Signs of Life

by Natalie Taylor

  “I don’t own a bike.”

  “You can borrow someone’s.”

  “I have never swum more than ten feet in my life.” This is actually a lie. I swam one year in the seventh grade for my middle school swim team. I had to swim the 200-meter because I wasn’t fast enough to be in any of the sprints and I wasn’t strong enough to do any distance farther than 200 meters. The night before the first meet I sat in my room and contemplated ways to break my foot. I ended up swimming the next day. (I didn’t have the guts to actually break my foot). It was a horrible experience. I remember overhearing one of the seventh-grade boys making fun of how slowly I went. I never swam competitively again.

  “You would practice.” She tells me to go to a Team in Training meeting and to think about it. I roll my eyes. We hang up.

  After Moo calls me, I don’t talk to anyone else about the triathlon. I think about it. I think of a list of reasons why I shouldn’t do it: (1) Child care. (2) I do not enjoy running, swimming, or biking. (That seems like a really good reason.) (3) I look absolutely ridiculous in a swim cap. Yes, it is for a wonderful cause, but is clearly not the best time in my life to take on an Olympic distance triathlon. I’ll let my childless, significantly more athletic sister do it instead.

  It’s the last Wednesday in April and the last meeting of my grief group. I think about how this group has helped. Maybe help isn’t the right word. But I have to admit, there is something so oddly comforting in knowing that I am not the only human who wants desperately to talk to thin air, wear clothes that don’t fit, and feels like the world is moving on without me. I am happy I decided to join the group. Maybe happy isn’t the right word either. Maybe it is.

  At the conclusion of the meeting Lynne says, “I have one final question for all of you.” I sit there, expecting some female-ministerish question like “How did this group make you feel?” or “What did you learn about yourself?” I start to concoct my answer before she asks the question.

  She looks over her clipboard and says, “What are you going to do next?” I can tell from the rest of the group that we all think this is a wildly unfair question. I exhale through my mouth and contemplate. Next? What does she mean, next? I’m going to continue to do what I’ve been doing: go from feeling horribly sad and frustrated to joyous about my son and keep my fingers crossed that one day the former will no longer outweigh the latter. But what am I going to do next? I haven’t got a clue.

  Fran starts by saying that she is going to continue to go to other grief support groups. Beaumont Hospital offers several support groups. There is usually a speaker and then you move into break-out groups to discuss the topic. Fran pulls out a few pink sheets of paper and says she brought the information with her for anyone else who may be interested. She hands one to me. This is really nice of her, but it sort of feels like when someone gets you a gift certificate to get your eyebrows waxed. It is a kind gesture, but really they are saying, “You really need some help.”

  Bernard says he’s been really good about going to church and he feels like his next step is to reconnect with people around him, his neighbors and old friends. Pat says she is going to start taking walks with a friend of hers. She needs to get out and enjoy the spring and she knows she wants to do something with someone else.

  “What about you, Natalie? Where are you going to go from here?” I look up for a second. I think about what I am about to say and how much I don’t want to say it, but I have to. Maybe not even for me, but for everyone else in the room.

  “I’m going to train for an Olympic distance triathlon.” The whole room suddenly perks up. Bernard looks over at me. Even though we sit next to each other, we don’t make a lot of eye contact during the meetings, but now he looks right at me. “Good for you,” he says. Everyone else is nodding, smiling. I think about how I have never seen Maureen’s teeth until right now. The room is buzzing with excitement. Jack wants to tell me all about his granddaughter who runs marathons and how much she loves them. They ask how I decided to do this, who I will train with, when I will start. I explain that it will raise money for cancer patients and their families. Debbie clutches her tissue to her heart and says, “That is so wonderful.” They all want to donate money. They all want to write a check right now.

