A Widow's Awakening

  “So maybe that’s what the ego is—the fake self we show others. Maybe we think that outer shell, that…”

  “Crust?”

  Amanda nods. “Yeah—that’s a good word for it. Maybe we think that crust will somehow make us less vulnerable.”

  “On the day Sam died,” I say, “when the social worker walked me down the hallway toward the ER, I had the sense there were two of me. I mean, I was walking but I could also see myself walking. Then when I went into the emergency room and saw Sam on the gurney, it happened again: it was like I was in two places at once. I was looking at Sam and watching myself looking at Sam.”

  “Really?”

  I nod. “Yeah. And one of your teammates was in the room and he later told me how incredibly vulnerable I looked in that moment. I wonder if somehow my ego, you know…fell down for just a sec so that what your teammate saw was the real me—my soul—and not the widow crust I was already creating.”

  “Which you had to,” she says, “to survive.”

  “I know.” I throw the ball. “But do ya think it’s possible that I was actually in your teammate? I mean, how else could I have seen myself?”

  “Shit, you think a lot.”

  I snort. “Tell me about it. But if departed souls can move from one person to the next, why couldn’t the souls of the living?” I let out a squeal. “Or maybe it was Sam who was in your teammate, watching me! That would make more sense…he could probably do tricks like that since he was already so close to death.”

  Amanda looks at me. “But how could you experience that?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. Sam and I are soul mates so we’re pretty much interchangeable.”

  WHEN I get home, I call Jodie and tell her about the memorial service in Ottawa. “And since I’m going to be down East anyway, I think I’ll go to New York. Sam and I always wanted to go, so here’s my chance.”

  Pause. “Are you sure you want to go there without him, Adri?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “What I mean,” she says, “is that you don’t have to go yet.”

  “But I want to—and I was wondering if you’d like to come with me?”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that. And by the way, we’re selling our SUV. I think at one point, you were interested in buying it.”

  “I’ll take it for a test drive,” I say. “See how it feels…”

  THE NEXT morning, I drop Sasha and Sven off at the puppy parlour and am pulling up alongside my house when I notice how brown the grass is. I fiddle with the soaker hose for a few minutes but can’t get it to work properly, so I decide to use the brass spray nozzle that Sam preferred to hand water the lawn with. I’m standing in front of the tap and have just seen the spray nozzle resting on the ledge of the hose holder—but when I go to reach for it, it’s not there. I blink. It’s gone. I look around the yard and find it on the fence, right beside the gate I’ve just walked in and out of three times.

  I close my eyes to ponder this impossibility—and the Waterworld show at Universal Studios comes to mind. I recall Sam’s laughter watching the reactions of the people being squirted with the hose by the undercover actor.

  Did I just receive the fifth and final sign from Sam to complete my worldview?

  INSIDE THE house, I turn my attention to more practical matters and write a letter to the police chief. The police association’s lawyer was right: not being “allowed” to remarry is bullshit. Even if I never manage to lasso another antelope, what about the next person in my shoes, God forbid there is one? It’s been four months since I’d learned of the remarriage clause and although I know the lawyer is looking into the issue, I dare say it’s time to expedite the process. I cc the chief’s letter to the president of the police association and the lawyer, then pop all three envelopes into the mailbox.

  After lunch, I retrieve Sasha and Sven from the puppy parlour then take them to my mom’s apartment. I make it as far as the foyer when a crotchety senior snaps: “You can’t bring those dogs in here!”

  I turn to her. “Oh yes I can.”

  She wags a finger at me. “No, you can’t!”

  “Oh, but I can,” I say, in a very Sam-like manner, “and I will. There’s no rule that says I can’t bring dogs to visit.”

  “How dare you speak to me that way!” she hisses.

  “How dare you speak to me that way?” is my reply.

  Then all three of us march—heads and tails held high—past her and on to my mom’s apartment.

  Over tea, my mom asks me if I’d like to join her for a festival of plays next weekend. Since I’m finding meaning in every conversation, book, magazine article, newspaper headline, movie, TV sitcom, current event and misplaced household item, attending an entire weekend of theatre will surely be a buffet for the mind.

  INDEED, AT the festival, every play was written for me.

  “It is the search for truth and beauty,” says one actor, “that shall set you free.”

  Oh yes! I want to cry out from the audience.

  But as I’m leaving the theatre, I wonder just how free I am in my supposed search for truth because finding potential meaning everywhere I look is starting to feel increasingly more like self-imprisonment. Perceiving life to be a mere unfolding of some pre-determined plan, in which my role is merely to pick up the pieces of the puzzle and snap them into place, is not a particularly empowering way to live.

  Over dinner, I find myself asking my mom why she had four kids.

  “We didn’t have the choices you do today, Adri.”

  “Given the choice, would you still have us?”

  She smiles. “Yes.”

  “Even though you know the world is such a shitty place?”

  She winces. “It’s also a very beautiful place. And new life needs to go on.”

