Love and loss bind my ‘other mother’ and me
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An unstoppable force
Moments after Phoenix died, my mother arrived at the hospital. She brushed past nurses who tried to insist that she put on protective clothing and a mask to protect her from the infectious disease that had killed Phoenix because she knew I needed her. My mother is in her 70s, a gentle, elegant slip of a woman, but she is a lioness when it comes to taking care of her family.
Mike and I stayed with her for weeks, unable to face our house without Phoenix. Some nights, when I couldn’t sleep, I crawled into bed beside her, like I did as a child when I had a nightmare. She hosted the many friends who formed a net of support around us, made our favorite foods, tried to coax me into eating and spent hours telling Mike and me what good parents we’d been to her only grandchild.
If watching your child die is the worst agony one can experience, I’m sure seeing your child suffer is close behind it.
As I disappeared into the abyss of grief, I stopped returning phone calls and e-mails, some days unable to muster the energy or clarity of mind to put together a sentence. But Isabel, unwavering and undemanding, sent into the silence a stream of cards and letters telling me she loved me and was praying for me. In many of them, she recounted the comforting story of us: “I remember the day your mother asked if I wanted to share you …” Always she signed her letters, “Love, Your other mother.”
In time, very slowly, I began to come back to life. I didn’t want the legacy of my beautiful, sparkly, happy boy to be that his life and death had destroyed his family. He deserved better than that. Eventually, I resolved to find a way to go forward in a manner that honored his spirit as well as my own. Three years later, I’m still finding my way. I suspect I will for the rest of my life. You never get over the death of a child, say those in the community of bereaved parents my husband and I are now a part of. But you can find a way to integrate that loss. You can learn to live with it as a part of you.
Goodbye to Wendell
At the end of January, Wendell was diagnosed with advanced cancer; doctors only gave him two weeks to live. This time, they were right.
He died on Feb. 15, 2008, at the age of 40 with his family and the staff who’d lovingly taken care of him for years at his side.
Whether your child lives seven months and four days, as Phoenix did, or 40 years and six months, like Wendell, it hurts the same. We always want more time.
“It’s not possible to love your child any more than you do at the time they die,” explained a friend, whose own son died as a teenager.
The little square of grass on a hillside where Phoenix is buried is to me the most precious patch of land I know. My husband and I helped bury him ourselves, letting the dirt run through our fingers as we tossed handfuls on to his casket.
We tend his grave about every two weeks, often with our precious 15-month old, Gabriel, who shares Phoenix’s blond hair, infectious energy and love of dogs and just about anyone who gives him a smile. Gabriel plays with the trains and other little toys left next to the headstone that bears his brother’s handprint while Mike and I water the flowers, a last way to honor him.
Before I had Phoenix, everyone told me how much my life would change. I’d never get a full night’s sleep again, friends predicted. My schedule would no longer be my own and my house would be transformed into a giant toy box, they warned. But the true way becoming a mother changes you, I’ve learned, is that your heart opens wider than ever before.
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When I called Isabel last week, I accidentally woke her from an afternoon nap, a rare occurrence. When Wendell was alive, if she ever had a spare moment she spent it visiting him. But now the woman who I always knew to be everyone’s anchor felt unmoored. And, as the days passed, she felt sadder.
Mark Twain, whose daughter died of meningitis, said losing a child is like your house burning down. At first you’re crushed by the calamity that the house is gone. And then, over the months and years to follow, you remember all the precious and irreplaceable things that were found only in that house. The ripples of grief stretch out of sight.
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After Wendell died, Isabel was filled with gratitude that he had lived as long as he did, and that the end, when it came, was swift and he didn’t suffer. But lately she couldn’t stop crying. “How long did you cry after Phoenix died?” she asked.
At first I didn’t want to tell her that I cried daily for at least the first year — and after that only slightly less frequently. Grief evolves over time, but doesn’t necessarily ebb.
But these days, I told her, I also feel joy and excitement again. The complicated truth is that the happiness over having had these amazing boys in our lives at all can exist right alongside the sadness that they are gone. It is possible to feel both things at exactly the same time without one canceling the other out. They are both equal parts in the fullness of a mother’s love.
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