Signs of Life

by Natalie Taylor

  Maureen sits next to Debbie. Maureen holds a tissue in her hand also. She has a little bit of an accent. She lost her husband, who had been physically disabled for about five years, in November right before Thanksgiving. They had gone out to Denver to see their son and his family. She says she remembers thinking how much energy he had on the trip. She couldn’t believe it, they hadn’t traveled in years. Then, one morning when he was getting dressed and she was getting ready to take a shower, he just fell backward on the bed and no one could resuscitate him. She takes the longest to tell her story. It’s like she still can’t believe it. Sometimes, she says, she finds herself talking to him. She admits her weekends are very lonely. She makes dinner and doesn’t know what to do with all of her leftovers.

  Pat has long white hair and pale skin. She wears all black to the group meeting. Her eyes are a deep brown, but they seem to droop as if her face is permanently fixed to express a sense of mournfulness. Up until Pat, everyone else had lost his or her spouse less than a year ago. Pat shrugs before starting her story. Two years ago Pat lost her “dear friend,” Ed. Ever since Ed died, all of the deaths she has had in her life have come back to her. She says this like she’s surprised and a bit annoyed. I picture her cooking dinner, and in walks the ghost of her mother and she has to yell, “Mom! Get out of here and quit scaring me!” But as she continues to talk, I realize that she’s not talking about ghosts.

  For the past two years she feels like she has slipped into a hole and she “just can’t seem to get out.” She is excited for the warm weather because gardening is one of the few things that still brings her joy. Pat lost her husband early on in her life and then her daughter lost her husband at the exact same age that Pat lost hers. Pat also lost her father in 1971. She says she’s really been missing him lately.

  Fran is a tall, slender woman, probably in her sixties. She is beautiful. Fran’s husband, Davis, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died within seven months. He did not suffer and hardly complained throughout his final days at home. At one point, the hospice nurse encouraged him to start morphine, but he said he didn’t want any because he didn’t want to risk getting addicted. Davis played professional baseball. He played for three different teams, including the Detroit Tigers. Fran still gets mail from people requesting his autograph. She says that drives her crazy.

  Bernard sits on the same couch as me. He sounds like he has a German accent. He’s a handsome older guy, probably mid-fifties. His wife died in a bike accident on June 18, 2007, the day after Josh’s accident. She was wearing a helmet but lost control of her bike and fell into a ravine. She died instantly. Bernard is one of two men in the group. Up until Bernard, all of the women had noted that one of the hardest parts in their initial journey was suddenly having to deal with all of the finances and the maintenance of the house. None of them knew how to file their taxes or fix the furnace or fix anything. Bernard said he obviously didn’t have a problem with any of that when his wife died because he was the one who originally took care of everything. Bernard’s main problem is that he just retired and he has no idea what to do or who to spend time with. He said his wife would make up their social calendar. She planned their dinner parties and arranged all of their outings with friends. “I was just a tagalong.” Now he’s not quite sure who his friends even are. Bernard has not cooked anything in ten months. Every night he goes out and buys something to eat.

  Finally, it’s my turn. This is the first time, probably in about five months, when I have to tell the whole story to people who don’t know me at all. I say, “My husband Josh”—and then I lose it. That’s all I get, those three words. I am the first person in the group to cry. Up until this moment, everyone has spoken in soft voices and no one has gotten out of control with their emotions. But now I cry so hard I can hardly talk. Everyone waits and after a few minutes I try again, “My husband Josh,” but the same thing happens. I am shocked by this. I haven’t cried this hard in a long time in front of other people, let alone strangers. Everyone stares at me. They feel bad for me. I feel bad for me too. I think to myself, Whose life is this? This is such a sad story, which only makes me cry harder.

  Finally I get it out. But when I start crying really hard and then I try to talk, everything is in this really high voice. Every now and then, in the middle of a sentence, my voice breaks and I start to cry again. Picture a little girl whose older brother has just ripped the legs off of her Barbie doll and she’s trying to relay the story to her parents. Every time she gets to the hard part, all of her words run together. (“I was just putting her in the house and then he grabbed her-an’-ripped-her-legs-zoff!) That’s me. At one point I say the date, “June 17.” Bernard looks at me, almost alarmed, and says, “That was Father’s Day.” I nod.

  Lynne and Mary direct a few questions at each of us. I am relieved when the spotlight moves somewhere else. Mary asks Debbie a question, which I don’t hear because I’m blowing my nose still. Debbie says something to the effect of the unfairness of her husband’s death, but then she pauses and looks at me.

  “But then I look at this child …” She holds her hand out in my direction. She says that my story makes her think about what is “unfair.”

  Usually I get mad when someone references how young I am. “Babies raising babies!” women say when they see me with Kai. But when Debbie says this, I know she’s not patronizing me or trying to make me feel less mature than I am. Just in the way she says it and the look on her face, I know she sees me as too young to experience such a tragedy. She’s right. I am too young. But then I look at her and think, She’s too young too. We’re all too young, too busy for our lives to be interrupted by death. All of us, despite our age difference, had a distinct plan that instantly turned to rubble. And we’re not here to figure out how to clean up that rubble, or at least I’m not. I guess I’m here just to practice saying my story out loud.

