I'll See You Again Part 6

After the funeral, hundreds of children, parents, townspeople, and mourners streamed over to Trinity Restaurant, a popular spot in Floral Park. With everybody wanting to show their support, the owners had put up a big tent outside and asked all the local restaurants to donate food. Warren wanted to attend.

"We can't go to a party," I said, horrified.

"We have to," Warren insisted. "All these people are trying to do something nice for us."

He headed over to the restaurant, but I couldn't stay in public a moment longer. I was thoroughly drained from the funeral, and didn't want to see anyone. My Catholic traditions got me through the wake and funeral, but enough-I had to be alone.

A phalanx of loyal friends ushered me back to the house and I collapsed on my bed. The wails and sobs I had held back in public erupted now and ricocheted through the house. My life had been ripped away from me and I thought I would cry forever because I couldn't think of any reason to stop. Later, neighbors would tell me that they could hear my howls of grief through the open windows, that they s.h.i.+vered at my pain and at the helplessness they felt when faced with the prospect of comforting me.

But finally I stopped and lay there, as limp as a rag doll, too drained to move. Is there a limit to how many tears your body can produce? Do you ultimately cry so long that your body withers like a dried leaf and all emotion is gone?

"I'll go to the restaurant," I said, getting out of bed. "I changed my mind."

I wasn't sure why I was going, but I wanted to be near Warren. And I felt a wave of guilt-all these people had arranged the lunch in honor of my girls and to be kind to me. However I felt, I needed to show I appreciated their generosity. The friends who had come home with me were surprised, but I got dressed and we walked the few blocks to the restaurant, where everyone had gathered.

With everyone from town present, the scene at the restaurant seemed as unreal as everything else that had happened in the last four days. I had a profound sense of dislocation, as if I had stepped out of my life and gone through a wormhole. Maybe, in some parallel existence, the life I had begun with my three daughters was still going on. At this very moment, in another dimension, I was helping Emma get into her costume and telling her that she would be wonderful in the premier of the play next week.

But in the only reality I had, I was sitting under a tent in the long driveway of a nice restaurant on Jericho Turnpike, while throngs of people dug into the platters of pasta, salads, sandwiches, and cookies that had been so generously provided. Food donated in love and grief and helplessness.

Around me, I heard people laughing and talking. But I didn't want to talk. I couldn't laugh.

What am I doing here?

I got up to leave. I didn't belong at a party, however kindly it was meant. Frankly, I didn't belong anywhere anymore.

Three

Everyone told me that my girls were in heaven.

On most days, I agreed.

I grew up attending ma.s.s every week, and whether out of belief, comfort, commitment, or guilt, the Church had remained a central part of my life. The girls always came with me to ma.s.s and sometimes Warren would join us, too. He knew how much prayer meant to me.

But after Emma, Katie, and Alyson's funeral, I stopped going to church. How could I believe that G.o.d had been listening to my prayers? I had prayed fervently for my children's safety, their health, their happiness, every night. Even before they were born, I didn't stint on grand gestures. While pregnant with Emma, I wore every crucifix I owned and put twenty pins on my bra strap each morning, in honor of my favorite saints.

One evening halfway through that pregnancy, Warren and I went out for dinner and I had three rosaries draped prominently around my neck.

"Jackie, you have to stop. This is getting embarra.s.sing," he said.

"How could it be embarra.s.sing to protect our baby?" I asked.

I felt a huge responsibility to s.h.i.+eld my children from harm. If that meant putting aside my own ego and needs, I didn't mind. Ferociously protective, I called on the saints to help me watch over my girls, and I continued wearing crucifixes and pins with each pregnancy.

I had followed all the tenets of Catholicism and done everything right. But now my whole belief system had been spun on its head. Rosaries and crucifixes and pious prayer had not been enough to safeguard me or my children from the randomness of life. I couldn't believe that killing three innocent children was part of any divine plan.

But religion and rationality aren't a good mix, and it is hard to shake free of what you have always believed. So I comforted myself with the thought that I would see the girls again in heaven, that we would be reunited.

The sooner the better.

