coincidence, she encountered him the next day—and told him about me. That afternoon, Warren and I had a personal invitation to be his guest at a three-day seminar in New Jersey.
Excited at the prospect of hearing Tony’s take on how to “Unleash the Power Within,” Warren made plans to take some time off work and I arranged for my mom and some willing friends to babysit Kasey. Tony Robbins has reportedly coached everyone from President Bill Clinton to tennis star Serena Williams, and he’s been heaped with praise from celebrities, sports stars, and politicians around the world. Now it was our turn.
We joined about three thousand people who had paid big bucks for the weekend, all seated in a huge auditorium. As Tony’s guests we sat right near the front and leaned forward in our seats as he talked about the need to change your story and change your state of mind. He asked us to imagine that inside each of us were shelves with tapes—and we needed to take out the bad tapes and replace them with good ones.
So far I was with him.
We did various exercises, mental and physical, to teach ourselves how to change our state. At one point, Tony told us to close our eyes and go to the worst possible moment that ever happened to us.
“I want to leave,” I said to Warren. “I’m not going to do this.”
“Just skip this part,” Warren whispered.
I didn’t have to imagine the worst possible moment that ever happened—it was with me every day. But then Tony explained that we needed to be able to move on to the next chapter. He had us lie on the floor and go back to a favorite memory. I imagined being with the girls on a Friday night and watching What Not to Wear. I could feel them with me as we giggled at the show. And then I thought of my other favorite memory, playing the ha-ha game in the backseat of the car. However cranky anybody felt, we all had to laugh. I’d say “ha,” then Emma “ha ha,” followed by Alyson’s “ha ha ha,” and Katie’s “ha ha ha ha.” As we tried to keep the game going for another round, we all, of course, dissolved in giggles.
Lying there, in that huge hall, surrounded by so many other people, I started chuckling. Tony was right—change your story and you can change your state of mind. Instead of focusing on pain and the girls’ last moments, I had to think about the happy times. Because they could still make me smile.
But the moment hadn’t been as successful for Warren. Thinking about his happiest memory—a moment with the girls—only sent him spiraling back into despair. After the seminar, Warren sent a note to Tony, thanking him for his graciousness and asking what to do when your favorite memories are also your greatest source of pain. “How do you get beyond that?” Warren asked.
Since he is busy coaching tens of thousands of people each year, Tony could have taken the question as rhetorical and let it pass. But instead, Warren opened his email a few days later and found a personal voice message attached.
“Hey, Warren, it’s Tony Robbins,” the now-familiar voice said.
He offered some pleasant chatter and said he’d been traveling. He hoped Warren had gained strength from the event in New York. And then he got down to the business of answering Warren’s questions.
“You have every right to continue to feel pain,” he said. “But the problem with staying in that pain is that it isn’t honoring your girls, it isn’t making you more fulfilled, it isn’t giving you more of the world. There’s a time for everything, a time for sorrow and a time to grow, a time to feel sad and a time to figure out what your next choice to give is. For you to have a way to honor your daughters and honor your wife and honor yourself and feel alive again, you’re going to have to put to bed what has been. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You’re not disrespecting the past to live in the here and now and think about building a future.”
He talked about his own losses and said that while he had never experienced anything to compare with burying three daughters, “people’s pain is people’s pain.” What had helped him cope during bad times was knowing that he wasn’t alone, and others were going through similar situations. If we could find a way forward, Warren and I could help millions of people with our story.
My past with the girls was a part of me, and I had been clinging to it, afraid to let go. I worried that “moving on” meant abandoning the memories and moments that had been the core of my life. But now I understood that I didn’t have to close one book to begin a new one. Warren and I would forever have the beautiful story we had begun with our girls, and what was written could last forever. But the book wasn’t finished. We could begin a new chapter.
• • •
We scheduled Kasey’s christening for early May, and I actually found myself looking forward to it. Sure, I still had some dread and guilt, especially when I realized that Katie’s Communion would have been that same weekend. When I worried about giving a party for one and not the other, Bernadette quickly reminded me that Family Fun Day was just a few weeks away.
“You’re doing something wonderful for Katie,” she said with her usual high energy. “She’s having a party with thousands of people at the Centennial Gardens. Everyone is there because of her. And six thousand girls already know Katie and her sisters because they’ve taken part in Beautiful Me.”
It was hard to argue.
I bought Kasey the most beautiful christening gown I could find, white dupioni silk with crocheted flowers on the sleeves and a matching flowered headband. I even bought silk bloomers.
The morning of the christening, the church was packed with friends and family, and Warren and I brought Kasey to the altar. Her three sets of godparents—Melissa and Brad, Jeannine and Rob, and Isabelle and Mark—leaned lovingly over her, and the priest did his sacred rite with oil, then put water on her head. Kasey, our good little baby, never cried or fussed and she looked picture perfect as dozens of friends snapped photos like crazed paparazzi.
We had planned a party afterward at a Knights of Columbus hall, and while I worried that it might be too dreary, the room looked beautiful when we walked in, shining with flowers and balloons and more than two hundred people. The children raced around eating cakes and cupcakes, and a DJ got them playing games and dancing. Then Warren stood up to give a speech.
“We’ve come full circle,” he said to everyone who gathered around, “and we’re here because of you. Actually, I can’t believe we’re here. This is a time for moving on but not forgetting, and trying to have a good life. I
t’s a happy occasion. Emma, Alyson, and Katie are with us and we miss them and love them, but this is Kasey’s day.”
Most of the people in the hall had been at the Communion party we’d had for Alyson after the accident more than two years earlier, when Warren had arranged for the Michael Bublé song “Hold On.” I’d loved the song, but at the time, lyrics about how we were the lucky ones and things would be all right didn’t seem to have anything to do with us.
Now I took the microphone from him. I reminded the crowd about the song.
“I thought Warren was crazy when he played that song at Aly’s Communion,” I said. “I didn’t understand but I finally get it now. It takes time and hard work and a lot of love from family and friends to get through the toughest times. In any situation, you have to know everything will be okay. This time, it’s a much happier moment than last.”
The music started and Warren came over and wrapped me in his arms.
And we danced at our daughter’s christening.
• • •
That night we got home and for once, instead of sinking into sadness and despair after a good time, our positive feelings lingered. I remembered a year earlier asking Warren if he thought we’d ever feel happiness again.
“We’ll find moments of joy and contentment, but happiness is too much to ask,” he had said. “Happiness is not what we’ll ever feel.”
“I just want to be happy again. I want to feel what other people do,” I’d said.
“Your expectations are too high,” he’d said.
Now, with Kasey, the feeling had changed. We were full of expectations and hope. Looking forward instead of looking back.
“I like what you said today about wanting to have a good life for Kasey,” I said to Warren as I hung up Kasey’s christening gown. “But good isn’t enough. I want great.”
We both went over to her crib, where she had easily fallen asleep after her long, exciting day. She seemed to have a little smile on her face. Who knew what dreams she might be having?
“I think we’ll experience everything,” Warren said, reaching down to move a stuffed animal closer to her. “Within one day we’ll feel happiness, sadness, anger, love, sorrow, all of it. That’s going to be our lives for the next twenty or thirty years.”