Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss & Love (7 page)

As we stood there hugging, someone interrupted. “Excuse me.” It was the grief counselor, and with her was a man in a black robe and a white clerical collar. A priest. In the movies, the priest shows up when someone is about to die.

I looked at the counselor and asked, “What the fuck is he doing here?”

She gave me a stunned look, but before she could answer, the priest said, “I understand that Liz is Catholic. Do you mind if we say a prayer?”

Now, I had been with Liz for over twelve years. Yes, she was born a Catholic, and I know that she believed in God, but she definitely wasn’t religious. She simply chose to write “Catholic” on the admission documents she was given when we arrived at the hospital, as if it had been a question about her blood type. Looking furiously at the short woman and pointing at the priest, I said, “Get him the fuck out of here. I know what this means. I don’t want to pray. I don’t want to talk to you. I want to see my wife.”

Looking more stunned than the counselor, the priest placed his hand on her shoulder and they both walked away. I instantly felt awful about the way I had treated them, but I just wasn’t ready to hear confirmation of what I knew was inevitable. Not from them.

As they walked away, I turned the corner toward Liz’s room and saw Dr. Nelson running down the hall. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she passed me: panic, mind-numbing fear, profound sadness, and helplessness. We were mirror images of one another at that moment. She ran into Liz’s room and I stood outside, leaning against the wall, once more not sitting simply to spite the grief counselor, though almost positive that I was, in fact, going to pass out.

My thoughts continued: This is it. It
is
happening. But this can’t be happening. It’s 2008. Healthy women don’t die in hospitals after something as routine as having a baby. Certainly not women like Liz; she is young and in great shape. Where the fuck is our family?

I reached into my pocket and grabbed my phone. I called Liz’s mom, then her dad, and then my mom. No one answered. I called Anya’s cell phone. She was at work, but picked up immediately. “Is everything okay?”

“No. Can you get to the hospital right now? I don’t think she’s gonna make it.”

“Madeline?” she questioned.

“No. Liz.”

“What?” she screamed, her voice cracking.

“Anya. Just get here. Please.”

I hung up before she could say anything else. I tried Liz’s mom again. This time she answered. “Candee. You guys need to get here right away. It’s not good.”

Like Anya, her response was “What?”

This time I gave a more specific answer. “Liz. There’s something wrong. Things are not looking good.” I heard her screaming “No, no, no!” as I hung up my phone.

I called my mom again. She answered. “Hi, honey.” This was my third call, and my words were even more direct this time. “Mom, come to Liz’s room right now. I don’t think she’s gonna make it.” I knew that she’d have a thousand questions, so I hung up on her, too. I felt like I was being overly dramatic with these calls, but panic started to grip me as I tried once again to deny what I knew I was about to find out.

A couple of minutes later, Pat and the other PCA walked out of Liz’s room, arms around each other’s shoulders, backs to me. I didn’t need to see their faces to know.

Liz was dead.

Chapter 8

dead.

i can’t fucking

believe that

dead
follows

the words,

liz

is
.

N
othing could be done to bring her back. There was no one to blame. Shitty luck and, most likely, a pulmonary embolism brought about the saddest, most horrific moment of my life.

My back slid down the wall until my ass hit the ground. I started crying harder than I’d ever cried. An intense heat was emanating from my body, but I was freezing. I trembled so violently that I thought I was having a seizure. I felt like I was going to vomit and keep vomiting for the rest of my life. I thought I had gone deaf, because all I could hear was nothing. The only fact I could comprehend was that my heart was beating and Liz’s wasn’t. I wanted to feel something—I ached to feel some sense of detachment, some feeling of denial. I wanted even for just a few seconds to believe that everything was okay and that Liz was still alive. But I knew. I knew she was dead.

It had happened only a moment ago, and I was already conscious of it. And then my thoughts went straight to Madeline, alone in that NICU, completely unaware of how drastically our lives had just changed.

Liz’s parents and my mom came running around the corner to the nurses’ station, eyes wide, unsure of what was happening. I pulled myself together enough to stand up, but I didn’t need to say anything.

Candee started bawling. I grabbed her and hugged her as hard as I could. Behind her stood Tom, his face showing disbelief. He seemed to be watching an awful Greek tragedy as it unfolded on a dark and distant stage—I don’t think he could fully grasp what had happened. Seeing my mom next to him, trying to comprehend, made me cry even more as the reality of Liz’s death grew larger. I felt terrible that they hadn’t gotten there before she’d died, but what had they missed? The result was the same no matter when they arrived.

I let go of Candee as Dr. Nelson came toward me, crying with outstretched arms. “Matt, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t figure out why she was apologizing. She hugged Tom, Candee, and my mom, and apologized to each of them, too. Yes, it was by far the worst fucking thing that ever had or ever would happen to us, but I knew that it was not her fault and she did not need to apologize. The human body is a complicated machine, I thought, and sometimes shit happens. This time it happened to Liz, and to all of us. It was no one’s fault. It couldn’t be. She was just gone.

