A Widow's Awakening

  “Since our holiday in Disneyland turned out to be so significant to me,” I explain, “it might be kinda cool to give the recipient time away with his or her family. For as much as Sam loved his work, being a police officer hasn’t provided me with the greatest memories. In fact, I’ve actually got a fairly shitty reminder of his dedication. What has given me comfort is our last vacation together.”

  Charlie leans back. “Like a weekend away or something like that?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “And the purpose,” Mark clarifies, “is to encourage spending time together, as a couple or a family or whatever, away from the stresses of work?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Then we’d need to make it very clear what attributes are recognized,” he says.

  Charlie nods. “Since the award is in memory of Sam, then the recipient ought to reflect what he stood for.”

  “Which is?” I ask.

  “Integrity,” Mark replies. “And honour.”

  “And courage and dedication,” adds Charlie.

  Mark nods. “Sam always went beyond what was expected of him…he was committed to excellence.”

  I jot down integrity, courage, honour, dedication and a commitment to excellence in my notebook.

  Mark then suggests that we come up with some sort of symbol for the memorial fund that represents Sam. Charlie and I nod in agreement. But I have no idea what this symbol could be.

  When I get home, I look up integrity in the dictionary for a reminder on the meaning: having the quality of honesty and the state of being whole. Mark was right. Sam had been an honest man—but not in the sense of always telling the truth. Rather, he’d been true to himself and because of that, he’d been real…authentic. Whole.

  Sometimes, however, his determination to be true to himself had been a pain in the ass, especially when it came to being my husband. Case in point was Valentine’s Day.

  “I love giving you gifts,” he’d say, “but not when you’re expecting them.”

  He’d still usually end up giving in to the commercialism and spend a portion of Valentine’s Day lined up behind all the other procrastinators, waiting to buy chocolates. On occasion, though, he surprised me. When he was still a student and we were living in British Columbia, I came home on Valentine’s Day to find dozens of Hershey’s kisses in the shape of a heart on the kitchen table with a bouquet of pink tulips in the middle.

  This year, so that I won’t be sitting at home alone on Valentine’s Day, staring at the fire and reflecting on all that is not, I join Cassie and Cam in celebrating their daughter’s first birthday. Once the festivities are underway, however, self-pity rears her ugly head yet again. How come I don’t get a husband or a child?

  Around 9:00 p.m. I leave their house and go to the cemetery to have a cigar with Sam. Sobbing, I stumble in my stupid high-heeled boots to his grave.

  “I fucking hate this!” I scream at his shiny, new headstone all the way from India.

  I fall on my knees. “I miss you so much.”

  Shaking from the cold, I mimic, in a horrible high-pitched voice, another oft-repeated comment made to me over the past five months: “Adri, I just can’t imagine what it would be like to be in your shoes.”

  “Well,” I howl into the night, “come spend Valentine’s Day with the old widow—that’ll give you a pretty goddamn good idea.”

  My teeth are chattering, my hands freezing, and I no longer feel my toes.

  “And here’s another suggestion,” I continue, surprised at the bitterness in my voice, “stand here at his grave and pretend that instead of Sam’s name, it’s the name of the person you love the most in the world.”

  My words disappear into the wind.

  “Then let your imagination do the rest.”

  As I watch the snow swirl around his headstone, it occurs to me that loving an unseen and possibly nonexistent entity called God is rather like me trying to love a cold slab of granite as if it were a living, breathing husband.

  I stomp back to my car, turn on the ignition and hear Bette Midler on the radio, singing, “Wind Beneath My Wings.” My head slumps onto the steering wheel and I let the tears come.

  On the slow, slippery drive home, I wonder if perhaps I ought to be less concerned with how Sam’s death has or hasn’t affected other people and more aware of how it’s affecting me—for I am downright wallowing in self-pity.

  Home, I take two sleeping pills and escape for ten hours.

  At the computer the next morning, I don’t write about Sam. For the first time, I find myself writing to him.

  At 11:00 a.m., Tom calls. “I just wanted to see how you made out yesterday.”

  My stomach flutters. “It was tough.”

  “I bet.”

  “I miss him.”

  “I know.”

  “Today is better, though,” I add.

  “Adri?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It takes a great deal of energy to miss someone you know you’re never going to see again.”

  I don’t know what to say to this.

  Then I call Jodie to debrief, but her husband answers the phone.

  “I’ve got a question for ya,” I say to him.

  “Shoot.”

  “What do you think Sam would say about me…you know, hooking up with another guy?”

  Pause. “I know he wouldn’t want you to be alone for the rest of your life.”

  “But let’s say that wherever Sam is, he can still see me. How would that work? I mean, he wouldn’t want to…you know, watch.”

  “He won’t.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “Because when the time comes, Sam will just…I dunno, pull the shower curtain across.”

  I laugh. “What?”

  “Geez,” he says, “I have no idea why I just said that.”

  SINCE MY birthday is two weeks after Valentine’s Day, Sam used to tease me about the double whammy on his pocketbook.

