Colors of Goodbye

by September Vaudrey

  Bethany rolled her eyes and smirked at me. Here it comes, Mom—and you deserve it. I tried to warn you.

  His face brightened as the perfect segue popped into mind.

  “Oooooooo. Dead people,” he said. “That reminds me, did you hear about those guys from the funeral home in Burr Oak who got arrested for digging up dead people and reselling the graves? I guess they dropped some body parts, and that’s how they got caught. Dead people . . . now that’s creepy.”

  Priceless!

  I paid the cashier—who politely pretended not to hear my exchange with her bagger—and Bethany and I hurried off with our cart, laughing as soon as we got outside.

  “That’s what you get, Mom, for baring your soul to Awkward Grocery Bagger!” Bethany said.

  But behind her laugher, I could tell she was ticked. I had embarrassed her. And worse, I had put that bagger in a horribly awkward position.

  In the car, Bethany let me have it. “Mom, you ambushed that poor guy!” she said. “He didn’t deserve that. What did you expect him to say?”

  She was right. I had said too much—not because it might serve that guy in some way, as I’d tried to rationalize to myself, but because it had served me. My need to tell. My need to talk about Katie.

  The truth was, I wanted people to know about Katie. If someone asked me how many kids I had, I was quick to tell them five. If they asked their ages, I listed each one—and included a few sentences about what had happened to my middle daughter. I resented the fact that it weirded people out when I mentioned that my child had died, and I bucked against it. Today I had used the bagger’s innocent question as an unsolicited launching point. It was a selfish thing to do.

  I ached to talk about Katie in the same way I could talk freely about any of my other kids. Plus I wanted people to hear that although I’d lost a child, her death was not the end of our story. I genuinely wanted to give them a glimpse of how good and faithful God had been for us in the midst of this horror. If someday they, too, would have to navigate horrors of their own, perhaps they would remember our story, and it might give them hope.

  But my habit of oversharing had come with a price tag I had been choosing to ignore.

  Scott and the kids were the opposite of me in how they responded to people with regard to Katie. To them, her death was so significant and personal that they discussed it only with those they were close to—not with strangers. Our conflicting styles of grief were mutually exclusive, as Bethany tried to explain to me in the car at Costco.

  “Your style of grief trumps ours, Mom,” she said. “Once you tell, we can’t untell.”

  But I was a slow learner. A week later, I slipped up again. I overshared. Tember and I were driving in a car with a new girlfriend of hers—and her mother. I managed to slip Katie’s passing into the conversation as her friend listened in, sneaking uncomfortable glances at my daughter. Tember was furious with me.

  That night at the kitchen table, she and Bethany sat me down and laid it out plain. “Mom, it’s one thing when you ambush Awkward Costco Bagger,” Bethany said, her eyes flashing. “But when you tell someone I know—or someone Tember knows—you are telling our story as well as your own! We can’t untell those people. And it’s so unfair!”

  “We don’t have the luxury of doing what works best for us in those situations,” Tember added, “because you have already left us exposed. My sister’s death feels too sacred to just mention casually. I feel I am devaluing all she meant to me if I talk about it with people I don’t know, who don’t know me.”

  The tension at the kitchen table was high. Both girls were angry. All three of us were crying. It was awful. At first I was defensive, but what they said made such perfect sense I could find no excuse for myself. How could I have been so blind?

  “You’re so right,” I told them.

  They weren’t through.

  “Mom, I know sometimes you worry that we hold our grief inside to an unhealthy degree,” Bethany continued. “I disagree. It feels right for us.”

  “But regardless—and this is hard to say because we don’t want to hurt your feelings,” Tember said, “have you really stopped to consider how healthy it is for you to be leaking on people to the degree you do?”

  Ouch. Me? Me, the mother who has psychoanalyzed every word, every glance, every facial expression of my kids these past many months? Me, who has worried so much about how they are doing inside? Had I failed to look at myself with the same rigor?

  Yes. Yes, I had.

