I'll See You Again Part 13

My life stood as scary proof that you can do everything right-follow all the expected paths of college, marriage, children, community-and still be shattered. Being a good person doesn't protect you from the randomness of life and death. My children were innocent victims. Warren and I had done nothing wrong-certainly nothing to warrant pain of this magnitude. Strangers could look at me with derision or disdain or doubt, but that didn't change the fact that tragedy had landed on our household for no obvious reason.

I suppose people felt safer about their own futures if they could list all the ways I was to blame. Vicious blogs appeared online, postings by people who didn't know me or any real facts. Their opinions should have been meaningless, but I couldn't stop reading them. Warren would find me sobbing at my computer at 2 a.m., crushed by some callous comment from an anonymous attacker. Warren eventually took down the Wi-Fi in our house and shut off the Internet. But it was too late. The cruel remarks were already ingrained in my mind:

She must have known Diane was an alcoholic.

She never should have let her kids go in that car.

Somebody could have stopped Diane after Emma called crying.

Rationally, I knew the answers to all of those "should-haves."

First, we had never seen Diane drink anything more than a single beer or the occasional pina colada and had certainly never ever seen her drunk.

Second, Diane was family, and we trusted and even relied on each other. To people who seemed dubious, I wanted to say: Think about your own sister or sister-in-law. Would there be any reason to worry about her behind the wheel? If I'd had any inkling that something might go wrong, I would have tied myself to the fender before letting my three innocent girls drive away in that car.

And finally, once we realized something was wrong on the drive home from the campsite, we did everything we could to stop Diane. Warren begged Diane to stay where she was. He got all the information he could and raced out to rescue his family. We called the authorities. We asked for help.

We did everything we could.

In the midst of crisis, all you can do is act honestly, openly, and with the purest of motives. That's what we did.

Warren and I never spoke publicly or tried to defend ourselves. Truth isn't always a deterrent to what others choose to believe. People wanted to find reasons why we must have been responsible, and their need to blame played into our own irrational guilt. In my darkest moments, I believed I was responsible. My job in life had been to protect my girls, and I had failed.

Fortunately, my friends had a completely different reaction. I'm told it's common for friends and acquaintances to run away when a tragedy happens-they're not sure what to say or how to react, and they struggle with the uncomfortable feeling that bad fortune is contagious. But my crowd did the opposite. My friends became superfriends. They rallied around Warren and me, completely supportive and nonjudgmental.

Most of us had children the same age and, since they liked being together, we bonded through their activities. Our lives were constantly intertwined. My friend Deana taught all the children religion, and she and Isabelle and I were Girl Scout Daisy leaders together. We had way too much fun helping our littlest Scouts earn their "petals." Isabelle and I and several other of our friends banded together to cheer at soccer games or gymnastics practice. With sports, Scouts, and religion, and all the kids feeling like one family, we could have been mistaken for a revival of The Brady Bunch.

The moms' supportive spirits must have set a good example for the children, because they always looked out for each other. For instance, one little girl in our circle didn't like to be away from her mom. When she found herself alone one afternoon, I saw Alyson stepping in to hold her hand.

"You'll be okay," Alyson told her. Seeing that kindness in my girls made me so proud.

After the accident, however, a veil of shock descended on all the families. We heard about some children who started having nightmares; others who refused to let their parents out of their sight. One of Alyson's close friends sobbed hysterically when the family set off for a vacation, and it took awhile for the parents to realize that she was terrified about being in the backseat of their minivan on the highway.

Since most of our friends had young children, their first instincts must have been to protect them and try to make them feel secure. But they never wavered in their stalwart support of Warren and me. Isabelle made a schedule so somebody was always in the house to answer the phone, make sure we had food, keep us from sinking into the abyss. Or that was the goal.

We sank, but at least the house stayed clean.

"Dude, who are those two with all the enthusiasm?" my laid-back half brother, Mark, asked in wonderment one day. He had happened to come over when two of my friends, dizzying dervishes of energy, spent the day scrubbing, polis.h.i.+ng, and putting things away.

Mark didn't have to clean or organize to be welcome. Even though he was much younger than me and the product of my dad's second marriage, I'd always been close to him. He lived in New Jersey and now tried to visit as often as he could.

My friend Karen-the whirling dervish whom Mark admired-had moved to another town awhile before the accident and we saw each other less. But now she came back into my life like a much-needed shot of 5-Hour Energy. After signing up on the schedule to be with us on Tuesdays, she loyally showed up at the house every week. One Tuesday, with all that energy, she didn't want to sit around.

"Come on, I'm taking you out," she said matter-of-factly.

"To do what?" I asked.

"It doesn't matter. Shopping. A grown-up playdate. We're getting out of the house."

For some reason, I numbly agreed. I didn't know how I would fill the days and weeks that stretched endlessly ahead of me, so to have one taken care of seemed a strange relief.

And not just one-one day every single week. Tuesdays with Karen became an inviolable part of the schedule. Every week, she arrived at my door with a plan for the day. Since she had three children of her own, the exact same ages as Emma, Alyson, and Katie, she could easily have found reasons to skip a week now and then. But she never did. Even during school vacations, she arranged for babysitters so she wouldn't have to let me down. I felt guilty-I didn't want to disrupt anybody's life. But she never gave me a choice.

"I don't feel like going out today," I moaned one Tuesday, huddled on the couch in sweatpants, with no intention of moving.

"You'll feel better once you're out," she said brightly. "Get dressed. We're going shopping."

"Not today."

"Yup, today!" She grinned and clapped her hands, a combination friend, guru, and personal shopper. She wouldn't take no for an answer. Karen, like so many of my friends, seemed instinctively to understand how to help someone sunk in depression:

1. Get them moving.

2. Plan something they can look forward to.

3. Insist they engage in the world.

4. Talk to them.

5. Be a constant presence.

Karen's depression-fighting strategy usually involved retail therapy. We would go to a mall, browse through stores, buy a few things, have lunch. For those few hours, I'd feel like an ordinary person again rather than a tragic freak. I'm shopping for sweaters! I must be just like everyone else!

One day in Lord & Taylor, a tall, flamboyant makeup artist for one of the major companies stopped us as we wandered down the cosmetics aisle and introduced himself as Sterling.

"Ladies, come on over here. How about a makeover?" he asked, mincing around us. "I can make you even more bee-you-ti-ful."

I shook my head no, but Karen gave me a little nudge. "Go. Do it."

"Oh yes, let's do it!" Sterling said. His prancing was already making me smile, so I let him lead me over to the makeup chair. As I sat down, he studied my face for a moment, then showily whipped out his brushes and pots of color.

"Keep it very natural," I warned him as he started in.

He nodded and, with a grand gesture, started applying cover-up to the dark circles under my eyes. He moved with such exuberance that a scout for the Alvin Ailey dance troupe would have grabbed him on the spot.

"Oh, what a nice life you ladies have," he burbled as he made broad strokes across my face. "You get to spend the day lunching and shopping."

Nice life? I looked over at Karen and we exchanged a smirk. He had no idea; it was such a relief.

When Sterling finished, he held up a mirror for me. His idea of "natural" included red lipstick, bright pink cheeks, and smoky eyes. Not my usual look.

"What do you think?" I asked Karen.

"Bee-you-ti-ful," she said, and we both laughed.

Maybe I didn't like the eye shadow shade, but Sterling had given me the perfect makeover. I'd been able to forget who I was for a few minutes-and even laugh. I couldn't imagine a better transformation.