Colors of Goodbye

by September Vaudrey

  The atmosphere at home during those first weeks lay thick and heavy. The older kids had flown back to California, and I felt bad for Sam and Tember, who were facing the full brunt of their own grief, plus the ripples of ours. Scott and I were caught in two roles: grieving parents and parents of grieving children. It’s harder than you think to switch between roles, especially for me—the more emotive parent. So I forced myself to find time alone to get messy with my grief.

  Our bathroom shower and my minivan became my “places” that summer and fall. Each morning, I would awake gasping, suffocating with our new reality. But when I stepped into the steaming shower, I could cry as hard as I wanted and not worry about the noise or the mess or ruining my makeup. I would start my morning with the slobbery release of that pent-up grief, and then I could breathe again and face the day less likely to dissolve into a puddle in front of the kids, my friends, or complete strangers.

  Alone in my minivan, running errands or driving to work, I could cry—loud, uninhibited sobs. I would rail my anger or frustration or pain to God. Sometimes I would call out to Katie. I probably sounded like a crazy woman, but what did I care? No one could hear. Privacy at forty-five miles per hour. And by the time I arrived wherever I was heading, my sorrow’s congestion had found its escape, and I would again feel God’s presence and His calm. I would blow my nose, reapply my makeup, and move forward with my day. (Tip: If you are a woman in a season of loss, stock up on waterproof mascara!)

  Scott’s grief hideouts were the Bug Room, our bedroom, and his office at work—in that order. Countless times I would come upon him sitting alone with reddened eyes, wiping his tears but giving me his best smile.

  “It’s like an amputation,” he said of the loss one day. “The wound will eventually heal, but we’ll still be missing the arm.”

  How horrid it would be to lose a child and not be this devastated. Love comes with a price tag.

  And absolutely we cried in front of the kids. It would have been phony not to. I tried hard to be the parent and let them be the kids—it wasn’t their job to carry me—but sometimes I fell short. Yet even when I was a total mess, I wasn’t looking for their comfort. Just knowing they understood the sadness was comfort enough.

  At times the kids carried Scott or me in a way that felt healthy and beautiful, and we were grateful. In mid-July, when my birthday rolled around, Sam and Tember made me a homemade birthday cake—something that had been Katie’s role in recent years. Without missing a beat, the younger kids just stepped in and filled that little gap. Best gift they could have given.

  We were all looking out for one another in our own ways—not just the parents hovering over the kids, but maybe the kids hovering over the parents, too.

  In the state of Illinois, an unusual death like Katie’s mandates a coroner’s inquest to determine the cause of death. Katie’s accident triggered such an inquest. This then prompted a phone call from our insurance company, since they had paid Katie’s funeral home bill under our policy’s accidental death clause. They wanted to know if the coroner’s inquest had happened yet. They wanted to know what had caused my daughter’s death.

  “The inquest is in late August, I believe,” I told the woman on the phone. “They said we’ll get a notice in the mail.”

  “If the accident didn’t cause Katherine’s death,” the woman said gently, “then it falls in the ‘act of God’ category, and we don’t cover acts of God, so you would need to return the compensation.”

  “Act of God”? Never mind the money, lady. But don’t pin this on God! I felt indignant.

  Yet He allowed the aneurysm to happen. He didn’t undo it, despite my begging. If I believe God is omnipotent, then did His failure to act mean He acted?

  But He also protected Katie’s body in the car. He kept Tember safely at home that day. He gave us nineteen glorious years with Katie before the aneurysm struck. Weren’t these, too, acts of God?

  I hung up feeling defensive of God, as if He were getting a bad rap. But the woman’s words brought to light my dilemma: How could the aneurysm and Tember’s safety—and the nineteen years with Katie and the million other goodnesses we had experienced—all be “acts of God”?