  “Mom,” Tember continued, her lashes wet. “It’s fine if you’re talking to someone who is primarily your friend, or if you’re teaching or writing a blog or something. That’s totally appropriate because we don’t know those people. But when it’s someone who’s primarily in our lives, let us decide who we share our story with.”

  I couldn’t argue. It was one thing for me to talk about our family’s story while teaching a grief class, as I’d done a few times—or when writing a blog, or even this memoir. Those were “anonymous” audiences as far as the kids were concerned. But when I was having a personal conversation with the mother of one of their friends, or a new teacher, I was forcing their hand, trumping their style of grieving with my own. (For the record, each of the kids gave invaluable input and their blessing on this manuscript!)

  That night at the kitchen table, I finally permitted a spotlight to shine on a part of my grief that desperately needed realignment.

  “I am truly sorry,” I said. “I’ve tried so hard not to make Katie’s death the centerpiece of my world. How could I not have seen?”

  “Mama, to a certain degree, Katie is the centerpiece of our family,” Bethany said. “And that’s okay. Her death has changed everything for all of us. How could it not? I’m not suggesting you go build an official Katie shrine in the living room! But maybe you would do well to accept that because of her death, Katie does hold a different place in our family—and just try to manage that reality rather than fight it.”

  “Wow,” I said. “What you’re describing sure would be easier than what I’ve been trying to do! I am so sorry, you guys.”

  “We forgive you, Mom,” Tember said, patting my knee. “This isn’t easy for any of us, and we know we don’t always get it right either.”

  This conversation was a game changer for me. Not that I don’t still fail. I do. But as a result of my daughters’ challenging but truthful words, I began to implement a new filter into my life: Before sharing, I would simply ask myself, Is this my story to tell?

  And I began to cut myself—and others!—more slack regarding our propensity to “centerpiece” the loved ones we had lost. Finding that delicate balance between honoring the one who has died and celebrating the ones who still live—it’s super hard. I am susceptible to centerpiecing, and rather than fighting this truth, I now try to focus my energies around managing it.

  In situations where it won’t adversely affect the kids, I definitely err more toward the side of telling people about Katie. And the kids and I agree on one caveat to my new filter: When asked how many children I have, I will always tell people five, not four. No matter the current head count around our kitchen table, Katie’s space will forever be kept in my heart.

  44

  SUFFICE IT TO SAY, my introvert husband has never been lectured for oversharing. He chooses carefully when to talk about Katie, and with whom. We are wired so differently that of course our grief has looked very different, too. He is highly sensitive inside but more outwardly stoic. His tears have been rare, but also more piercing and poignant. He has spent countless hours sitting alone just thinking, praying, meditating, or reading. Yet he has never hesitated to listen to me verbally process, and he assures me it is no burden. I adore this about him. Because how can it not be a burden to hear someone talk about the death of your daughter?

  I, on the other hand, am rather sturdy inside, but frequently a bit of a mess on the outside. My eyes leak at country ballads, reruns of Little House on the Pra
irie, pretty much anything written by Dickens, Austen, or a Brontë, and the final episode of The Office. (Also the “Casino Night” episode, when Jim finally kisses Pam.) So it makes sense that large volumes of tears would be involved when I had lost a child. I also felt compelled to work out my loss in tangible ways, like staying with Katie in the hospital, doing her makeup in the funeral home, visiting the wrecking yard and crash site, and attending the coroner’s inquest. And I have needed to put words to my loss. I have written myriad pages and have found comfort in conversations with willing friends, especially Scott, who has let me talk—and talk—and talk. My process has been costly for him. And likewise, his quiet way of grieving has at times been a challenge for me. But for both of us, embracing each other’s unique style of surviving has been an honor as well.

  Despite our differences, sometimes our grief aligns. Sometimes we lock eyes across the room and read each other’s thoughts: Did this really happen? Is she really gone? Scott’s gentle eyes grow moist. A quiver crosses his lips, and he looks like a little boy. Scott’s sorrow is deep and soul shattering. He is digesting it in small, purposeful bites. And I have taken big, messy bites, which fits my personality. Each of the kids falls somewhere in between this spectrum—though closer to Scott. Except Andrea, who is my grief twin.

