A Widow's Awakening

by Maryanne Pope

  That much is clear.

  As Harry is serving us homemade hash browns and sunny-side up eggs on toast, he asks how the writing went.

  “It isn’t going to be easy,” I reply, stuffing in a spoonful of potatoes. “But at least I know what I have to do.”

  Standing in the kitchen, with a tea towel in one hand and a frypan in the other, my brother—the chief worrier in a family full of worriers—is clearly concerned.

  “I’m going to write our story,” I say.

  “Sam died two weeks ago.”

  “Yes. I realize that. But I have to do this.”

  He opens the cupboard and places the frypan inside. “Why?”

  “Because it’s my job.”

  I put my dirty dishes in the sink and am on my way back downstairs when Harry says, “Remember that the police want to meet with you today.”

  I turn around. “Um…what for again?”

  “Sam’s investigation, Adri.”

  “Right.”

  Harry takes me to the police station, where we’re directed again to the parade room. Tom and the two detectives are waiting for us. The main detective starts off by saying they’ve further investigated the alarm question.

  “Uh huh,” I say, suspiciously eyeing a storage box on the table.

  “There’s still confusion,” he explains, “as to what sound the employee heard that caused him to call 911.”

  I lean back in my chair, assuming Sam’s best thinking position.

  “The alarm,” adds the other detective, “actually went off twice earlier that night.”

  I blink. Surely, I didn’t hear correctly. “Pardon me?”

  The first detective clears his throat. “The alarm went off two other times that night and both times, it was false. Apparently, a hole in one of the overhead doors was triggering the alarm.”

  “A worker had driven a forklift into the door the day before,” adds Detective Two, “leaving a large hole—and the wind going through it likely set the alarm off.”

  “You’re fu…kidding me, right?” is my response.

  “They’re not yet through investigating,” Tom says.

  “But the company was ordered to put up a safety railing,” says the first detective, “and they immediately complied with that order.”

  A hell of a lot of good that’s gonna do Sam now.

  “The final police report will be completed in January,” continues the first detective, “and the Occupational Health and Safety report sometime after that.”

  The second detective stands up. “We also have a few more of Sam’s personal effects for you.”

  Ah, the contents of the box. I, too, stand up for this portion of the program. Out come Sam’s running shoes, worn at Disneyland as well as to work on the last night of his life. Next is his fuzzy gray jacket. Not feeling so good, I sit down again. His security clearance card and identification tag follow, then his keys. Then the twenty-dollar bill and loose change, last seen in the plastic bag at the hospital, appear.

  Detective One hands Sam’s holster to me. “That held his gun. But we obviously can’t give you the weapon.”

  I smile. “Probably not a good idea, no.”

  As I watch the second detective place the items back inside the box, I do a mental recap. On the day Sam died, I received his watch and chain; the next day, his cross and medal were returned to me. At his funeral, I was given his hat and badge. Is all this evidence for my investigation into Sam’s death?

  Tom lifts a black duffle bag from the floor and, with a pained expression, hands it to me. “Here’s Sam’s duty bag. I thought you might want it.”

  After leaving the police station with what remains of Sam’s career neatly divided between a box and a bag, Harry drives me to the cemetery. The two of us stand on the freshly packed dirt, staring at the white wooden cross temporarily marking Sam’s grave.

  “I still don’t believe this,” Harry says.

  “Oh, it’s pretty real to me now,” I reply, dropping to my knees.

  Harry returns to the car to give me some time alone with Sam.

  “You are my sunshine,” I sob, rocking back and forth. “My only sunshine…”

  “You must be his wife.”

  I look up to see an older woman standing beside me. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, dear.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you. I…”

  “But your husband is facing the wrong way,” she says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Jesus is coming back from the East—and your husband is facing West.”

  Before I can formulate a response, she turns and walks away.

  Back at the car, I tell Harry what the crazy lady said.

  “That’s why you’ve got your bullshit filters,” he says.

  “My what?”

  “Your bullshit filters. Just like those big-ass headphones you wear when you’re writing, bullshit filters are your best line of defense against all the crap that’s coming at you. Remember that you choose what you let into your mind.”

  Then he drives what’s left of me home.

  On the kitchen table is another box, with an attached note, on the table. I place Sam’s box and duty bag on the floor then pick up the note and read my dad’s handwriting: “The funeral home dropped these off for you.”

  I lift up the lid and a waft of formaldehyde hits me. I grab a handful of the leftover memorial service pamphlets and am frantically sniffing them when Harry walks in the back door.

  “Sam’s here!” I cry. “Oh my God, I can smell him!”

  Harry’s face crumples. “Seeing you go through all this,” he says, “is the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

  “Well, it’s no picnic experiencing it either!” I snap.

  Then I grab my precious cargo and stomp up to my room.

  I place Sam’s duty bag on the bed and unzip it. Resting right on top of the other items is a city map folded open. I pick it up; it’s open to the location of Sam’s fall. This is one of the last things Sam would’ve touched.

  But I know I’ve had enough for today, so I carefully place the map back in the bag, zip it up and put it on the chair.