"I'm going to be with the girls soon!" I started telling my friends, flas.h.i.+ng a big smile that reflected my sense of relief. It was more than just a way to make myself feel better; I truly believed it. My little girls would not spend eternity without the love of their mother. I needed to be there to take care of them in heaven as I hadn't been able to on earth. I clung to the promise of our reunion as my only chance of feeling happiness or joy again. And, in my deranged state, I thought the sooner I joined them in heaven, the better for all of us.

My closest friends, who were still keeping watch at our house twenty-four hours a day, faced the reality of what I would have to do to make this heavenly connection happen. They didn't want to keep me from the girls-but they wanted to keep me alive until I could think straight. Though I'd always been high-strung and anxious, I'd never had suicidal thoughts before, but the circ.u.mstances had dramatically changed my entire outlook on life.

So, without telling me, my friends quietly removed anything from the house I could use to harm myself. Sharp knives disappeared from our kitchen. Long scarves were gone from my dresser. Getting dressed one morning, I couldn't find my favorite belt. I went to cut something out of the newspaper, and instead of my usual kitchen blades could find only children's safety scissors.

Since the Church had been the foundation of my life, I began looking for answers through religion. I grew up believing that priests knew the answers to all the mysteries of life. They could tell me what G.o.d expected of me; all I had to do was follow their rules. I had turned to priests when I was pregnant with Emma and an early sonogram suggested she might have cystic fibrosis or Down syndrome. The doctor recommended an amniocentesis but I didn't know what to do. I would never terminate the pregnancy-I had bonded to my baby from the first moment-but Warren said he wanted to be prepared. I worried about the risk of miscarriage that accompanied the amnio. What if I lost my baby? I had sworn to myself to protect her under any circ.u.mstances.

"I'm so confused," I had moaned to the priest. "I'm not giving up on this baby no matter what. Why would this happen? What do I do?"

He didn't ask for medical specifics-he just told me to follow my heart. "Do what makes you and your husband most comfortable," he said.

It took two weeks for the amnio results to come back. While I waited, I kept going back to the church and praying that my baby would be healthy.

The test came back fine. Emma was healthy. I thought then that my prayers had been answered.

After the funeral I made appointments with several different priests, visiting them and asking questions, looking for explanations as to why the G.o.d I had always trusted could turn on me with such vengeance. n.o.body had answers for me that I could understand. As priests, they offered theoretical theology instead of honest, simple answers.

"How could G.o.d do this?" I asked one.

"It wasn't G.o.d, it was Diane," he said. He then went on rhapsodically about fate and destiny and free will.

"So this was supposed to happen to me?" I asked, getting increasingly confused. "It was my destiny? I was born for this tragedy?"

"No, no," he said, getting slightly flummoxed. "As I mentioned, we have free will."

Of my own free will, I decided we were getting nowhere and I'd better leave.

I visited a priest at another nearby parish. Like all clergymen, he had dealt often with sadness and grief, and he offered carefully practiced words of kindness and comfort. But in the face of numbing grief, plat.i.tudes are pointless. They slide off your skin like dewdrops from a leaf. I wasn't seeking solace-I needed answers. So I began again, asking him the question that had been tormenting me.

"Why were all three girls taken? Couldn't one of them have been spared? It seems so unfair."

Danny still had his son, Bryan. The girls had each other. But Warren and I were completely alone and bereft. All three of our daughters gone? How could that be? What meaning could possibly emerge from such misery? I gazed at the priest through my haze of sorrow, hoping that he would have the bit of wisdom or ethereal insight that would pierce the balloon of pain that surrounded me.

But he answered too quickly.

"They needed to be together," he said.

I felt the anger rising in me since I'd already heard that same response over and over. The very idea infuriated me. What did it mean that they needed to be together? Didn't the girls need to be together here on earth with Warren and me?

I left again, disappointed in another collared cleric who couldn't help.

Reeling from pain, I told my friend Tricia, a mother of three and an executive at a big company in Manhattan, that I was losing faith in the Church. Tricia always found solutions, and she gave me the number of a young priest she knew, Father Brian Barr.