Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss & Love (8 page)

The nurse placed Madeline in my arms. I bawled as I stared at her, worried that I was going to fail her as a parent. Not only in general; I really had no idea what to do with a baby girl. I grew up with five brothers, and I knew the kind of trouble boys would inevitably get themselves into. At least I wouldn’t have to discipline our daughter for a mailbox bombing or a grass fire started with a gasoline-soaked, fire-engulfed soccer ball. I had a stepsister, but she was a lot older, so I never got to listen through the door, snickering as someone explained all the things that girls need to know as they grow up. My thoughts fast-forwarded twelve years into the future. When is it okay for her to start dating? Never, if she ends up looking anything like Liz. How am I going to explain a menstrual cycle with the delicateness of a mother? I won’t be able to do it without making inappropriate jokes. How am I going to take her shopping for a training bra and not look like a total pervert? Wait…I should probably figure out what the fuck a training bra is first.

Madeline squirmed a bit in my arms, drawing me back into reality. Though I knew there would be plenty, it was probably too soon to start counting my fatherly failures. Holding her, I knew that I was going to have to figure things out for her sake. But I was going to need help. I looked at Madeline and said out loud, “I don’t care what you do when you’re fourteen or fifteen, but for the next few years, you better be the best fucking baby ever.” The NICU nurse must have thought I was insane, but at that moment, I
was
insane: my wife was dead, and I had no clue how I was going to live without her.

I spent about twenty minutes with my child before heading back toward Liz’s room. As I walked the hallways, I noticed they were devoid of hospital staff. Through an open door I found the missing nurses, some sitting, some standing, most crying. I recognized nearly all of them. I saw the grief counselor inside as well, and I knew for sure why they were there. I stuck my head in and asked if I could join them.

I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to say something to the nurses and PCAs. I thanked them for everything they had done to keep Liz comfortable during her time in the hospital, and for everything they had done to get Madeline safely into the world, too. And for everything they had done to try to save my wife’s life.

There was no reaction; just stunned silence as I exited the room. Back in the hallway, I saw a man pushing a stretcher with a large, white cardboard box on it. I didn’t immediately realize that inside that box was Liz’s body. I stood there alone, watching as the man took a left and pushed the stretcher—and the only woman I had ever loved—away from me.

Chapter 9

in the chair,

you in my arms,

it’s almost

as if the rest

was nothing but

a nightmare.

i just wish we

could both

wake up.

W
ord began to spread about Liz’s death, and my phone was constantly ringing with people calling to say nothing. Each conversation was another chance to try to comfort the person on the other end of the phone, but it was weird to have to play that role for everyone else. I knew that our friends and family meant well, but what the hell were they really going to tell me? The circumstances were unimaginable to everyone; finding the right words was impossible. Some spoke of Liz in the present tense, acting as if she was on vacation, while others focused on Madeline, asking questions and telling me that they were looking forward to watching her grow up. But all of them used euphemisms that kept them from truly having to face my reality: Liz had passed on, passed away, or was in a better place. None of them wanted to acknowledge the finality of her death, but I didn’t have that luxury. I watched her die, I held her lifeless hand, I saw her body wheeled from the hospital, and now I was facing life as a widowed father to a newborn.

With an endless stream of people coming to cry with us, the hospital converted one of the maternity waiting rooms into a grieving room. I spent that evening lying on the floor, staring at a room full of mostly silent friends and family, everyone waiting for someone to say the right thing. But there was no right thing to say. There was simply no way to sugarcoat this situation: it just fucking sucked, but I was the only one willing to acknowledge that.

When anyone did finally speak up, I didn’t hear a word. I was so deep in my own head that I may as well have been left alone in that room to talk to the walls. But I couldn’t tell anyone that things were going to be all right, that I was going to get through this, that I would survive without Liz. And I didn’t need to tell them how much I loved her, or how much I was going to miss her, because they all knew that. I just kept repeating the same thoughts: What the fuck am I gonna do without her? She was my life. I can’t go on without her.

Sitting there, I felt that dying might be the only way to truly take away the pain, but I knew that suicide would never be an option. I just couldn’t leave Madeline alone. The thought of our child as an orphan turned my stomach, and I hated myself for even thinking something so selfish. Besides, Liz would fucking kill me if I did something like that. Just hours after my wife had died, I became determined to make Madeline my reason for living. She would be my source of hope and happiness in every bleak moment I encountered. She would be the one to pull me out of the dark moments I knew I’d inevitably face. She would be my constant reminder of Liz, and no matter what happened during the coming days, weeks, months, and years, I would rely on her to make sure I was happy so I could be the best father possible for her.