  34

  AS WE NEARED THE TWO-MONTH MARK since Katie’s death, I began to feel myself sliding into a depression. Sam and Tember were at summer jobs or summer school most days, and Scott had gone back to work, so I was often home alone. Before Katie’s death, I had worked as a freelance writer and had just completed a huge job, with no new assignments lined up. This was a blessing at first, but spending day after day with nowhere I needed to go was turning into a detriment. I would just lie on the couch like a slug. Merely getting dressed was a chore. Taking a shower was a major victory.

  When a friend called and offered me a large freelance writing assignment at our church, I said yes.

  “Only one or two meetings a week,” he said. “The rest you can do from home.”

  So at least one day a week—sometimes two—I had to make myself shower, dress (in something besides sweatpants), and get off the dang couch. It felt good to force my grief-stalled brain into gear, to push myself to craft sentences and to find the best words. It felt good to be productive and to walk among the living once again.

  Death makes people squirm. They didn’t know what to say to us, and we didn’t always know what to say back. There were times when someone’s comments left us speechless. And there were times when our own responses to others were inappropriate, awkward, or even funny.

  “I need some material for a new song,” a kid told Sam that summer, “but nothing sad ever happens to me. Sorry about your sister, man, but are you cool with me writing a song about her dying and posting it on YouTube?”

  Wow. Sure, dude. We’d love for our loss to help you be the next YouTube sensation.

  Our family, never willing to let a good story go unrepeated, found an odd comfort in regaling one another around the dinner table that summer with tales of these awkward moments.

  “My first day back at work was hard for everyone,” Scott told us one night. “Some people were great, but most looked scared spitless at the mere sight of me. When I walked by, they would pop their heads out of their cubes to see who it was and then pop their heads back in and pretend they hadn’t seen me. Walking to and from my office, I felt like I was playing Whac-A-Mole!”

  Often the person who didn’t know what to do or say was me. One afternoon, I had taken Tember for an orthodontist appointment, and afterward at a red light, a man was working his way from car to car. He wore a bright orange traffic vest with the words Homeless Shelter scrawled across the front in faded black marker. A tub of nickel lollipops hung around his neck.

  On a good day, I am apprehensive about giving cash to this type of fund-raising effort unless I am certain the money will actually go to a legitimate cause. This man with the handwritten vest didn’t exactly scream legit nonprofit. I did not want to buy one of his lollipops.

  Never had I hoped for a green light so badly. “Turn green! Green-green-green!”

  “Chill, Mom,” Tember said.

  The man reached our car, and with a flashy salesman’s smile, he motioned for me to roll down my window. I smiled back but shook my head no. So he hung a pouty lip and began making begging motions with his hands. Again I smiled but shook my head.

  Undaunted, the man began to pantomime crying, using his pinky fingers to show invisible tears trickling down his cheeks, his lollipop bucket bouncing against his belly as he fake-sobbed, inches from my face.

  World’s longest red light.

  Finally, he made an exaggerated brokenhearted face and began mouthing, “Please! Please! Please!”

  I was being tortured by a relentless, lollipop-bearing Marcel Marceau.

  “Give it up, mister,” I said under my breath.

  “Let it go, Mom . . . ,” Tember cautioned.

  Too late.

  I rolled down my window. “I’m sorry,” I said, real tear
s erupting, “but my nineteen-year-old daughter just died, and I don’t want to buy your lollipop!”

  “Mom!” Tember whispered.

  The poor man! His jaw dropped—as did his Marcel Marceau imitation. He looked horrified.

  “Oh, I am so sorry, miss. I had no idea.”

  I felt like I’d just kicked a puppy. “It’s okay,” I said, smiling and wiping my eyes. “You had no way of knowing. It’s all right, really. But I just can’t buy your lollipop today.”

  “No problem, miss. No problem. I’m so sorry about your daughter . . .”

  He backed away as the light turned green, and I rolled up my window, feeling sick to my stomach. I didn’t dare look over at Tember. She was so embarrassed.

  “Mom,” she said, “you just humiliated that guy! Sometimes you just need to let people be people.”