  Each of us is on a solitary journey that fits our God-given temperament. What might look like ignoring, stuffing, or avoiding for one person might be just the right pace or season or style for another.

  “There’s no wrong way to grieve, so long as you grieve,” family friend Chrissie told our kids.

  “Mom, when you went back to work a couple of months after Katie died,” Bethany told me one day, “it helped you avoid a depression. The work helped your grief. But for me, work and school became places that distracted me from my sorrow, making it harder to grieve.”

  Same actions, different people, different results.

  I wish I had a grief thermometer I could just stick under my kids’ tongues to get an accurate read on how they are doing inside. But the reality is, neither Scott nor I can force them to share their grief process on our schedule. (Trust me, I’ve tried!) Finding the balance between inviting and invading has not come easy to me. I worry. I get panicky. I want to fix their hurt, and I barge in. I drive myself (and my family) a little crazy with my attempts to assess their grief or force an expression of it.

  If I discipline myself to ask a simple, straightforward question and then leave space for the kids to share, I am sometimes rewarded with glimpses of their inner journeys. But when I use invasive questions or unspoken expectations to try to force my way inside, they close up, protecting those tender places from my uninvited prying.

  It’s hard for me to be that disciplined and self-controlled when I am hurting too. When a whole family is deep in grief, the entire home team is on injured reserve, which makes it even harder for me to ask for what I need. I don’t want to ask anything of the kids when I know they are suffering. And besides, as parents, our job is to do what’s best for them, right? We sacrifice. We moms in particular are the broken-cookie eaters of the world. But I have found that the healthiest thing for the whole family is simply to be direct. Even if others cannot meet my needs, there is something healthy about me stating those needs without the demand that they be met. No passive-aggressive innuendos, no lingering expectations. Just an honest request.

  When I am unable to just come out and say what I need, here’s how it usually goes:

  Me: Gee, I see Katie’s birthday is coming up next Thursday . . . I wonder if we should do something . . .

  Kids: [crickets]

  Andrea: Matt and I will host a family dinner! [She always rescues me.]

  Kids: We will eat the family dinner.

  My kids are not dum-dums. They smell my manipulation, and understandably they resent it. So these days I’m practicing speaking my needs more directly, like an actual grown-up. Here’s how it goes when I am being a big girl:

  Me: Would any of you be up for marking Katie’s birthday with a family dinner?

  Kids: Sounds great, Mom!

  Andrea: Matt and I will host the family dinner!

  Kids: We will eat the family dinner.

  Okay, to be fair, the kids all pitch in with the dinner. But that’s not my point. Being straightforward is much more effective than being (not very) sneaky. When I am direct, the kids are almost always receptive. If they cannot meet my specific request, that’s okay. I might feel disappointed, but I don’t feel hurt because I get so fed by the mere honesty of our adult-to-adult exchange. And I can turn to a girlfriend or to Scott—or even just be alone—to get my needs met.

  I’m getting better—a little. My interactions with the kids are becoming more straightforward, grown-up to grown-up, with each passing year.

  One more thought: In grief—and in life—family is great, but it’s not enough. Even with an amazing family to walk alongside me in this season, I have desperately needed my posse of girlfriends. We all need a posse of our own—people who have our backs, who can be there for us when the pain is too great to bear alone, and who are not drowning in their own grief. Therapists make great paid posse members, but friends, too, are vital for the journey ahead. My posse—Kaye, Lynne, Sandy, Tammy, Lynette, Margaret, and a handful of others—has ridden alongside me over some rough patches of road. I don’t know how I might have survived without them. And their investment in me has left me better equipped to ride alongside others as well.