  Meanwhile, Harry does what he can to redeem this incredibly shitty day among many by making me an onion casserole for dinner. He dishes me up a huge plateful, saying, “This’ll give ya some fantastic farts tomorrow.”

  UNFORTUNATELY, THE next day is my first non-death-related social engagement. The Hope chaplain’s wife asked me if I’d like to attend a weekend retreat for spouses of police officers. That my husband isn’t a living officer doesn’t seem to pose a problem—at least not in terms of my qualifications as a participant.

  “I don’t know about this,” I say from the backseat, cranking down the window and hoping no one notices. “I feel like I have ‘worst case scenario’ stamped on my forehead. Who’s gonna wanna talk to the widow of a cop who just died on duty? I mean, they’re obviously going to this retreat thing to get away from the stresses of being married to a police officer.”

  “You don’t have to go,” Harry says. “I can still turn around.”

  “It might be really good for her,” adds Katrina.

  Harry turns off the highway onto a side road and drives through a wooded area, until pulling up alongside a beautiful log cabin.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks me.

  “She’ll be fine,” Katrina assures us all.

  After I receive my information package, I take a seat and am waiting for the festivities to begin when a woman sits beside me.

  “I just want to say how sorry I am about Sam,” she says.

  “Thank you.”

  “How are you doing?”

  I shrug. “OK I guess.”

  “I won’t pretend to know what you’re going through, Adri. But I do want to tell you about my own experience.”

  I smile, inwardly groaning. Please not another goddamn story about losing your ninety-year-old grandmothe
r back when you were twelve.

  “I lost my first husband when I was twenty-two,” she says.

  I don’t like the adjective “first” one bit.

  “I was very angry at God,” the woman continues. “I really lost my faith in Him.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And then a few years later, I met the most incredible guy…”

  My stomach tightens.

  “And he became my second husband.”

  Traitor!

  “And now,” she finishes, “we have two wonderful kids.”

  I want to smack her across the face.

  “I’m glad it worked out for you,” is what I say.

  “Please take care,” she says then sashays off to her happy little life.

  I wish I’d farted.

  The first speaker of the day is a policewoman, the partner of a city police officer who’d been violently killed in the line of duty eight years earlier. As far as my mental health is concerned, things are not looking up. I’ve come here to retreat from my new reality—hearing about another cop’s death doesn’t seem overly conducive to that.

  “I’m going to talk about the actual incident,” she says, looking directly at me, “so I hope this won’t offend anyone.”

  I give her the nod. I’ve come this far, haven’t I?

  “I remember one moment seeing my partner laying down the spike belt—that’s the belt with spikes on it which is used to stop vehicles—and then watching his body being torn into two pieces the next.”

  OK, I really ought to have stayed in bed this morning.

  “And the car that hit him just kept on going…”

  I swallow rapidly, trying not to throw up. What a fun retreat!

  “I went on the radio,” she continues, “and thought I was speaking normally but when they played me the tape later, all you could hear was this horrible high-pitched wail.”

  The room is silent.

  She looks at me. “It didn’t even sound human. They say shock does funny things to people.”

  The I-am-Jesus-thought springs to mind. I sink lower in my chair. The woman goes on to describe how the deceased officer’s sister worked diligently to raise public awareness about the need for a police helicopter.

  My ears perk up. Helicopter?

  “His sister realized that similar incidents might be prevented in the future because the necessity for car chases, and the use of spike belts, would be reduced if there was a helicopter to do those chases instead.”

  Up till now, I hadn’t known the history of our police helicopter.

  “Sufficient money was eventually raised to purchase the helicopter,” she finishes, “but it took my partner’s death to get this done.”

  As I’m scarfing down my third donut during the coffee break, I decide that my attendance at this retreat is no coincidence. Clearly, not only is there a greater plan at work, it’s one I’m meant to be figuring out. Maybe the helicopter story is supposed to teach me what to do in the wake of Sam’s death? But if so, what would I raise awareness about?

  After the break is the main speaker.

  “My goal today,” she says, waving her arms as her cape—yes, that’s right, cape—swings behind her, “is to get each of you to come up with a personal mission statement. I want you to ask yourself: what is your life purpose?”

  Who the hell wears a cape nowadays?

  “Let us start today’s journey with…”

  The police chief did at Sam’s funeral!

  “…the world around us.”

  And that certainly marked the end of his career. Is the cape-clad chick at the front of the room signifying the start of mine? For the meaning of my life seems a logical place to begin unraveling the mystery of Sam’s death.

  “For it is in the natural elements,” says the speaker, “that we’re often able to see our own selves.”

  I nod. What harm can a little more self-analysis do?

  “What are you?” she asks. “Earth, wind, fire or water?”

  Sam would be rolling his eyes about now. I, in contrast, eat this stuff up.

  “Take a few minutes to think about your personal qualities—and which element those most represent.”

  That’s easy. I’m water—always moving.

  Sam is earth—solid, grounded and dependable.

  Next?

  “Now write down the qualities of your element and then draw from the list of action verbs to come up with your one-line personal mission statement.”