  “You’re right, honey,” I said. “I blew it. I really blew it.”

  We continued home in silence. But when we pulled in the driveway, she flashed me a forgiving smile. She knew all too well that her mother is a people too.

  The hardest moments for me often came when people failed to say anything at all about our loss.

  One day I had a work meeting at church and bumped into a fellow staff member in the hall. Katie had been his kids’ babysitter, and I knew he knew she had died.

  “Hey, September!” he said, smiling brightly.

  “Hey, Rich,” I said. We continued walking, and I figured he’d at least toss me a “Sorry about your loss.”

  Nothing.

  It felt like there was a giant elephant in the room. The longer he said nothing, the more ticked off I became. I was tempted to say something snarky like, “Oh, by the way, Katie can’t babysit for your kids anymore because she died.” But even the Lollipop-Man Attacker could show occasional restraint.

  I reminded myself that this was a good man—an awkward but decent guy. He was a caring father who had been generous to our daughter. Who knows? He might have had all sorts of legit reasons for his deafening silence.

  I recounted this story to our family later that night. Bethany was sympathetic toward me. “When someone is simply willing to acknowledge your loss,” she said, “it gives you permission to give voice to the reality that is playing its reel over and over again in your mind. It helps you feel sane because it reminds you that this really did happen and that others outside of your house were affected by it too.”

  Unless you have experienced the kind of loss that freaks everyone out, you don’t realize what a gift it is to have your loss acknowledged.

  Navigating situations like ours isn’t easy for anyone. Even since Katie’s death, I have sometimes been that awkward, silent person, the one who held back from acknowledging someone else’s loss. I know better than to remain silent, but it is still hard to know what to say. We are all feeling our way.

  It helped our family to laugh about those awkward moments—like the time a girl told Tember, “I know just how you feel. My fav cat died last month.” Rather than be discouraged or hurt by such comments, we shared the funny stories with one another and laughed at other people’s fumbles, as well as our own. We were just doing the best we could.

  We were especially grateful for friends—or even acquaintances—who were willing to be present without being overly invasive or awkwardly avoidant. Each of us could recount times when someone had simply provided space to talk if we wanted—or to be silent if we chose. Those encounters were gifts.

  “For the most part, people have been remarkably sensible,” Sam observed one night. “The greatest friends and companions in times of horrible sadness are the ones who don’t attempt to fix or quantify your experience, but rather are simply present and willing to share only as little or as much of your life as you invite them into.”

  Well said.

  In the stillness of summer, I became rather obsessed with Katie’s art. We had dozens of finished pieces that had been matted in black by Mr. Pinley and his Fremd students. But in transit from the Life Exhibit to our home, some had been dented or scuffed up, and others had a color scheme that could be enhanced by a colored mat rather than a black one. I bought a mat cutter, several sheets of mat board, and some frames. Then I set to work at our kitchen table.

  “Lots of art you got there,” Scott said. “What do you plan to do with all these once they’re framed?”

  “Well, I won’t hang them all . . . ,” I said, already feeling defensive.

  “Okay, but how many do you plan to hang?” he asked.

  “I just feel they should be protected behind glass.”

  He smiled. “And how many do you plan to hang?”

  “Uh, probably more than you want.” His gentle persistence was ticking me off.

  It’s dang frustrating sometimes to be married to someone who knows me so well and who can see beneath my excuses. I pretty much want to wallpaper our whole home with Katie’s art, okay? And I don’t want you thwarting me. Back off, Jack.

  A testy exchange followed. And because Scott is dogged and my project took several days, we engaged in several more bouts of discussion across the kitchen table that week.

  He knew me well enough to invite me in small bites to see this issue from different angles: If our home became wall-to-wall Katie art, what would it communicate to our kids? Or to our friends? And more important, what was going on inside me that was driving this?

  Then there was this clincher: “You thought it was important to move Tember into Katie’s room because you knew you risked making her room into a shrine if you left it empty. Is there a chance you’re using Katie’s art to turn our whole house into a shrine?”