  45

  IT HAD BEEN ALMOST TWO YEARS since Katie’s death, and I had heard from only one recipient of her organ donation—a thirty-nine-year-old man who had received bone and soft tissue, which had been used to rebuild his knee. His letter moved me deeply. “My favorite things to do include rock climbing, mountain biking, and telemark skiing,” he wrote. He’d had multiple knee surgeries, and after his latest sports injury, he’d required yet another operation—this time with a tissue donation. “Because of the gift from your loved one, I will again be able to climb, bike, ski, and enjoy life!” This man is a nurse who cares for critically ill patients, so he often talks with families who have lost a loved one. “I see firsthand what a difficult time this can be for you, and I have experienced firsthand now what a life-changing gift tissue donation is for me. Thank you so very much.”

  As happy as it made me to think of this man enjoying the outdoors on his freshly repaired knee, I still ached to hear from any of the organ recipients who carried a living organ of my daughter inside their bodies. I especially hoped to hear from the girl who’d received Katie’s lungs. What must it have felt like for her on that first morning to wake up from surgery and take a deep breath of air? She and I probably awoke around the same time that morning—me at home, my head foggy with shock and grief, and this young woman in the ICU, her head foggy with anesthesia. I awoke, went outside, and railed at God. Perhaps she awoke and thanked Him. I secretly hoped to meet her someday—and to see my daughter’s lungs in action.

  My mailbox had continued to disappoint for almost two years when one day a Gift of Hope envelope appeared. I ripped it open (sorry, Scott and kids, for not waiting till you got home!), and into my hands fell a letter from the woman who had received Katie’s liver. Her letter captivated me. She had begun writing it in 2008, but it had taken her until now to finish and send it.

  “I was three days away from dying when Katie’s liver became available for me.” The woman explained that she suffered from a chronic illness that had silently destroyed her liver. She also told me that she was the caretaker of her visually impaired husband, served as a deacon in her church, and was a grandmother. “I was sixty-nine when I had the transplant and am now seventy, so a definite senior but with work to accomplish and a family to support. Thank you so much for seeing that Katie could give the gift of life. She surely is still helping to do good in our world. Many people do not understand that others are dying every day because there is no organ for them. You gave me the incredible chance to
live days of service and joy to others, just as Katie would have. Thank you—thank you. Hope to hear from you soon.”

  I want to leave ripples in the lives I leave behind . . . With one simple signature on the back of her driver’s license, Katie had done just that.

  This woman and I soon talked on the phone, and it was fascinating to hear the voice of someone in whom Katie’s liver was busy doing its work. She had a great sense of humor, and I confessed that in our house we referred to her as “The Liver Lady.” She laughed out loud. We agreed it would be wonderful to meet face-to-face. She wanted to come to our house and see Katie’s art.

  The rest of our family had hesitations about meeting her, however. It freaked the kids out, and for Scott it just triggered overwhelming sadness. Once again the differences in how we grieved came to bear. For the time being, I set aside our plans to meet. The Liver Lady understood. When the time was right, we could revisit it.

  Spring arrived, and with it the approach of the two-year mark. Sights and sounds once again triggered my “body memory” of this time of year—the smell of loam, freshly cut grass, and hawthorn blossoms; the symphony of Midwest songbirds; and the rustle of new leaves on the cottonwood trees. All these brought me back to that fateful weekend when Katie had died. I braced myself for the milestone that was fast approaching.

  Sam’s high school graduation happened to fall around that second anniversary of Katie’s death, and Matt, Andrea, and Bethany flew to town. With all my chicks in the nest, the house was filled with stories, laughter, rich conversation, good food—and plenty of games. Bethany made a giant score chart to keep track of who won which games throughout the week so we could crown an ultimate victor at the end. Sam dubbed the tournament the “Graduational Invitational.” Points were awarded in Speed Scrabble, Settlers of Catan, Hearts, Wii Tetris, Mario Kart, and Shanghai. I enjoyed cooking for everyone as much as I enjoyed playing games, so Bethany awarded me points for meals prepared. It kept me on the board.