We held each other in the hallway for a few seconds, while most of the hospital staff streamed out of Liz’s room. All of them had their eyes fixed on the ground before them, unwilling to make eye contact with two parents who just lost a child, a woman who lost a daughter-in-law, and the man they knew would now be alone in raising a newborn baby. One of them closed the door to Liz’s room on the way out.

“Do you know what it was?” I asked Dr. Nelson.

“We’re pretty sure it was a blood clot that went from her leg into her lungs. We’ll do some tests to confirm.” She squeezed me again, looked mournfully at all of us and then walked away.

Even though my family was with me, I felt alone. Like I needed the wall to hold me up.

I thought about my fear of dead bodies. I’d seen a few of them, mostly at funerals and three times while in India, lying in the middle of the road after being hit by vehicles. I always avoided looking—nothing like the immediacy of a newly dead body to force a confrontation with your own mortality. But with Liz it was different. I wanted to—had to—see her, touch her, hold her hands one last time.

The grief counselor reappeared. I heard her hurling platitudes from some 1970s social work textbook at Tom, Candee, and my mom, all of whom accepted them with grace. But I ignored her, knowing that if we talked at that moment, my family would hear me say some things I’d regret. I heard her tell them that Liz was being cleaned up and that we could go in to see her soon. Jesus. This process is so fucking clinical. As if having her cleaned up was going to make this any easier. I hated the counselor, and I made a mental note to complain about her when I finally got my shit together. That was not something I normally would have done, but I thought about how Liz would have handled the situation, and I can guarantee it would not have been pretty.

Anya was walking toward us just as that awful woman finished talking. Fuck. She had no idea what I was about to tell her. As soon as I got the words out, she broke down. I held her, letting her cry on me. My family came to us and held us. We all just stood in the hallway together, unable to comfort each other in any other way.

A few minutes later, the door to Liz’s room was opened and someone told me I could go inside. I took a deep breath as I walked through the doorway alone. I stared at her, my eyes dry for the first time in a while.

There she was, and there she wasn’t. Eyes closed, skin pale. There was a tube in her mouth with some vomit stuck inside of it. Fuck. She looked awful. So much for cleaning her up.

I got closer and sat on the edge of her bed. I ran my hand over her head, brushing back her hair like I did when she was sick. It felt coarse and dry, like straw. It felt dead. Liz’s hair never felt like that—it was the softest hair I’d ever felt. I touched her forehead, and all I could think was that I’d never before touched anyone or anything that cold. Fuck. Just a little while ago she was up and walking around, soft hair, warm skin, big smile, all the excitement of a new mother, but now…How could this be?

I grabbed her right hand, the same hand I had held as I walked her around the room not even an hour ago, and squeezed it the way I did when I was trying to secretly convey something to her when we were in public. I ran my thumb up and down her hand like I did when we watched movies on our couch. The tears came again. How could I get this image out of my mind? I did not want this to be my last memory of my wife. But there wouldn’t be any more memories. This was it.

I closed my eyes as hard as I could, trying to erase what I’d just seen. I tried to remember her smile as she was about to go see Madeline. I tried to remember how her skin felt when I walked her around this room. I tried to remember how beautiful she looked. Holding her hand there on her bed, I kept repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I knew it wasn’t my fault, just like it wasn’t anybody else’s fault. But I wasn’t apologizing for her death. I was apologizing for what could have been, what should have been, and for what she was going to miss as our daughter grew up.

I didn’t want to leave her side, but sitting there in that room, my emotions flattened: I no longer felt love. I no longer felt hate. I felt nothing. It made me even sicker to my stomach than I already was.

That nothingness scared the shit out of me. I needed to go to Madeline, to hold her, to be with her, to know that my world hadn’t totally imploded. To feel love again. To know that I was capable of doing so. If anyone could revive these emotions, it was going to be Madeline. The need to see her was sudden. I didn’t think about it; I was compelled to go to her, because in that moment I knew that she was all I had, and I knew that if I was going to survive this day or any of the days that followed, she was going to be the reason.

When I walked out of the room, I saw the grief counselor again, but I no longer had the urge to knock her teeth out. Even my anger toward her had simply disappeared. “Matt,” she began, “I need you to complete an inventory of the things Liz had with her in her hospital room.” I followed her across the hall. I could see Liz from where I was, and I could see her mom and dad in there with her, but I turned my head away to keep from losing it again. I scanned the inventory list. Clothes, laptop, jewelry. I stopped. I hadn’t seen Liz’s rings in weeks. “Where are her fucking rings?” I yelled to anyone who would listen. This sudden outburst was a revival of my emotions, but not the one I wanted. I was scared. I started to sweat. They meant the world to her.

Liz loved her rings. Of course they were symbolic of our unending relationship, but she also admired them for the sheer beauty they possessed. She was as proud of them as I was of the fact that I’d actually figured out how to pay for them without her help. She knew how difficult it had been for me to afford them, which made her appreciate them more than if I’d been rich enough to put the Hope Diamond on her finger, and she treated them with the kind of care practiced by a chemist mixing potentially volatile chemicals. Liz took them to a jeweler at least monthly to have them cleaned, and she cleaned them at home almost weekly. She’d call me every time a barista or client complimented her on the brilliantly sparkling rocks that made the rings so gorgeous. “I always tell them that I have an amazing husband,” she’d say.