  After the meeting Kai and I go home. While Kai is asleep, I go into my bedroom to put away the box I opened to find a picture of Josh to take to the meeting two weeks ago. I put back the picture of Josh in his wet suit. In the same box are two books Josh gave me years ago. When Josh and I first started dating, I was a senior in college and he had just graduated. At the start of my second semester, I had to go back to school and Josh moved out west for a few months. We knew we’d stay together; he just wanted to get some surfing in before getting a real job. When he left he gave me these two books to read. I look at their worn-out title pages. One is called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the other is The Gospel of the Redman. The Gospel of the Redman is a book of Native American prayers and sayings. I have no idea where he got it. Even before we started dating I knew Josh was not a religious person. He was a chemistry major, and he answered questions with science. The Gospel of the Redman is the only thing I’ve ever seen him read that had any connection to a God, higher power, or spiritual world. But even the word spiritual would freak him out.

  I go through The Gospel of the Redman, just to see what it says. I’ve never read it. You’d think I would considering he gave it to me, but I never have. I go through it sort of looking for a secret message from Josh. I did this with his philosophy books from college a few months ago. His favorite philosophy book was called 21 Questions. It’s all marked up in his writing and notable passages are highlighted. I went through it page by page, reading his notes, hoping he left me some sort of message about how to deal with death. I didn’t find anything. It seems a little silly now, like I should’ve called Nancy the nurse to see if she wanted to get out the Ouija board and Josh’s books and give it the old college try.

  I find the section on death in The Gospel of the Redman. This is from a part called “The Soul of the Redman: Death Songs.”

  I care not where my body lies,

  My soul goes marching on.

  I care not where my body lies,

  My soul goes marching on.

  This is Josh. This was written for him. He isn’t in a cemetery.

  may

  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,

  Robert Frost

  Whose woods these are I think I know.

  His house is in the village though;

  He will not see me stopping here

  To watch his woods fill up with snow.

  My little horse must think it queer

  To stop without a farmhouse near

  Between the woods and frozen lake

  The darkest evening of the year.

  He gives his harness bells a shake

  To ask if there is some mistake.

  The only other sound’s the sweep

  Of easy wind and downy flake.

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  wedding season is quickly approaching. Toby and Nikki are getting married this May. Angela, my friend from college, is getting married over the July Fourth weekend—I am a bridesmaid. Terrah and her fiancé, Andy, get married in August—I am a bridesmaid. Three weddings may not seem like a lot, but for women it’s not just the wedding. Nikki’s shower is next week. Angela has already sent us a slew of e-mails regarding dresses, shoes, jewelry, makeup, hair, and fitting deadlines. Not to mention two bachelorette parties and two showers this spring. I am so sick of all of this that when Terrah calls me to see when I can go in for a fitting for her bridesmaid’s dress I say, “Can you just order me an eight? I’ll write you a check.”

  I know this is a hugely insensitive gesture considering she is the bride and I am a brid
esmaid and I’m supposed to be doing everything for her, but I can’t do it. I can’t arrange for a babysitter to go get fitted for a dress that I’m going to wear for five minutes. I know weddings are supposed to be joyous celebrations and I really try to be happy. But part of me can’t help but feel like that demographic broke up with me eight months ago.

  Toby and Nikki want Kai to be a part of their wedding ceremony. Toby requests that I bring Kai to the ceremony so Claire, the maid of honor, can walk down the aisle with him and so we can get a picture of him with all the groomsmen. I am annoyed by this. I feel like Toby and Nikki are using Kai as some sort of ornament or decoration. In addition to this, I have to go to Carter’s to get Kai a new outfit for the wedding.

  “Well, the wedding colors are purple and black,” Nikki tells me over the phone. “So if you could get something that matched, that would be great.”

  First of all, wedding colors is pretty much the dumbest phrase I’ve ever heard. You might as well make up a wedding fight song while you’re at it. Why don’t you just hire some wedding cheerleaders who can get uniforms in your wedding colors? Second of all, chances are there aren’t going to be any baby clothes for boys in purple and there aren’t going to be any baby clothes at all in black. I vent all of this to Mathews. He says maybe I should see it as a nice gesture that they want Kai in the wedding. He asks me if they didn’t invite Kai to be in the wedding, would I be annoyed at that too? I tell him his positive attitude is what is annoying.

