Widowish: A Memoir(20)

Sometimes as they were watching their show, I would walk through the room and mutter, “I really don’t get it.”

“Hun,” Joel would say with a laugh, “it’s so simple. There are twenty-six suitcases, and they’re trying to guess which one has the most money in it. Then the banker will make an offer that could be more or less than what’s in the suitcase. That’s the risk of the game!”

“But who’s the banker?” I’d want to know.

“It doesn’t matter who the banker is!” Joel would say, exasperated.

“Just watch and you’ll get it, Mom! It’s not that hard,” my third grader would say as she and Joel shared an eye roll.

But I never got it.

For me, easy was sometimes difficult. Without Joel, I worried how I would understand anything.

My heart broke for Sophie more than it did for myself. What must she be feeling? At that point in time, the only experience she had with death was our beloved cat, Puddin’. Losing a pet does not prepare a child for the death of a parent. Her four sets of grandparents were all alive and well.

It’s unnatural for a child to lose a parent before her grandparents.

Just as it’s unthinkable that a parent outlives their child, this was out of order. It made no sense.

The fact that Hal had lost his own father at the same age as Sophie was, thirteen, seemed particularly cruel that he was now, at seventy-three, about to also lose his son.

Elisabeth, too, had lost her mother as a young girl of ten years old.

My mother lost her father at seventeen.

The grandparents provided me with some solace that although this loss seemed unbearable, it was survivable. While Sophie was aware of these facts, losing Joel was no comparison. This loss was hers.

I continued to go to the hospital every day that week. I called a select group of friends to come and say their goodbyes. I thought of who Joel would want to see and who he wouldn’t mind seeing him so compromised. I had acclimated to seeing him nonresponsive with tubes everywhere. But our friends weren’t. They all thought of Joel as energetic and alive. Even with my warning that it wouldn’t be easy to see him like this, it was shocking for almost everyone who came by.

With so many visitors during the preceding days and weeks, I had been growing accustomed to seeing grown men cry, but still, it was crushing every time.

One friend cried so hard he left puddles at his feet.

Another friend went to say goodbye at a time I wasn’t there. He called to tell me about it and had to call me back three times. He was sobbing so hard each time he called that he couldn’t get his words out.

By then I had cried so much that I thought I would run out of tears.

On Halloween, I helped Sophie get ready, and then dropped her at her friend’s house with her plastic pumpkin bucket to collect candy in. She told me that she was excited to go trick or treating with her friends even though she knew she’d be saying goodbye to her dad the next day. But an hour after I dropped her off, I got a call to come pick her up.

When she got in the car, I said, “I’m sorry, Smoosh. I know it’s a rough night.”

She was visibly upset. “It’s my hair!” she cried. “It was supposed to be curled under like Snow White, but it was taking forever and everyone was waiting to leave so we couldn’t finish it. It’s not how I wanted tonight to go!”

I nodded.

“I don’t know why I even bothered going out.” She fished around her plastic pumpkin candy bucket. “I don’t even like the candy I got!”

She cried and was frustrated and quiet on the short ride home. I didn’t know how to comfort her, but I was fairly certain her tears were over something much more significant than hair and candy.

There were eleven of us surrounding Joel in his hospital bed the next morning. Our immediate family, Sophie and I, and Rabbi Hannah. He was still being kept alive when Rabbi Hannah said the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for mourning. There was sobbing, there was shock; the grief in the room was palpable. It was loud. It was ugly. It was painful.

When the kaddish was over, each family member took some private time with Joel. Afterward, they all wanted to leave the hospital. I understood. This was the saddest thing I had ever experienced. They wanted to get away from it. Sophie, too, decided to leave with her grandparents. I would meet her back at our house in a few hours.

I was left alone with Joel. At this point, he was still on life support. The nurses and doctors were giving us our privacy. I am not the kind of person who wears a lot of makeup, but I had some on that day. I even wore my long hair down. I wanted to look pretty. I wanted Joel to remember me that way. I had the thought, He is dying young. What if he doesn’t recognize me when I see him again? I could be old and wrinkly, but he’ll still be young and handsome.

I remember feeling anxious when Rabbi Hannah knocked on the door.

“You’re sure you’re OK?” she asked.

“I’m just staying to say goodbye,” I told her.

“I’m happy to stay with you,” she said.

It was a Friday. A busy day for rabbis, the start of the Sabbath.

“I’m really OK,” I assured her. “My best friend is coming to pick me up.”

I had arranged with Jillian to bring me home from the hospital that day. She texted that she was downstairs and said I should take my time.