After everyone but my mom and Liz’s parents left the hospital that night, I realized just how alone I was. Our friends were headed home with their wives, their girlfriends, their husbands, their boyfriends, all probably saying they same thing:
I love you, and I’m so glad that it wasn’t us.
Me? I had no idea what to do, nowhere to go. There was no possible way I could go back to our house. Not tonight. In fact, I felt then that I might never be able to step through our front door again. I headed to the attached hotel with my mom.

I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling. In one arm I clutched the red travel pillow that Liz had carried with her almost everywhere. In the other, her favorite pink pashmina, a gift I had picked up for her on one of my trips to India. Though I thought I had no tears left, they once again started to flow as I brought the pillow and the shawl up to my face, taking in her scent. Her perfume was so deeply embedded in both objects, I swore I wouldn’t let them go until I’d sniffed every last bit of her from them. It was remarkable how the smell filled me with hope—hope that I’d be able to sleep through the night, hope that there’d be a dream during which Liz was still alive in my mind. I ached for just one moment in which this wasn’t my reality. As I drifted off, I hoped I’d wake up the next morning realizing that this had all been an awful nightmare. Sleep was an escape. Plus I was so fucking exhausted that I couldn’t have kept my eyes open even if I’d wanted to.

Sometime around 2:00 a.m., I woke up to my phone ringing.

“Is this Mr. Logelin?”

“Yeah. Who is this?”

It was a woman from an organ donation organization. “Mr. Logelin, we’re so sorry to hear about your loss. We’d like to talk to you about organ and tissue donation.”

This was not how I wanted to wake up: not only was I robbed of that one hopeful dream, but it was by a woman looking to exploit my worst nightmare for someone else’s gain. It was an awful thing to think, and I knew it then, but I couldn’t help it. I was a little out of my mind.

“How soon does this need to be done?” I asked.

“Procurement needs to take place within twenty-four hours,” she replied.

Twenty-four hours? “Ma’am. My wife hasn’t even been dead twelve hours. Is there any way we can talk about this in the morning?”

“Sure. We’ll call you back at nine a.m.”

I was pissed off and hung up the phone. “Twenty-four hours?” I asked out loud, waking my mom.

“What, honey?”

“Nothing, Mom. Go back to sleep.”

I understood the time sensitivity, but all I could think about was the lack of sensitivity shown to me. A more spiteful person would have told them to fuck off, but as I tried to get back to sleep, I thought about what Liz would want in this situation. We had never talked about organ donation, but she had a donor sticker on her driver’s license and had encouraged me to place one on mine as well. I knew what I had to do, and before I passed out again, I took a little comfort in knowing that Liz’s death might actually help others live.

My phone rang again the next morning at nine o’clock on the dot, and I knew who it was. To spare Liz’s parents the pain of having to listen to one side of the negotiation for their daughter’s organs and tissue, I excused myself from the breakfast table and took the call in the lobby of the hospital.

I slumped down in a chair near the information desk and started answering the woman’s questions. No, Liz didn’t have any tattoos. Yes, we had traveled extensively, including to countries with plenty of blood-borne illnesses and mad cow disease. No, she was not an intravenous drug user. Yes, we’d had unprotected sex in the last year, pointing out the fact that she died the day after giving birth. No, she didn’t have hepatitis, AIDS, or any other diseases. Yes, I’d be willing to donate any organs or tissue deemed usable. With each question and subsequent answer came another wave of nausea. This was exactly why I wasn’t eating.

I watched as nurses and doctors walked through the lobby on their way to whatever part of the hospital they worked in; I was paying special attention to the female employees. I kept thinking,
I need to marry her.
This wasn’t about needing a second income, love, or sex. And it certainly wasn’t about replacing Liz. It was a reaction to my fear of raising a premature baby on my own, and my inability to be a good dad—and now mom, too—to my daughter. It wasn’t really even about me; I was convinced that Madeline needed a woman in her life as soon as possible so she didn’t grow up with only the parental influence of her derelict father. In my estimation, my mind was worth roughly half of what Liz’s was. Shit. Madeline has one quarter of a parent.

The bad thing about the Internet is that word travels fast. So fast, in fact, that the day after Liz died, my phone didn’t stop ringing, and the red light on my BlackBerry blinked almost constantly. Of course, the great thing about the Internet is that word travels fast, which meant my support system was suddenly enormous and stretched across the globe. I heard from high school friends I hadn’t spoken to in twelve years telling me they remembered meeting Liz once and how they never forgot her smile. My friends from college contacted me, all shocked, in disbelief that someone as lively and vivacious as Liz could be dead. Biraj called from South Korea in tears, unable to say anything. My graduate school roommate listened to me cry into the phone for at least thirty minutes. Family members I hadn’t heard from since the previous Christmas called to share memories of Liz. I heard from colleagues and friends in India and the Philippines, most of whom had never met Liz, calling and writing to tell me that they remembered the way my face lit up when I talked about her.

Standing outside the hospital, the sunshine of a beautiful Southern California morning unable to divert my attention from the darkest moment of my life, I talked on the phone to one of my oldest friends, Alex. I’d known Alex since he was the new kid in our third-grade classroom. We had the low-maintenance kind of friendship that was sustained by a call or an e-mail once or twice a year. I hadn’t even gotten around to telling him that Liz was pregnant, so I was more than surprised to hear from him. He told me that he was away on business, but that he would catch a flight to Los Angeles as soon as he possibly could. I hadn’t even considered that my friends from out of town would come to Liz’s funeral. “I’m not even sure when or where the funeral is going to be, but I guess on Saturday? That’s the day that funerals usually happen, right?” Neither of us really knew; we were too young to have ever thought about such things. Well, at least Alex was. I had aged over forty years in fewer than twenty-four hours.

As we continued to talk, a taxi pulled into the driveway of the hospital, stopping right in front of me. The door opened, and there was my best friend, A.J., and his wife, Sonja. I hung up with Alex and started crying all over again. They had been on a ski vacation in Colorado with A.J.’s family, and I hadn’t spoken to them since Madeline’s birth. I hadn’t expected people to show up, but if anyone was going to, it would be A.J. and Sonja. I had gone to high school with both of them, and they were one of the few couples Liz and I knew who had been together longer than we had. I was in their wedding, and A.J. was in ours. They were the kind of couple other couples envied but didn’t hate. And they were by far the nicest, kindest human beings in the world.

One night in the hospital, Liz had said to me, “I know we agreed that we don’t want to baptize Madeline, but I really like the idea of her having godparents. Can A.J. and Sonja be Madeline’s ‘not-godparents’? You know, in case we die in a car crash or something, I’d want them to take care of Madeline.” I thought about this conversation as I reached out to A.J., hugging him for what would normally have been an uncomfortable amount of time, weeping into his black fleece ski vest.

“What are you guys doing here?” I said, asking the dumbest question of the day. “You’re supposed to be on vacation!” I needed them, and they knew it, so they came to me as fast as they could, even though I hadn’t asked them to do so. I wiped the tears from my eyes, threw my arm around A.J.’s shoulder and said, “Come on. Let’s go see the most goddamn beautiful baby in the world.”

This scene played out multiple times over the next few days. Liz’s sister, Deb, flew in from San Francisco, and her expression was something I hope I never see again. My dad and his wife came from their vacation in Florida, both still thinking that this was some awful joke we were playing on them. My brothers David and Nick; my stepbrother, Adam; my stepfather, Rodney; my cousin Josh; one of my college roommates, Nate; Liz’s family; and her friends from high school and college—people streamed in from around the country, all coming to cry with our families and me.

Each time someone else arrived at the hospital, I promptly took him or her to the window of the NICU to catch a glimpse of Madeline. At one point I arrived to find Madeline’s bassinette moved up against the window. The nurse told me she was drawing such a crowd that they wanted to move her to where everyone could see her. Liz would have loved the idea of her daughter being the star of the NICU, but I found it a bit awkward to be sitting in a chair, holding my baby and crying while our friends and family watched from the other side of the glass. Even more awkward was watching their lips move and not being able to make out the words. I was pretty sure I knew exactly what they were saying to one another, though.
That poor son of a bitch. How is he gonna do this without Liz? I’m so glad it wasn’t my husband/wife.

On Thursday afternoon, I went with Liz’s parents, my mom and stepdad, my dad and stepmom, and Anya to a funeral home a few miles from the hospital. I’d driven up and down the street it was on thousands of times, but I’d never noticed it before. I didn’t know how this particular place had been chosen, and frankly, I didn’t give a shit. We walked inside and were greeted by a tall old man who introduced himself as the funeral director. No introductions were really necessary—I mean, he had the appearance of every funeral director I’d ever seen on TV, and the look in my eyes must have been the one he’d seen on ten thousand other widowers.

He led us into a room with a huge wooden table outfitted with tissue boxes and bottles of water. It reminded me of the hatchet rooms set up at my office when employees were laid off. He seated himself at the head and delivered us a well-prepared message about how sorry he was and how death is part of life, even when it happens at such a young age. Then his speech took an abrupt turn: “So, are we looking at caskets or are we looking at urns?” I appreciated his ability to get down to business, but I couldn’t help feeling a little repulsed by the question. My wife had been dead fewer than two days, and here was a guy treating the question of how to deal with her remains with the kind of attitude usually reserved for determining what type of breakfast meat to have with one’s eggs. But this choice wasn’t as easy as saying, “Bacon, of course.” In our more than twelve years together, Liz and I had never talked about what should be done if one of us were to die, and we were too young even to begin thinking about drafting a will that would have answered the question for me. I looked around the table, searching the faces of everyone in the room. Their teary eyes were staring back, waiting for
my
response.