  Dang him.

  Any family that loses a loved one faces dilemmas like this. It’s not black and white, and I’m guessing it’s different for everyone. But that day, it was important for Scott and me to get at the root issue. It wasn’t about Katie’s art. It was about finding the balance between honoring our daughter and stepping into a life without her.

  In the end, I framed a bunch of her pieces, stacking several matted drawings or paintings inside each frame to protect them—and so I could swap them out if I wished. We hung more art than Scott wanted and less than I wanted—four clusters of paintings in four different rooms and a couple of single pieces here and there. Probably a good compromise. It was a small step in finding the balance between holding on and letting go.

  35

  OUR FAMILY DIDN’T REALLY HAVE A “PLACE” to visit to remember Katie. Because we have lived in three states—Washington, Illinois, and the college kids in California—we didn’t have the kind of hometown roots that make cemetery decisions easy. We didn’t want to bury her ashes somewhere we couldn’t readily visit, and we weren’t sure whether we should sprinkle them—and if so, where. Thus, her urn sat in my closet, wrapped in her baby blanket. But I wanted a “place”—a physical location to go to and grieve my daughter.

  Maybe the crash site could become that place. In early August, I picked an armful of wildflowers from the field next to our house, bought a dozen red roses from the grocery store, and set out to locate the exact spot of the crash.

  Katie’s friends made it easy. They had erected two crosses on the grassy bank next to the place her car had landed. One was made of rustic iron filigree, and the other was one of those white wooden highway crosses made of garden stakes. Someone had thumbtacked a laminated photo of Katie to it, a summer snapshot of her with a big grin, wisps of hair loose around her face. As I approached the site, it startled me to find her smiling up at me. Surreal. I cannot believe I am one of “those” people leaving flowers at a marker on the side of a road—briefly bumming out all who drive by.

  I sat down on the grass and ran my hand over the sun-warmed turf. Did Katie’s body touch these very grasses as she was pulled from the wreckage? I felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to write her a note and leave it there for her, but others who visited might read it—plus that would be littering. Then I got an idea.

 
I pulled a fine-tip Sharpie from my purse and picked up one of the red roses I had bought. Each stem bore two clusters of three waxen green leaves, and each leaf was like a tiny page for note writing. The bouquet would provide me seventy-two pages in all. No littering. And privacy.

  At first, I wrote a single word on each leaf—adjectives that described things I loved about Katie—and her quirks, too. I said each word aloud—maybe she could hear me. Kind, joyful, beauty, messy, funny, sacred, artistic, dancer, spark, sister, flirt, authentic, daughter, baker, stubborn, impulsive, food artist, feminine.

  The notes on the leaves were barely visible to the naked eye, so I began writing full sentences. I miss you. I hate that you died! I love you beyond words. I am afraid my joy is gone forever. You were too good to be true. I wanted to hold your babies someday. Come back! Rewind the clock! I will never forget you. Dad is brokenhearted, Bug. I will try hard to help Tember in her grief. Bethany loves you. I will hug Sam for you. I loved being your mama. Matt and Andrea wish you could paint their mural. Thank you for loving me well. I will hug Matt. I will hug Andrea. I love you. I love you. I love you.

  When the last leaf was filled, I nestled the wildflowers around the feet of the crosses and tucked the roses among them. The effect was stunning. My artist daughter would have approved—though I knew I would take a good-natured ribbing from the rest of my kids for this leaf-writing inspiration. They might say it was a bit “Momily Dickinson” of me—or tease me about my Laura Ingalls Wilder ways. We’d just keep these moments to ourselves.

  I breathed in deeply and exhaled as I walked back to the van. It felt good to have a place to be purposeful about remembering my daughter.

  The miles between Illinois and our California kids tortured us that summer. Frequent e-mails and phone calls just didn’t cut it. We needed to gather as a family. We needed someplace to decompress and process together and grieve.