Widowish: A Memoir(22)

As I waited for the elevator, I put on my sunglasses. I continued to cry. I could not comprehend what was happening. My husband just died.

I saw people on their phones; friends were laughing and making plans for the weekend. People were getting on and off the elevator. My husband just died.

As I walked through the hospital lobby and outside its doors, people were driving their cars and looking for parking. Someone was eating a sandwich.

How could they? Didn’t they know? My husband just died.

I saw Jillian’s car. I saw her waiting for me. The sun felt warm on my face. I felt a sense of urgency. I wanted to run! I did not want to look back. I wanted to get home to Sophie.

It was over.

I wanted to tell Joel that I would find him . . .

But as I opened the car door, it didn’t feel like I had left Joel alone inside the hospital.

It felt like he had left with me.

I was not going to let him go.





NINE

Doing Clooney

There’s a mountain trail near my house that I’ve been hiking for about twenty-five years, even before I lived so close to it. It’s a little over three miles long and there are a few different entry points. The trail is actually a wide path that is paved part of the way, then becomes a dirt footpath, and eventually leads you into a residential neighborhood, which happens to be where George Clooney lives when he’s in Los Angeles. Because of this, my friends and I call it the Clooney hike.

There have been times in my life where I do Clooney every day, and other times when there are weeks in between. In the beginning, when Joel and I lived in my Hollywood apartment, my friend Jennie would pick me up on Saturday mornings, and we’d drive over Laurel Canyon to do Clooney. Jennie has since moved back to Chicago, and I’ve had a variety of walking partners over the years. And quite often, I do Clooney on my own.

You are hit with a pretty steep incline at the onset. I have a no-talking rule when starting the climb because even after so many years of schlepping up this side of the hill, I still can’t catch my breath for at least the first ten minutes, let alone carry on a conversation. You zigzag up the mountain for about another twenty minutes after that. It’s rigorous, but the abundance of wildflowers and eucalyptus trees makes up for it. By the halfway point, there’s a reprieve, and a short part of the trail becomes flat with spectacular views of the valley, Mulholland Drive, and snowcapped mountains in the distance. Eventually, you realize that you’re walking downhill. The neighborhood appears just beyond the bend. Soon you’re passing George’s house, and sure enough, you’ve completed the loop, gotten some fresh air, and moved your body in a way that is considered exercise.

In those early days of losing Joel, my life became that hike. I kept expecting to be able to catch my breath. I kept thinking that things might get easier or at least slow down. I was waiting for the reprieve. But things weren’t easy for a long time. I just kept climbing uphill. Conversations were difficult. Catching my breath, impossible. I wanted to stop hiking, stop climbing, but my every day became the climb. It was months before I could breathe again.

I was sitting at our yellow-painted dining table. It was the night Joel died. My neighbor Roxanne was leaving to pick up my dad and Elisabeth from the airport. Jillian had stayed with me since leaving the hospital. Sophie was asleep in my room.

“I’m worried about Joel,” I said to Roxanne as she was heading out the door. “I’m afraid he’s cold. I’m afraid he doesn’t know what’s happening to him.”

I saw Roxanne and Jillian exchange a look.

“I think Joel’s OK, honey,” Roxanne said. “I don’t think he’s cold.”

“I’m worried,” I kept saying. “He’s better when we’re together. I think he’s confused without me there.”

I didn’t know where there was. But I believed what I was saying. I believed that Joel was lost that night. That he was confused and didn’t know where to go. People talk about seeing a white light when you die. That you travel through a tunnel, toward the light, and that family and friends who have passed are there to meet you. But with the exception of his grandmothers, who had died years and years earlier, there was no one “close” to help show him the way. No contemporaries, no one who had a first degree of separation. This thought had me reeling.

“He doesn’t know what to do,” I cried. “He doesn’t know what’s happening to him.”

Jillian offered her comfort, too. “I think Joel’s OK,” she kept saying. “I don’t think you need to worry.”

But worry became my new normal.

Earlier that day, when I got home from the hospital, I held Sophie, and we cried.

“I really believe this, Smoosh,” I said to her. “I don’t think that Daddy would have let go if he didn’t think we’d be OK on our own.”

“I think so, too,” she said. Whether or not my thirteen-year-old really agreed with me, I wasn’t sure. But she was following my lead. I wanted to comfort her more than anything.

“We’re going to be OK,” I cried to her. “We’ll be OK.”

I was convincing myself of this, too. It was just the two of us now. I felt the weight of that responsibility immediately. I was mad at Joel for leaving us, but I was happy that he was no longer suffering. I could not get the thought of him in the hospital out of my mind. I kept trying to remember him from our life together, but I couldn’t get out of the hospital.