  To grow, change and fertilize happiness.

  Hmm…

  To fish, float and cleanse thought.

  Oh dear.

  To live, act and give love.

  Perfect! It sounds lovely—even though living, acting and loving don’t have much to do with water. However, it is a start.

  Armed with my newfound purpose in life, neatly wrapped in a single sentence yet, I then proceed to spend the next hour belly dancing as that just happens to be the only afternoon activity that interests me. I tell myself Sam is smiling down at me from heaven, watching everything. Well, maybe not the whole retreat…he sure as heck isn’t paying any attention to the craft room where a bunch of ladies are sticking buttons on jars.

  On the way home, Katrina asks me how it went. I tell her about the exercise in discovering one’s life purpose.

  “You’ve been busy,” says Harry.

  “Yeah but then some lady told me how she’d lost her husband at a young age and then remarried a couple of years later and popped out a coupla kids.”

  All is quiet in the front seat.

  “I will never remarry,” I announce.

  Katrina turns to face me. “Well, you never know what could happen ten years from now…”

  I feel the panic rising. “Oh, but I do know! You can’t have two soul mates!”

  “Calm down, Adri,” says Harry. “Nobody says you have to get married again.”

  “Damn right,” I snarl, arms folded tightly across my chest.

  Then I glare out the window in silence all the way back to the city. We stop at a restaurant for fish and chips, which temporarily cheers me up. But halfway through the meal, it suddenly seems wrong for me to be doing something as normal as eating in a restaurant—without Sam.

  “I need to go home,” I announce as the anxiety builds again.

  Harry requests our meals be packed in doggie bags and we leave.

  At home, I head straight to my room, sit on the edge of the bed and close my eyes. “God is Love,” I whisper.

  God’s an idiot.

  I open my eyes and see Sam’s duty bag on the chair. I walk over, unzip the bag and pick up the folded-open map. I flip to the front but it’s Amanda’s name on the cover. So this wouldn’t have been one of the last things Sam touched because he would’ve been driving. Amanda would’ve been co-pilot, so it makes sense this is her map.

  HARRY HAS to return to work tomorrow so Dawson, an old friend from high school, takes over Adri-sitting. Figuring s’mores might be good comfort food, we roast marshmallows on forks over the stove after dinner.

  “If Sam could see us,” I say, “I bet he’d be howling.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure he can,” Dawson replies, turning his fork over to brown the other side of the marshmallow.

  “But where do you think he is?” I ask.

  “Heaven,” he says, “for lack of a better term.”

  “I didn’t think you believed in heaven?”

  “Before Sam died, I didn’t.”

  I tilt my head. “What made you change your mind?”

  “It just doesn’t make sense that someone as decent as Sam would die without there being a reason for it.”

  “But what’s heaven got to do with that?”

  He thinks about this. “Well, heaven may be a better place than here, but I highly doubt it’s perfect.”

  I put my toasted marshmallow between two graham crackers and pull the fork out. “Don’t forget the chocolate,” he says.

 
I laugh. “Like that’s gonna happen.”

  “Sam was one of the people actually doing some good here on earth,” Dawson continues, “so why would he get taken unless he was needed for something else?”

  “You think Sam is somehow working in heaven?” I ask.

  “It’s possible. But who really knows? I mean, aside from…”

  I hold up my hand, like a cop stopping traffic.

  “What?” he asks.

  “Don’t say God.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I hear one more time how Sam’s death is part of God’s plan and therefore I ought to accept his death and move on, I’m gonna snap. The existence of some grand plan is ludicrous if nobody on earth knows what it is.”

  “But…”

  “It’s like a CEO,” I interrupt, waving my s’more, “who creates a brilliant business plan for her corporation and then buggers off, leaving her employees to try and run the company without actually letting anyone read it.”

  Dawson, a business student, smiles. “That’s not a bad analogy.”

  ON THE second of November, Tom calls to let me know his team has something for me, and could I drop by the station later this afternoon to pick it up?

  I’m developing a bit of an aversion to the old parade room. If I’m not hearing about the angle and force at which Sam’s head hit the concrete or being told that he died searching for a nonexistent bad guy because the wind set the alarm off, then I’m being given personal articles of clothing he’ll never wear again.

  “Is this a good surprise?” I ask Tom. “Or a bad one?”

  “Good. I promise.”

  Sam’s team has just finished day shift, so the parade room is full when I walk in.

  “We had this made for you,” Tom says, handing me a beautiful framed picture of a wolf. “It’s in memory of Sam.”

  “Thanks!” I reply, genuinely excited. “Wolves are very significant to us.”

  His face brightens. “Really?”

  “Yeah. We even sponsor a wolf in the wild. Her name is Nakoda.”

  “Well, I’m glad you like it,” he says.

  “I love it!”

  Tom smiles. “We’re heading to the pub now for a drink, if you’d like to join us.”

  In the pub, I sit beside him. One of Sam’s teammates sits on the other side of me. I’m halfway through my beer when the teammate asks me how I’m doing.