  I realize I am being incredibly grumpy about this wedding, and I know why. Most obviously, Toby is one of Josh’s best friends. Josh would have been one of the groomsmen. He may have been the best man. I know that’s the only thing I’ll be able to think about during the ceremony.

  But the other part is the dancing. Right after Josh died, I had a hard time even listening to music. I couldn’t turn on the radio in the car for a while. At my brother’s wedding, I realized how much music and dancing bothered me. I couldn’t even watch other people dance. At Christmas when my brother and his wife, Ellie, came home we looked at pictures of them dancing together. I felt so guilty that I had missed it, but at the time I couldn’t even be in the same building as people who were dancing. Every wedding after that I would sit at a table and pretend not to notice that everyone was dancing except me. I haven’t been to a wedding since August, so I don’t know if I can dance or not.

  After Battersby lost her mom, I was always so stunned by her dad’s gracefulness in accepting his widowerhood. Now that I am a widow, I think about Mr. Battersby a lot. I know he thinks about me. This past December, three and a half years after her mom died, Battersby’s cousin Colin got married. The day after Colin’s wedding she came over to tell me all about the wedding. She said it was beautiful and a lot of fun. But the best story was about her dad.

  Battersby reported that Mr. B. danced like he was paid entertainment. At one point in the night the deejay played the song “It’s Getting Hot in Here.” As most teenagers know, in this song the singer informs the listeners that “it’s getting hot in here,” and you should “take off all your clothes.” It needs to be noted that as long as I have been a friend of Katie’s (since the sixth grade), we have all seen Mr. Battersby as iconic. He is a lot like my dad in the sense that he is a solid, real man who keeps promises to his children and shows more than he tells. But in addition to that, he has always been a gentleman who demonstrates respectful, dignified behavior. If I was over at Katie’s house in high school and the song “It’s Getting Hot in Here” came through her stereo, he would have walked in and said with his glasses pulled down slightly on his nose, “You know, ladies, I really don’t think these lyrics are appropriate. Kathleen, why don’t you go ahead and turn that down.”

  As Katie explained to me, however, Mr. Battersby was a different man at Colin’s wedding. She said that even before the song came on, he was whipping out dance moves that had some strong similarities to aerobic video workouts circa 1985. Katie started demonstrating by pulling her right knee to her opposite elbow, then the left knee to the right elbow. “But then,” she went on to say, “it got even worse.”

  “It’s Getting Hot in Here” came blaring through the speakers, and to the shock and awe of his three daughters and the rest of his extended family, he started to take off his tie. Not just take it off, like stand there and fumble with it a little, like take it off. After getting his tie off, he whipped it around his head and threw it out onto the dance floor. “And then,” she paused for dramatic effect, “he started to unbutton his shirt.” At this point, we were both laughing hysterically at the thought of Katie’s dad doing an unrhythmic strip tease to a rap song. It would be like if you saw Santa Claus giving someone a lap dance. Totally unexpected and totally hilarious. For the rest of the night, Claire, Katie’s little sister, strutted around the reception with her dad’s tie loosely knotted around her neck.

  I know Katie thought her dad’s behavior was hilarious, but I could tell by the way she told the story that there was an overwhelming current of pride surging through her words. And the fact that Claire wore his tie around like a trophy only confirmed that his daughters were most certainly not embarrassed by their father, but ecstatic at his display of utter happiness.

  Katie’s mom died the summer after we graduated from college. Katie’s older sister, Margaret, lived and worked in Chicago at the time and Claire was still in school at Michigan State. Katie decided to move back home and live with her dad for a while. I know it wasn’t part of her plan—she had always thought she would end up in Chicago with Margaret. Obviously, she never made a big deal out of it. She just knew she didn’t want him in a big house all alone quite yet. Although she has never told me about it, I’m sure she saw her dad up close and personal with the demon of grief. Now that I’m a widow, I understand that this is a long, hard road, and sometimes—most times—it really feels like I’m going nowhere. But when I heard about Mr. Battersby dancing at Colin’s wedding, I laughed and smiled because it was funny, but I also laughed and smiled because he is able to dance again. And not just dance. He is able to steal the show.

