I'll See You Again Part 29

Psychiatric manuals give people a year to recover from grief. My year was up with no recovery in sight. No protective scars had formed over the raw grief, and if anything, each day got harder and harder.

Whoever writes those manuals doesn't have a clue.

Even Oliver seemed to be having a hard time. He was getting old, which meant that soon I'd be losing him, too. Warren had bought him for me as a surprise shortly after my dad died-so he was like our first baby. When Emma joined the family several months later, Oliver seemed mildly offended. At Aly's arrival, he looked at me like, What? Another one? But he seemed to get used to having the girls around, and Emma adored him. Once when Aly was about four years old, she reached into his mouth to take away food that he'd gotten from the garbage-and he snapped.

"You have to put down a dog who bites," the vet said after Aly got st.i.tches.

But Emma wouldn't hear of it. Protective of all living creatures, she locked herself in her room with Oliver.

"If he goes, I'm going," she announced dramatically.

Preferring to keep both of them, we hired a dog trainer to come to the house instead.

"The dog needs to know that the hierarchy in the house is you and Warren, the girls, and then him," the trainer told us. "Right now he's treated like a king and thinks he's top of the heap."

A king? Well, maybe I did cook special meals for Oliver. So we took the trainer's advice and set new rules. Once we established a different pecking order in the family, Oliver's behavior improved dramatically. He was never aggressive again.

But he stayed spoiled.

After the girls were gone, I cooked for him and n.o.body else. Our sad old dog seemed as lost and lonely in the empty house as I did. Then one day, a year after the accident, Warren surprised me by bringing home a new dog.

"What am I supposed to do with him?" I asked, unable to imagine rousing myself to take care of a new dog.

"Oliver needs a friend," Warren said.

The little puff of white fur he'd brought home was a Havanese who already had a name tag on his collar that read JAKE W. HANCE.

"You named him already?" I asked Warren.

"Not just any name," Warren said triumphantly. "J-A-K-E-Jackie-Alyson-Katie-Emma. W for Warren. The dog is named for all of us."

Oliver did perk up in Jake's presence. But however thoughtful his name, I didn't want a new dog.

I refused to love him.

"I'll take good care of him," I told Warren, "but that's it. I don't have any love left to give."

Frisky Jake did everything he could to win me over. He curled up in my lap when I sat crying alone. He ate store-bought dog food instead of insisting on homemade. He scurried onto the windowsill and peeked between the venetian blinds to watch me when I went outside.

But caring about a dog who had never met Emma, Alyson, and Katie seemed like a betrayal, just like enjoying a garden where they'd never sit held very little joy. I felt hollow inside. Like the Tin Man, I was missing my heart.

Nineteen

Life had stopped for me. I couldn't expect that it would stop for other people, too, but in many ways it had. Friends had put their own activities on hold to sleep at our house and bring us meals and be available at all hours. Now, more than a year later, they needed to let their families return to normal. They still came by all the time, called, and surrounded me with help and support. But the shock had lessened and everybody wanted to move ahead with their own lives.

Many of our friends' children were seeing therapists for anxiety disorders that had cropped up after the accident. The psychologists urged the parents to do whatever they could to provide an atmosphere of stability and constancy. n.o.body abandoned me or kept their children from me, but I would have understood if they did. I was the monster-under-the-bed personified, the epitome of everyone's worst fears: a mother who couldn't keep her children safe.

Even though I understood others' need for normalcy, I found it hard to stomach any efforts at life-as-usual. Each seemed another step toward forgetting my girls and abandoning their memories.

Jeannine sent out invitations for her annual Halloween party, which she had canceled the previous October. It hit me hard. All the anger I normally aimed at Warren got redirected at one of my very best friends. How could Jeannine do this to me?

"Who's going?" I asked Isabelle as the day got closer.

"Just about everybody," she admitted.

"Are you?"

"No, I'll stay home with you. I'd much rather do that than put on a costume."

I felt deeply grateful but didn't admit it. However much I hurt, I didn't want to inconvenience anybody.

"You can go if you want," I said with a shrug.

"I'm not really into Halloween," Isabelle said loyally. "I used to go because everyone else did. This is a great excuse to stay home."

Isabelle is kind and sweet and funny, and with her gentle charm turned on full force, I made it through the evening of the party. But after Isabelle left, my mood turned black. I stayed up all night, unable to control my fury.

At about 3 a.m., needing to vent, I sent a text message to Jeannine:

"I have to get this off my chest. I don't understand how you could have a Halloween party where you're laughing and having fun with all our friends. It breaks my heart. Birthdays and Christmas we all try to celebrate, but you didn't have to do Halloween. It's not necessary. I know this is wrong of me and I'm being irrational and selfish. But it's what I'm feeling."

By 7 a.m., Jeannine had texted me back. She apologized for hurting me and said that was the last thing in the world she wanted. But she needed to have the party for her family. She and Rob had been hosting Halloween parties since before the children were born, and not celebrating was weird for them. The children had been upset.

"The kids wanted to have Halloween again," she wrote. "We could explain not having the party last year, but now their lives have to get a little bit back to normal. I apologize again for how you feel but it's what we had to do."

I realized she was right. Jeannine is so competent and steady that I rely on her judgment to lead the way. And maybe that's why the party, which she always held the weekend before Halloween, stung so deeply. Whatever Jeannine did was carefully thought through and considered. She had four children of her own to think about, and she understood that people needed to keep going with their lives. She wanted me to keep going, too.

But I couldn't do that yet.

"What are your plans today?" Warren asked one morning as he got dressed for work and saw that I had crawled back under the covers. "Who are you going to see?"

"I don't want to see anybody."

"It's Thursday," Warren said, persisting. "You should go to your bowling league."

"I don't feel like bowling today," I said testily.

"You have to go bowling."

"Really, Warren? My kids are dead and you think it's important that I go bowling?" I glared at him across the room. "I have the right to do whatever I want."

"We all have to do things," Warren said, standing his ground. "I have to live with this pain, too. I don't have a choice. As miserable and sad as I am, I have to keep going. What if I didn't go to work?"