  At one point in The Catcher in the Rye the reader learns that shortly after Allie died, Holden went into his parents’ garage and broke all of the windows with his bare hands. He had severe cuts all up and down his arms and he was covered in blood. The day I left the hospital with Kai, Patty, my amazing nurse, sat down on my bed and told me that I needed to ask people to help me when I needed it. With a very serious expression she said, “If you think you’re going to hurt the baby or yourself, call someone immediately.” I sat there silently. I remember thinking, Why on earth are you saying a thing like this? Although I would obviously never hurt Kai, there are these dark times, usually in the middle of the night when I can’t get Kai to sleep and I feel the harrowing effect of Josh’s absence. At those moments I fully understand why Holden shatters all of that glass. He watched his baby brother die and now his whole life is screwed up forever.

  Holden seems to have Picnic, Lightning days all the time. On top of it, he’s a teenage boy. I’ve never had the experience being a teenage boy, but a couple of Christmases ago my brother bought me this book called Youth in Revolt. The narrator is a fifteen-year-old boy, so you’re basically inside the mind of an adolescent male. It is as if a brain with two hands has been driving the vehicle of a boy’s body—at the right speed limit, obeying all traffic orders—and then one day a giant penis comes crashing through the passenger’s side window, whips open the driver’s side door, and kicks the brain out onto the pavement. After that the body is being driven at 120 miles per hour by a penis. The brain is long gone, never to be seen again. That’s my impression of the male mind, body, and soul after reading Youth in Revolt. So here’s Holden Caulfield in the midst of puberty and grief. No wonder he gets himself into an awkward situation with a prostitute in a sleezy hotel room. The collision of hormones and grief are catastrophic.

  That’s everybody’s problem. All of us are trying to figure out how to operate normally at whatever phase of life we are in, and then grief turns everything inside out. Bernard and his retirement. Debbie and her empty nest. Me and motherhood.

  Between my grief group, the April
rain, and Holden Caulfield suddenly making a claim on my living room couch, the passing winter doesn’t seem to have taken the darkness with it. These wild mood swings are forming a pattern. I walk out of the shadows for a moment, look at the sunshine, and declare that life is grand, then I go back in, shut the door, and cry for a while longer. I think about calling Dr. G. again. Then I think, what kind of crazy woman am I if I call my therapist to debrief about my spousal grief group?

  In the midst of my blues, I receive an e-mail from Maggie regarding Mathews. Mathews is in Denver for a two-week hiatus before he starts his new job. Maggie is here in Michigan, but she talked to Mathews on the phone last night and had to report on what transpired.

  Last night was Mathews’s first night in Colorado. He went out with our friend Becky. In typical Mathews-partying fashion, he strayed away from his group and ended up roaming the streets of Denver at three o’clock in the morning by himself. Around five o’clock eastern standard time, Maggie got a phone call from Mathews. He was trying to call someone to figure out how to get back to Becky’s apartment and he ended up calling Maggie, who was in Michigan. He talked to Maggie for about a half hour, relaying every moment of his late-night Denver adventure. At this point in the evening he was very drunk. As all of our friends know, when Mathews hits a certain blood alcohol level his behavior becomes very predictable. Once intoxicated he will start high-fiving random people, he becomes obsessed with finding something to eat, and he begins to completely disobey all pedestrian traffic laws.

  In her e-mail, Maggie recounts all of the ridiculous things he said to her over and over throughout their conversation:

  “Sista!”

  “Becks—and by Becks, I mean Mags.”

  “I just turned the door handle to Neverland. That’s right, sista!”

  “I am great with children; but if that baby cries, I will kick the shit out of you!” [referring to the people sitting next to/near him on the plane with a little baby]

  “We’re in the DANGA ZONE!”

  “I’m ponying to the side and urinating on the grass!”

  “We don’t know if these bushes are going to leap out at me, now, do we?”

  “Magrid, I love that you’re on this adventure with me!”

  I read this e-mail and by the end there are tears in my eyes. I can’t remember the last time I laughed this hard. This is why I love Mathews. He seems to appear at just the right moments. Less than one year ago, Mathews lost his best friend in the entire world. Ever since they met in college, Mathews and Josh couldn’t move through any phase of life without the other. Josh was the first person Mathews told he was gay. Josh took Mathews ring shopping when he was planning our engagement. Mathews was the first person we told when we found out I was pregnant. I have vivid memories of going to bed early and listening to the murmurs and laughter of those two in the living room. When Josh died, Mathews and I both lost our own version of a soul mate. But over the past ten months, he seems to be the one person who has tried his hardest to live despite his loss. He is always calling me with entertaining work stories, he listens to my rants about my in-laws, and he stops by not because he pities me but because he really cares about Kai and me. He is a complete gentleman, and at the same time, as Maggie’s e-mail confirms, he acts like a complete moron. A totally hilarious moron, who wastes no time in the pity pool.