  “But don’t you think we should be solving our problems instead of just bringing more people onto the planet?” I ask.

  “And what are you doing to solve our problems?”

  “I’m trying,” I say, “to write a book.”

  “I know. And I realize you’ve been through an awful lot but at some point you’re going to have to actually do something instead of just complaining about what’s wrong.”

  Ah the two by four of truth. How sweet it does not feel as it hits my forehead.

  MONDAY MORNING is my first appointment with the personal injury lawyer and on the way there, I stop in to have a chat with Sam. I’m walking from my car to his grave when I see there is a huge hole in the ground. I break into a run.

  Sure enough, right in front of his headstone is a hole about three feet long by two feet deep. I drop to my knees and look down but thankfully, I can’t see his casket—just dirt and a candy wrapper that blew in. I reach in to retrieve the garbage and I think to myself that if I were in a horror movie, a hand would reach up right about now and pull me in. But instead of being terrified, it occurs to me that, given the opportunity, I’d go anywhere to be with Sam again. I let out a sigh of relief, finally feeling how I figure a normal widow ought to.

  I lift my head to look at his shiny black headstone—but it’s a beautiful woman in capri pants and a white shirt kneeling at her husband’s grave I see. As difficult as it was to hear at the time, maybe Ed had been right when he said that Sam lives on in me.

  “Do I sue or not?” I ask Sam’s photo, recently set into the stone.

  I’d given in to his parents’ repeated request for a photo—but I chose which one.

  “I’m not even sure I have a legal case yet,” I continue. “But if I do, is there any point in me spending all that time and energy in the courts?”

  A bird chirps.

  “Besides, what am I really after here? Money? Trying to force a corporation to take responsibility? Creating awareness about the issue?”

  Silence.

  “What exactly is the issue?”

  I hear an aircraft, possibly a helicopter, in the distance.

  I answer my own question. �
��Because of an unsafe workplace, you never made it home.”

  It is a helicopter.

  “But is suing the company going to change that fact?”

  It flies overhead.

  “No,” I say to Sam’s grave. “Not unless the money is directed to dealing with workplace safety.”

  On my way out of the cemetery, I stop in at the office and tell the staff about the hole. They assure me it’s likely just the ground shifting as the result of an air pocket. They’ll fill it in as soon as possible.

  “WE’VE DONE a preliminary review of Sam’s case,” the personal injury lawyer tells me half an hour later, “and to be honest, the circumstances are quite unusual.”

  “That seems to be the general consensus,” I say.

  “And I don’t have a clear-cut answer for you at this point.”

  I lean forward. “As in?”

  “As in whether or not to advise you to proceed with litigation against the company where Sam fell. And because it was a Workers’ Compensation Board claim, you might not even be entitled to pursue legal action anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m looking into that right now. However, what is clear is that according to Alberta legislation, a safety railing should have been in place. But I’m concerned this could be a long drawn out process and frankly, the evidence thus far doesn’t suggest this is necessarily the wisest road to take. I think you need to ask yourself what it is you hope to gain from pursuing legal action.”

  “Awareness,” I reply. “Sam’s fund is going to produce a public service announcement about workplace safety, so any money I receive from litigation will go toward this.”

  “Then there’s the possibility of approaching the company outside the legal system and explaining what the memorial fund is planning to do.”

  “And?”

  “And hopefully, they’ll do the right thing.”

  I lean back in my chair. “Well, whatever we do, it’s pretty safe to say that Sam would…” I stop speaking and my hand flies up to my mouth.

  “What?”

  “I was just going to say that Sam would roll over in his grave if I spent the next five years of my life dealing with this in the courts—but that’s an odd choice of words considering I just came from Sam’s grave and there was a big hole in the ground!”

  The lawyer’s face goes rather pale.

  I give him the wave. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it was the ground shifting. It’s just the timing that’s weird. But this kind of thing happens quite a bit.”

  BACK HOME, there are two messages on my machine. The first is from Jodie; she’ll be joining me in New York. I immediately go online and purchase outrageously expensive tickets for us to see La Boheme at the Met.

  Then I deal with the second message. It’s from the police association lawyer and he does not sound pleased.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he snarls when I muster up the courage to call him back.

  “About?”

  “Those letters you sent about the remarriage clause! Adri, you wrote the chief of police and the president of the police union.”

  “Yeah…so?”

  “So? So, in the middle of contract negotiations, you communicated about a major flaw in the contract with the top dog in management and the head of the union. They are on opposite sides of the fence.”

  “But they needed to hear my perspective,” I say rather quietly.

  “That’s my job.”

  “Sorry.”

  He sighs. “Well, I guess you didn’t know any better.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Your guess,” he says, “is as good as mine.”

  Oops.

  BY EARLY September, the long days on the computer are taking their toll on my body. My wrists and forearms ache from tendonitis so I book a massage. The masseuse, not one I’ve met before, asks me to remove my necklace and upon seeing the wolf pendant given me by the girl on the plane, asks if that’s my power animal.

