Signs of Life (25 page)

every
day when I drive to work, I pass the cemetery where Josh’s ashes were placed. I haven’t been back to the cemetery since we placed the ashes there last June. I have no intention of visiting. I hardly ever get sad as I drive by. I am immune to cemeteries, or so I thought.

But this morning I am driving to work and it’s pouring rain (it’s April in Michigan, which means it rains a lot) and Holden Caulfield just sort of walks into my brain, completely uninvited. Holden Caulfield is the narrator in J. D. Salinger’s
The Catcher in the Rye
. We teach it in tenth-grade English. I taught it my first year at Berkley. Holden, a teenager, lost his little brother, Allie, to leukemia. I haven’t read
The Catcher in the Rye
in two years, but this one part comes right back to me when I see that cemetery in the midst of the gray April rain. There is a part where he talks about when it rains on Allie’s stomach.

Now that it’s raining so often I think about Holden all the time. Annoyingly enough, I start to look at the cemetery more and more on my way to work. I have this weird feeling when I think about the rain scene in that book. I feel relieved that Josh’s remains were cremated so I never have to worry about the rain on his stomach.

I’ve never liked associating Josh with a cemetery. I’m not exactly sure what I think about the afterlife, but I’m certain he’s not sitting in some plot at the corner of Twelve Mile Road and Woodward Avenue across the street from Uncle Andy’s Pizza. Instead I tell myself his spirit is off racing around doing a million different things. I picture him snowboarding down the Andes Mountains or juggling a soccer ball barefoot on the beaches of Fiji. Every now and then he goes back to the cemetery to check in on people—other souls who feel like they don’t know where to go so they stay in the cemetery. He meets some older man
named Al who passed away from old age and really misses his grandchildren. First, Josh sits and listens and goes through Al’s pictures with him. Then Josh says, “Hey Al, have you ever been fly-fishing in Mongolia?” Josh lends Al one of his Arc’teryx raincoats and his best Orvis rod and they’re off.

This is how I think most of the time, but now that Holden Caulfield is in my head, I think differently. Usually I feel like my husband is too good to be cooped up in a lousy cemetery.
Lousy
—that’s a total Holden Caulfield word. Maybe Josh is there. Maybe the bodies do turn gray and the ashes turn to dust and it is as sad and useless as I fear it to be.

I sign up for a grief group through my church. I shouldn’t say I signed up. Technically, I was invited to join. For some reason saying I signed up makes me sound like I’m desperate. I may be desperate, but for some reason I need you to know I was invited. I got a letter in the mail explaining that the group was for people who had lost a spouse. We would meet every Wednesday in the month of April for an hour and a half. I only work Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, so I can make it, but I have a baby, so I can’t make it.

I don’t know what motivates me to call the church, but I do. For some reason, I want to go to this group. I don’t see Dr. G. very often anymore and this seems like a place I can go to sort of check on myself. My single moms’ group is great for the camaraderie of raising a child alone, but I need a place to share my grief again. I think it will be good for me to talk about things out loud instead of just mulling stuff over in my head. I want to talk to other amputees and hear about how their lives are with one arm. Fortunately, a volunteer from the church agrees to come in and entertain Kai in the toddler room while I attend the group.

The group meets in a large room. There are four couches in a square shape and one armchair. I am the last one to arrive. I am shocked that everyone is so prompt. As I sit down and look around, I see why. It’s a bit of an older crowd.
This is a huge mistake
, I think to myself.

There are six people besides me. Two female ministers lead the group, Lynne and Mary. Lynne and Mary both have short hair and soft voices. Lynne holds a clipboard on her lap. Mary opens the meeting by welcoming everyone. She explains the schedule, the parameters of the group, its intentions, and so on. She says that we’ll start this week by introducing ourselves and telling our story.

Jack goes first. He sits in the armchair. He has white hair and large square glasses. He is easily in his seventies, maybe his eighties. He recently lost his wife, Carol; she was eighty years old. She had quite the life, he tells us. She served as a nurse in World War II. She had a bout of hepatitis when she got out, almost died, but made it. She went on to be a mom, then a grandmother. After retiring, she wrote two children’s books. Jack says he has been fine since her death. It was expected. He basically joined the group to give him something to do.

Debbie looks like she is in her late forties. She is an attractive woman with brown hair and a nicely put together outfit. She holds a tissue tightly in her hand. Her husband worked as a minister and actually consoled a lot of people through grief. He was always concerned about the war in Iraq because he was such a peaceful man. He worried a lot about how many lives were being lost and how many families were feeling the effects of it. She says he would have done anything for anyone. “A true Good Samaritan.”

The night he died he went off to play basketball, just like he
did every Sunday night, and collapsed in the middle of the game. No one did anything. There was a defibrillator machine on site and no one went to get it. No one tried CPR. It took EMS fifteen minutes to get there and by that time his heart had stopped beating completely. Some random guy called her and said her husband had been rushed to the ER. She went, thinking he had broken a bone, and when she got there, they put her in a room by herself. She sat there until the doctor came in, looking very scared, and said, “Tell me about your husband’s health.” She explained he was in excellent shape and exercised on a regular basis. The doctor stuttered something about his heart and then said to her, “And we just couldn’t revive him.” That’s how she found out her husband was dead. She was by herself until one of her friends called her cell phone. Debbie dabs her eyes with her tissue, but she doesn’t cry. Both of Debbie’s kids are in college. Debbie and her husband were looking forward to traveling or just taking it easy. Two days prior to his accident, he had filed for his retirement.

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.