  This year, a few days before my thirty-third birthday, I’m in bed reading the paper and have just lit two candles on the bedside table, which still holds a photographic shrine to Sam. I glance over and see that one of the candles—the friendship kind with a small present hidden in the wax—has gone out.

  I go downstairs to have breakfast and when I walk back into my bedroom, both candles are burning brightly. I walk over to the friendship candle, look down and see a gold heart pendant floating in the melted wax.

  I sit down on the bed to rationalize this. I must have been mistaken when I thought the friendship candle had gone out, as I probably just couldn’t see the flame from my bed. However, just in case this is a sign from Sam, I fish the heart out of the wax, wipe it off and place it on his chain alongside his ring, cross and medal.

  Then, since it was Angela who gave me the friendship candle as a gift, I phone to tell her what happened.

  She gasps. “Oh my God!”

  “What?”

  “The candle in my room is still burning.”

  “So?”

  “I know I blew it out before bed last night. And even if I hadn’t, it’s impossible for it to still be burning—it’s a tealight.”

  WHEN KATRINA takes me out the next day for an early birthday lunch, I tell her about the candle incident. “Do you think it was a sign from Sam?” I ask.

  “That wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”

  “There’s something else I have to tell you.”

  “This sounds serious.”

  I blush. “I, um, I think I kinda like someone.”

  “Thank goodness!”

  “What?”

  “Now that surprises me.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I’m sorry, Adri, but you have no idea how happy this makes me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s healthy. I’m not saying you have to get married tomorrow. It’s just really good to hear that you can have feelings for another guy.”

  “Do you know
who it is?”

  She smiles. “I’ve got a pretty good idea, yeah.”

  Over dinner at my place, I run the Tom possibility by my father. Not only is my dad the least romantic person I know, he’ll be sure to give me a brutally honest and rational assessment of the situation.

  “I see,” he says, after I tell him the details.

  “And?”

  “First of all, it’s logical why you would fall for him. Secondly, knowing his character, if he decided that he could pursue a relationship with you, and I’m not saying he will, but if he did, then I can tell you right now you’ll be waiting quite awhile.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was Sam’s friend and boss.”

  I sigh.

  “Besides,” the realist adds, “doesn’t he have a girlfriend?”

  I nod.

  My dad laughs. “That might be a bit of a problem.”

  I shrug.

  “Whatever you do,” he advises, “don’t fall in love with love. On the other hand, you don’t want to be on your own too long because then you’ll get stuck in your ways.”

  “But thinking about Tom gives me hope,” I say.

  Then I walk over to the dining room wall, where I’ve hung the framed first stanza of an Emily Dickinson poem. I point it out to my dad.

  Hope is the thing with feathers

  That perches in your soul,

  And sings the tune without the words,

  and never stops at all

  He reads it then looks at me. “But your tune has a word.”

  ON MY actual birthday, I find a chocolate orange and a card in my mailbox. I rip open the envelope and read the words: “From your friend, Tom.”

  I figure it’s time to have a chat with Sam about the matter.

  “Is it wrong for me to have feelings for another guy so soon?” I ask his headstone.

  The wind picks up. I try lighting a cigar, but the match keeps blowing out. “I’ll be right back,” I tell the granite then run to my car.

  Back at his grave, lit cigar in mouth, I kick the snow with my boot. “I know you wouldn’t want me to stay single forever but is it, you know, taboo for one cop to date another cop’s wife?”

  Silence.

  My feet are frozen, so I blow his headstone a kiss and head home to resume our discussion in the bathtub.

  “I’m not a piece of property,” I tell the flickering candles at the corner of the tub.

  But Sam had never thought of me as a possession, nor had he been a jealous guy.

  “So, you wouldn’t be like Sasha,” I say, turning off the tap with my toe, “angry when the police dog peed all over the front lawn, marking her territory?”

  I take a sip of sherry and think about the dream Sam had in California, where I’d cheated on him with the cop with the sexy voice. Had Sam been upset because I’d betrayed him with another guy? Another police officer? Or had the dream symbolized an altogether different sort of betrayal?

  I hear a helicopter flying over the house. A few minutes later, it flies over again. Is it the police helicopter, searching for a bad guy? Or am I the bad guy, fantasizing about Sam’s boss? It flies over again.

  “This isn’t just about my love life, is it?” I ask the shower curtain.

  I know I’m not holding up my end of the bargain. In the contract I’d written and placed in Sam’s casket, I promised that I’d find some good in his death. Have I?

  I sink lower into the water. Three years ago, I’d told Sam I was going to take a correspondence course to help me with writing my novel.

  “Good,” he’d said.

  “It’s gonna cost us two thousand bucks.”

  “Ouch! Are you sure it’s worth it? I mean, will it actually help you become a better writer?”

  “Oh absolutely, Sam.”

  “OK, then let’s make it happen.” He’d cashed in court time to pay for the course.

  Six months passed, and I told him I was quitting the program. It was too stressful…all that actual writing, never mind the criticism.

  His response: “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “That little effort cost us two thousand dollars.”

  I’d shrugged. “I just can’t handle the pressure right now.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he’d said, shaking his head. “You’re quitting again.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Whenever things get tough, you give up—just like that writing contract in British Columbia.”

  I’d rolled my eyes. “Oh God, here we go.”

  “That organization really pushed you, challenged you to become better. And you just walked away from…how much money was it again?”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Sam.”

  But he’d been on a roll. “Refresh my memory, exactly how much cash did you turn down by not renewing your contract?”

  “You know how much.”

  “That’s right. Ten thousand dollars for two or three months of writing work, which—if I remember correctly—was your dream career.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I was a full-time student and working two part-time jobs, Adri. We really needed the money back then.”

  “I remember.”

  “But you know it wasn’t the money I was angry about.”

  “Yes, Sam.”

  “It was because you gave up and now you’re doing the same thing.”

  I’d still quit the course. The funny thing is, although I kept giving up on myself, Sam never did.

  “Let’s get you a laptop,” he’d suggested a year ago, “so you can go to a coffee shop, or wherever, and write.”

  “We can’t afford it,” had been my excuse, “and besides I prefer to write at home.”

  Yet here I am, five months after his death, hanging out in my bathtub talking to a bunch of candles about another guy. I still haven’t bought a laptop, even though I could afford twenty of them. And although I am writing something in my basement, although meandering at times, I’m finding the process excruciatingly painful. Writing about and learning from Sam’s death hurts. Fantasizing about a fairytale future with another guy makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

  “I’m repeating my pattern, aren’t I?” I ask the showerhead.

  “I’m putting excuses in the way of my dream again. I did it with you, my mom, with every ‘yes’ I said when I wanted to say no. And now I’m trying to do it with a guy who isn’t even interested in me.”

  Feeling light-headed, I climb out of the tub, wobble to my room and lie down until the dizziness passes. But the damn helicopter flies over again.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I snap at the ceiling, “now what?”

  Sasha and I go downstairs and from my back porch, I can make out the blue and red flashing lights of the retreating police helicopter.

  Why does it exist? Because a dead police officer’s sister cared enough to help ensure positive change came from her brother’s on-duty death.

  I look to the sky. “I’m getting to that, Sam.”

  ON A Friday morning in early March, Harry and his thirteen-year-old daughter pay me a visit. My niece hands me a wrapped gift that stands three-feet-high by two-feet-wide..

  “Oh, my goodness,” I say, tearing away the paper, “she’s beautiful.”

  It’s an oil painting of an angel with long dark hair, wearing a pink dress.

  “Wowsa!” I say, hugging my niece. “Thank you.”

  “It was supposed to be your birthday present, but the framing took a little longer.”

  I ask her how long it took to paint.

  “Five months. My art teacher gave us the project a week after Sam died and I knew it would be for you.”

  “She spent every Friday night working on it,” Harry says.

  This kid hadn’t been sitting around thinking about painting and daydreaming about becoming an artist one day. She’d just shown up and done the work—until completion. After they leave, I hang the painting in my dining room.

/>   THE NEXT morning, under the angel’s watchful gaze, I tackle Sam’s career scrapbook. I’d started it after he’d graduated from recruit class in 1996 but had only got as far as his first year on the job. Since order had been so important to Sam, I want all his papers neatly organized. I carefully sort into chronological order the letters of commendation, job performance and course reviews, police-related photographs and newspaper clippings from the remaining three years.

  I come across a summary of Sam’s accomplishments and courses taken. I’d typed this up myself for his application to the Priority Crimes Unit last August. When I read it through again now, his first course ever taken has new significance: Officer Safety.

  I look out the window. Because of an officer safety issue, all of Sam’s career accomplishments are now completely irrelevant. It hits me that I’m not just grieving the loss of Sam; I’m mourning the death of his dream.

  “Sam,” I whisper, “I think you better send me an angel pretty quick.”

  Two minutes later, the phone rings for the first time today.

  I pick it up. “Yeah?”

  It’s my new neighbour from across the alley. “I made a whole batch of celery soup this morning,” she says, “and I was just wondering if I could pop some over?”

  Homemade celery soup comes my way about as often as peach juice.

  Later in the afternoon, as I’m placing the newspaper clippings in the scrapbook, I notice there aren’t any media photos of Sam from his last year and a half on the job. This makes sense because that was when he began focusing on a career in undercover work. Whenever the media had showed up at a scene he was working at, he’d asked them not to take his picture. But something had always bothered me about Sam’s undercover aspirations: his physical appearance. In Alberta, he didn’t exactly blend in with the masses. For starters he was Greek. Plus, he was tall and broad-shouldered, had jet-black hair going prematurely gray, and a very distinctive, handsome face. When Sam walked in a room, both men and women turned to look. I would have thought the best undercover operators would be forgettable in appearance, not memorable.

  I find the ending to his career scrapbook on his desk. On September 13th, 2000, he’d printed a poem off the Internet entitled, “When God made Peace Officers.” It’s about the emotional, psychological and physical impact that police work has on officers.