  “My what?”

  “Your power animal. It’s a native belief that each person has an animal to which they turn for strength and guidance. Sometimes it also symbolizes the type of person you are.”

  I shake my head. “Actually, the wolf symbolizes the spirit of my husband. He passed away a year ago.”

  “Were you soul mates?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you probably have more wolf-like attributes than you realize.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But I think the animal that best symbolizes me, at least at this point, is the butterfly.”

  “That tends to represent transformation and change.”

  I smile. “That’s me all right…I just hope I’m through the damn caterpillar stage—eating everything in sight.”

  She laughs.

  “Or maybe I’m more like a dragonfly,” I muse. “They’re bigger, tougher and louder, plus they’re always trying to mate.”

  “I’m shooting a documentary about that right now.”

  I lift my head to get a better look at this person. “You’re a filmmaker?”

  “Yup. I’m just on call here to help finance my films.”

  I lie flat again. “And you’re making a documentary about mating?”

  “Pretty much…it’s called The End of Evolution, which is where the human race is headed if we don’t start changing the way we think and live.”

  WHEN I get home, there’s another message from the police association lawyer.

  “It’s gone,” he says when I call him back.

  “Pardon me?” is my response.

  “The remarriage clause has been removed from the contract. I won’t pretend to guess what happened—but clearly, your letter had an impact.”

  Smiling, I hang up the phone. “Well, whaddya think of them apples?” I ask my little wooden gazelle all the way from Portugal, now sporting a tiny pink jelabah.

  TONIGHT I dream that I’m in my basement office writing when I hear someone come in the back door. Expecting Sam, I race upstairs to say hi, but it is Tom standing in my kitchen. I’m the same age I am now but he’s about thirty years older, has white hair and is very thin. We hug tightly and are about to kiss but I quickly pull away. “No!” I say. “We can’t do this yet.”

  In real life, Tom and I meet later in the day for ice cream and I tell him my dream.

  “You do realize I am in love with my girlfriend?” is his response.

  I dip my spoon into the sundae we’re sharing. “I thought you guys weren’t gonna make it?”

  “We’re still trying.”

  I eat a spoonful of ice cream. “Did I ever tell you that both your and Sam’s regimental numbers add up to eleven?”

  “No.”

  “They do. I had an actuarial friend calculate the odds of that happening.”

  “And?”

  “It’s less than .01 percent.”

  Tom folds his arms across his chest. “And what do you make of that?”

  “I think eleven is the number of my soul mate.”

  He sighs and sticks his feet into the aisle, crossing one leg over the other.

  I glance down. “Are those traffic boots?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you wearing them?”

  “Because I’m back in the traffic unit. I got transferred last week.”

  “Oh.” I scrape out the walnuts and chocolate sauce.

  “You need to move on, Adri.”

  I shrug. “I’m taking a dance class.”

  His face brightens. “That’s a start. What kind?”

  “Hip hop. I start tomorrow.”

  “And the book?”

  “It’s in rough shape,” I say. “Maybe I’m not cracked up to be a novelist.”

  Tom frowns. “How so?”

  “What if I just needed to write this book to make sense of Sam’s death—and my life without him in it?”

  “But he’s still in it! You have a stronger relationship with your dead spouse than mo
st people do with a living one.”

  “True,” I say. “So maybe I just needed to write this book to help me grieve but that doesn’t mean I have to publish it.”

  “But if writing it helped you, then reading it will help others.”

  I shake my head. “Not the way it reads now.”

  Tom folds his arms across his chest. “What would Sam say if he knew you were thinking of not publishing this book?”

  “He’d throttle me,” I say, reaching for my purse. “Oh, and by the way, I finally saw Gladiator.”

  “And?”

  I look Tom in the eye. “And I know perfectly well I can’t be with Sam.”

  “But you still want to be,” he says softly. “And that makes all the difference.”

  Sigh.

  THE NEXT morning I pick up Jodie’s SUV and drive it downtown for my first hip hop class. Inside the studio, I find a spot in the last row of students, furthest from the mirror that takes up the entire front wall.

  “The only rule in my class,” the teacher tells us, “is to fake it till you make it.”

  This sums up my past year quite nicely.

  On the drive home, I ask the rearview mirror how it feels driving a $32,000 SUV home from dance class on a Monday afternoon?

  Like I’m a spoiled princess considering using blood money to purchase a luxury vehicle to cart muddy dogs to and from the off-leash park.

  I give the mirror a wave. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  At home, I call my financial advisor and request that he sell some stocks, so I can purchase the SUV.

  There is a definite pause before he replies. “Have you researched this purchase?”

  “I need a new vehicle,” I say, “and I’m sure this is as good as any.”

  “OK. I’ll get that money out of the market for you.”

  I’M HAVING coffee the next morning when I hear my mother sobbing on the answering machine, telling me to turn on the TV now. I do so and along with a few billion others, watch a replay of the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsing.