grief

The Accident


Overlea High School

Image via Wikipedia

A child was hit by a car this afternoon by the teachers’ parking lot at the high school where I still teach. I actually didn’t see her at first. I was sneaking out a bit early, and my mind was already on ahead of me, thinking about a possible mini-stop at Starbucks for an iced green tea, and how to maneuver the logjam in the parking lot at my daughter’s preschool. As I pulled up behind the two cars waiting to exit on to the street, I realized that the red car I assumed was parked was really sitting in the middle of the street and a young girl was lying on her side in front of it. I couldn’t tell how badly she was injured because she was facing away from me, but she wasn’t moving. A yellow-blond woman, whose age it was impossible to tell, knelt beside her. She was softly stroking the teen’s head, and it was obvious she was talking to her.

 

I saw all manner of kids running around. Most of them had cells phones they were frantically speaking to, and many were girls who gestured emphatically at their unseen listeners. A boy, possibly from the middle school next door, was standing at the parking lot’s exit and directing out-coming cars to the right and away from the accident. I didn’t see a single adult other than the woman, who I was beginning to realize was probably the driver of the red car, and a quick glance back at the school confirmed my suspicion that no one inside was aware of what had occurred.

 

I grabbed my cell out of my bag on the passenger seat and dialed the school’s office. P., our secretary, answered before I even heard it ring.

 

“H. High School.”

 

“P., this is Ann M.. Does C. know there is a student hit out in the street by the parking lot?”

 

“No. Where?”

 

I repeated to her what I was seeing and that I had overheard one of the girls on the cell phones say that 911 had already been called. She told me she would take care of contacting the administrators. By this time I was being waved to the right by the boy. I contemplated stopping, but the street is a very narrow one. Parking is prohibited though parents do all the time when dropping off or picking up kids, a factor that I have no doubt led to the accident that was now in my rearview mirror. I could hear the EMT siren and decided that parking would cause more of a problem than any help I could give, which frankly would be little. My hands were shaking, and I could feel tears welling in my eyes and tightening my throat. I can’t even watch these kinds of scenes on television or in movies. I am useless in real time.

 

I spent the drive to pick up my daughter choking back tears and calming myself. I was so distracted that I drove right past the street for her school and had to double back two blocks.

 

The image still sticks in my mind. The girl curled on her side. The woman huddled over her, stroking her head. It took me back to the moment when Will died, and I haven’t been there in while.

 

 

The Perfect Widow


Photo of Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, J...

Image via Wikipedia

I wonder if Jackie Kennedy wrote all her own thank you cards in the days after her husband’s murder? I imagine she did. Perfect widows write thank you’s to everyone who express even the most rudimentary acknowledgment of their loss. Perfect widows don’t make any important decisions during the first year. They don’t date. They live only for their children, who represent the only reason for rising in the morning, and they adhere with the fervor of a convert to the stages of grief. Following them lock-step through that first year, the perfect widow is all about preparing herself for that second year, which she expects to be only occasionally as awful as the first, but certainly as melancholy.

I am so not the perfect widow. And it goes well beyond the fact that I didn’t write a single thank you card. As a matter of fact after I shook the cash out of each card, like my four year old does whenever she receives mail of any kind, I put the cards in a bag and never took them out again. I don’t think I even read any of them. I needed the money to pay for my husband’s wake and to bury him, but I had no use for expressions of sympathy from people who had ignored, abandoned or treated my daughter and I as inconveniences during the two and a half years we watched Will die.

When I say “we”, I mean that almost literally. It was just she and I most of the time. There were a few people who stuck close and were beyond helpful and generous, but very few.

I am continually floored by the Grief Rules mavens who seem to think that being widowed entitles them to bully all others into accepting their interpretation of bereavement. I am make no claims to wallflower status myself when it comes to expressing an opinion, but I would hope that no one ever felt as though I was telling them how to mourn from my perch high atop Mt. Perfection.

It shouldn’t surprise me that people seem to possess a fair amount of entitlement when it comes to having their tokens of sympathy acknowledged. It seems that we are not able to simply do the right thing by family, friends and neighbors without being handed a gold star to wear in return. To my mind, sending flowers or food or cards is for the comfort of the bereaved person and never done in expectation of acknowledgment of any kind. I can’t recall exactly the chapter and verse (I am a Catholic after-all) but I am sure that Jesus had something to say about those who needed to have their good deeds and pious ways well published.

There is no right or wrong when it comes to surviving the death of your spouse. Because it is about surviving with the hope of one day moving forward and living again. It is in this way that we honor them and not through the writing of thank you cards.

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Dream House


Dream House Country Inn (1852)

Image by origamidon via Flickr

Selling the house is proving to be more traumatic than I would have ever guessed. In so many ways the house has been my prison these last 3 years. There are very few happy memories and the majority of those are recent ones, but I have been feeling more and more down as prospective buyers traipse through. In part, I think, because of the silent (or in the case of one snotty woman not so very) judging that goes on.

 

Mick remarked to me in an email early on in the listing process that she found the whole process of showing houses to buyers weird. That it would feel as though they were checking her out too. In a way she is right. The walls need paint. The flooring is outdated and worn. The bathrooms need a bit of updating as well. Nothing monumental but if you didn’t know my story, you would wonder what kind of lazy home-owner I have been.

 

In an even odder way, it makes me feel more like a failure than I already do when I reassess my care-taking and early widowed days. Leave it to me to seek perfectionism in roles that I never wanted in the first place.

 

This house was supposed to be our future. We had spent endless hours speculating and planning. Thinking about it now, our dreams were so cliche. A suburban life. The kind that everyone else lives. At the time I wanted to be like everyone else. I guess if I am being honest I sometimes still do want that. To be like everyone else. I am not sure though that I am like everyone else or ever was. The root of my discontent perhaps is that I have spent a large part of my life trying to not be myself.

 

When I go into the basement, I see the pool table that Will wanted. The patio out the sliders to the backyard should be a deck. Dee’s room upstairs should be occupied with the baby brother she has always wanted, and the spare bedroom should be green with Disney princesses on the wall. The kitchen should look like someone actually cooks, and the living room should actually have furniture in it that we shopped for on a Sunday afternoon while the kids climbed on the displays as though they were at the playground down the street. His white truck should be sitting in the drive and the creepy guy who lives next door shouldn’t have ever felt free to watch me like he still sometimes does.

 

It’s silly to let all these endings drag me down when I have so much love and life surrounding me and so many happy events and happier days and nights to look forward too. But the past must be bid a proper farewell and tucked in to rest for awhile. I want to meet the future with my heart and mind fully present and that means letting certain memories and regrets have their moment when they come knocking. Acknowledge the past that could have been while remembering that you never were meant to live there.

 

Tricky business, like letting go. I didn’t realize until recently that I had let a certain part of myself go back there from time to time. I had always thought that I was moving forward at all times. Surprise, eh?

 

My favorite couple to come through so far looked to be first timers. I could hear her gushing about the color of the upstairs bath which I had loved myself when I first saw it though the realtor and Will thought it was awful. She was animated and excited and bursting with enthusiasm. The house deserves someone like her after what it has gone through. It should have laughter and life to look forward to again.