At that moment, the only thing I cared about was finding the rings. I started tearing through everything in the room, frantically looking for Liz’s prized possessions. While searching, my thoughts went to her funeral for the first time. The rings were a symbol of our lifelong commitment to one another, and that didn’t end with death—I was certain that she needed to be buried with them. But then I thought about what Liz would really want. She would tell me that they were too pretty to bury, and that burying them would be a supreme waste of money. And she would be right—I was still making payments on the loan I took out to pay for them. Besides, some crooked funeral director would probably steal them after we left the funeral home anyway. But more than anything, I thought about our daughter and how much her mother’s rings would mean to her someday. Though we promised to wear them forever, I couldn’t bury them with Liz. They belonged to Madeline now, and I knew that Liz would agree with my decision.

After a few minutes of frenzied and fruitless searching, I saw Anya standing in the doorway. “Do you have any idea where Liz’s rings could be? Maybe she told you where she put them or something?”

“Matt,” Anya said gently, “I put them in her purse.”

I found Liz’s giant black leather purse buried under a pile of her clothes. I rifled through it, finding an old package of gum, a couple of pens, two airplane barf bags, a packet of Zofran, and whole bunch of other stuff, but no rings. I thought to myself what I always said to Liz when she asked me to get something from her purse: how the hell do you find anything in here? Anya said, “They’re in the inside pocket.” I acknowledged her with a glance, and then fumbled with the zipper for a second or two. I fished around the pocket, finally finding her engagement ring with the big square diamond on top and the much smaller wedding band, too.

I pulled them from the bag and held one between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. I rubbed my fingers together, feeling the cold platinum bands, watching the diamonds sparkle as the white light dispersed through them. My fear was abated, knowing that they weren’t lost somewhere in her hospital room, but I didn’t know what to do with them. Do I put them back in her purse? Do I give them to my mom or her parents to hold until I am ready to put them in a safe place? The only way I could ensure their safety was to keep them on me. I placed them on the pinky finger of my left hand, the same way that Liz did: first the wedding band, then the engagement ring.

Now that I had them safely on my finger, I no longer gave a shit about completing the inventory. I looked at my mom and then at the grief counselor. “Can you please take care of this for me? I’m going to feed Madeline.”

I walked down the hall, trying not to acknowledge the looks of pity cast in my direction by the nurses I passed on my way. I knew what they must have been thinking, because it was the same thing I was thinking:
That poor guy. There is no way he is going to be able to get through this and raise that baby properly. They’re both fucked.
When I reached the NICU, a nurse greeted me. “I’m so sorry to hear about your wife,” she said.

It was the first time I had heard those words, and they stung worse than the weekly allergy shots I had gotten as a child. My entire body tensed up. I knew that I’d be hearing that same phrase, getting that same reminder, for the rest of my life. I had been slapped with the label of widower, and it would be impossible to shake. I went to wash my hands, realizing that like my wedding band, Liz’s rings would have to come off my finger. I removed them, placing them on the safety pin clipped to my belt loop that had been given to me by a nurse the first time I visited the NICU. I could feel everyone’s stares as I walked to the room where my daughter was. Another nurse came to me and gently rubbed my shoulder. “I am so, so sorry.” She looked up at me and into my eyes, coming face-to-face with a different kind of anguish than she normally dealt with. “Let me get your baby for you.”

I stared at Madeline lying there in that plastic box, surrounded by tubes and cords. The relief I had felt just a day earlier was replaced by dread and crippling fear. Yesterday I had been absolutely certain that Madeline’s health would be fine and that Liz and I would be the best parents there ever were. But without her…I didn’t think I could do this without her, and I didn’t
want
to do this without her. Where was the optimism? Where was the happiness? Where was the future? These things had died along with Liz. I felt so helpless, so vulnerable, and that was exactly how Madeline looked to me now. In reality, she was doing better than expected and had made great progress so far, but knowing that we had both lost the most important person in our lives, I wasn’t sure that either one of us would survive.

I watched as the nurse maneuvered the cords and tubes so she could pull Madeline from the incubator. Sitting in the same rocking chair I sat in yesterday when I first held our child, I couldn’t help but think how different everything was. I looked down at the T-shirt I was wearing, white, with the image of nineteen faceless women dressed in aerobics gear, the words Broken Social Scene underneath. A few hours ago it had simply been a reminder of a great show I’d been to, but now and forever it would be something else. It would be a reminder of the night I bought it—a night when a pregnant Liz was feeling too ill to join me. I went by myself, unwilling to miss a show I’d been anticipating for months. It was fucked up that I left her alone that night, and now this T-shirt would forever be a reminder of what a selfish asshole I was. Smudged with the mascara of a woman who had just lost her daughter-in-law and soaked in the tears of a mother who had just lost her firstborn, it would also be a reminder of something else.