  One of the hardest things about grief is that there is no accurate measure of how you are actually doing other than how much time has passed. I count months obviously. I’ve met people that count days, but that doesn’t really tell us anything other than how much time has elapsed. So we look for little signals. We wait for times when we laugh from the gut, or for some people maybe it’s falling asleep easily or getting an appetite back. But sometimes it can be hard to find those signs of life. For me, dancing is one of the few accurate barometers. It doesn’t mean Mr. Battersby is healed, but it does mean that he’s not where he used to be. I am nervous that I will go to Toby’s wedding and it will be my brother’s wedding all over again. I’ll have to run out and get in my car and drive home crying at eight o’clock.

  There is one glimmer of hope. I’ve had a lot of practice dancing with Kai. At first I would just do squats while holding him. I think that’s how I lost a lot of my baby weight. I would sweat in my bathrobe from repeatedly squatting with a fifteen-pound baby. Then the squatting got a little boring so it turned into dancing. Instead of just the down and up motion, we’d do down, up, right kick, down, up, left kick. Then all of the sudden we were adding side steps, hip swings, pliés, samba steps, and it grew from there. I think it’s a little ironic that dancing was the one thing I couldn’t do after Josh died and then after Kai was born it was the one thing he wanted. I pictured Josh whispering into Kai’s little ear while he slept in the hospital bassinet, “Make sure she dances again.”

  We dance all the time now in our pajamas or when I’m in my bathrobe. If I need to cook or clean while he is in his jumper I’ll turn on the music and dance around the room to keep him entertained while I chop vegetables or clean up the house. He sees me jumping around and then he starts kicking his legs like crazy. At my parents’ house, one of my favorite things to do after work is put him in the jumper nex
t to their computer and turn on “Shoot to Thrill” by AC/DC. He hears the opening chords and starts to laugh hysterically and jump and waits for me. I dance the whole time, or I try to. “Shoot to Thrill” is a long song, so by the guitar solo sometimes I have to lie down and catch my breath.

  My parents, like many people in this country, have been totally caught up in the recent Dancing with the Stars season-six fever. My mom calls me on random Monday nights and says, “Did you see Marlee Matlin? She really is amazing.” So now when Kai and I dance, we obviously hear the announcer, “Ladies and gentlemen, dancing their final routine, Natalie and Kai Taylor.”

  Of course Kai and I have made it to the finals of Dancing with the Baby Stars. It is 11:26 a.m. Bottle, check. Nap, check. We are on. He starts off in the jumper in the doorway, looking nonchalant. I freeze in the middle of the living room. I unfreeze to press play on the iPod. I freeze quickly again and unfreeze when the opening vocals start for “Footloose.” An obvious choice for a final routine. I kick my legs and start whirling my hair. I am channeling Sarah Jessica Parker’s performance from Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Kai laughs and starts jumping. I hit a combination of moves inspired by my aerobic videos (circa 2006) and a line dance my friend Trisha taught me in high school (circa 1998). The chorus kicks in. I start shaking my hips. Kai throws a smile to the audience. I grab him out of the jumper, a flawless lift. Eat that, Carrie Ann Inaba.

  We are on fire. I put him on my hip, we do a little samba. Then we move into a modified tango. I go for a big dip, Kai squeals. Our technical points are spot on. I can see Len beaming out of the corner of my eye. I spin Kai and then I throw him in the air. Another spin, another throw. Then we’re on the ground. I lift Kai. Superman meets a rhythmic shoulder press. Our energy is amazing. We’re back on our feet, ready for our grand finale. I swing him in between my legs, bring him back up, give him a throw in the air, and grab him, and we land on the couch right as the music ends. The audience is immediately on their feet. Bruno Toniolo is out of his chair. He’s throwing his arms everywhere. After Tom Bergeron gets everyone settled down, which takes a while, we stand ready for our remarks. Bruno goes first.