  I am so deeply thankful for Mathews’s rich spirit and love of life. He is the only person in this world who can make me laugh when I’m stuck in a Holden Caulfield moment. He lures me out of the shadows, not because he feels sorry for me but because he knows how much more fun it is out there in the sunlight (or moonlight, depending on the occasion), which is exactly what Josh used to do when he was here. I feel like I’ve lost a lot of my own enthusiasm and vibrance since Josh died, but it is a tremendous relief to know that Mathews hasn’t. Someday I’ll catch up to him. In the meantime, I say a little prayer to the Gods of Drunk and Disorderly for once again watching over my friend Chris Mathews. They must love that guy.

  This Wednesday at the grief group we were all supposed to bring in a picture of our spouse or an item that reminded us of them. Bernard has a photo of his wife and his daughter. Fran brought in an old picture of Davis in his Tigers uniform. Debbie shows us a picture from her family’s last vacation to Hawaii. She starts crying a little and says that this was the last vacation she had with her husband. I forgot to bring a picture or an item. I had a picture all picked out and left it at the last minute. I found one we used for Josh’s funeral. He’s in his wet suit holding his surfboard and the sun is setting behind him. He has long hair. He had the most beautiful long blond hair.

  Pat is wearing a bright pink hat and a camouflage army coat. Both belonged to Ed. She says it brings her joy to wear his stuff. She actually gets up and spins around to show us the whole 360 degrees. Pat passes around a picture of Ed. It was taken a while ago, or at least I think so from the brown plaid suit coat he is wearing. Ed is incredibly good looking. He reminds me of Jay Gatsby with dark hair. In the picture, he is looking dapper holding a martini glass, and he’s not gazing at the camera but a little off to the side. He’s got this smirk on his face. I can tell Ed and Chris Mathews would have a great time together.

  As the picture is being passed around, Mary asks Pat some questions about what she and Ed did together, what some of her best memories of him were. It’s still not entirely clear what the nature of their friendship was. Pat says, “Well, he had this plane and we used to fly all over the place together.” Right as she says this, this smile creeps across her face. It’s not just any smile. It’s not like an “Oh yeah, that was fun” smile. It is a distinct smile—every woman knows what it means—and suddenly li’l old Pat has transformed into Kim Cattrall from Sex and the City and I know exactly what kind of relationship she and Ed had. I love it. I want to take Pat out for a drink and introduce her to my college friends and get her to spill her guts.

  After the pictures, Mary and Lynne guide the conversation. They ask us about memories and what it’s like going through pictures and clothes, how we treat these relics of our lost loved ones. They ask us about life now. Somehow we get on the topic of food and meals, and Debbie tells us that she doesn’t cook anymore. She’s found a few frozen meals that are okay. She says this with such a practical tone, like this is a part of the problem that she has actually solved. I feel so sad at the idea of her frozen dinners.

  I imagine how Debbie probably used to walk through the grocery store when her husband was alive. She is on her cell phone with her husband talking about what to get. “How about tilapia? Oh, that’s right, you want to do Italian … okay, how about I make lasagna … Oh, Kroger has a sale on fresh peaches. Honey, can you check to see if we’re out of fruit?” Or maybe they went grocery shopping together. But now she stands with her cart in the frozen food aisle debating whether to try Stouffers or Lean Cuisine. The people in the aisle get mad at her because she’s in their way or she’s taking too long in front of one of the glass doors. No one in the aisle knows what has happened or how this moment of picking between cold boxes for dinner is really her whole life. I don’t know why this makes me sad. I want to invite her over for dinner, but I only have smashed carrots and turkey that you could drink through a straw.

  In our third grief meeting we get on the topic of daily routines. We talk about what our daily routines used to be like and what they are like now. Bernard says that for the thirty-two years he and his wife were together, she always made the bed in the morning. He never made the bed once throughout their entire marriage. The morning after Marie died, the first morning he woke up without her, he made the bed. He has made the bed every day since she died.

  When Bernard says this, I can tell he thinks it’s a minor detail. It’s not a big deal. To him it’s a logical solution—she’s not there, so he has to make it. But for some reason this small detail of Bernard’s life sticks to me like glue. We talk about a million other things, but all I can think about is Bernar
d in his bathrobe or flannel pajamas pulling up the comforter. I want to put this in my pocket so that any time I hit a bad patch, I can think of Bernard stacking those pillows trying to make his bed look nice.

  • • •

  Moo called me a few weeks ago and said she signed up to do her first triathlon. She wants me to do it with her. Moo has always been into endurance sports. She has completed two marathons since college. I played soccer in high school and college and I only ran because I had to. When I think about running competitively it makes me want to vomit.

  “Absolutely not,” I tell her.

  “Nat, it’s for a really good cause.” She tells me about this organization called Team in Training. Sure, I’ve heard of it. I get their promotional flyers in the mail sometimes with those people jogging with big smiles on their faces like that marathon they’re running is no big deal. I don’t buy it.

  “Moo, you know what those people have that I don’t? Free time. When would I train for this?”

  She tells me that the grandmas would love it if they had one or two nights a week when I left to go train and they stayed with Kai. Not to mention Auntie Ashley is always around. I am still cynical.