Widowish: A Memoir(26)

And so it went. Every night for almost a year. I was adamant about it, and if for some reason we went to sleep at different times or were too exhausted to stay up an extra five minutes, I made sure we would read the night we missed the following night, too. The ritual of it—reading, reflecting, sharing our memories of Joel—was crucial to my healing.

Otherwise, I kept acting as if things were normal, and it’s because of Sophie that I was able to pretend they were. She had a schedule; she had school commitments. She needed me to keep her on track, the same as it had always been. I was able to get her to school on time, to make her meals, to help with homework . . . I was able to focus on her, instead of how alone and scared I felt.

I seemed to cry every day, all day long and well into the night, but I feared Sophie wasn’t crying enough. Is she shutting down? I wanted her to have peers to talk to, but we didn’t know other kids who had lost a parent. Her teachers and the school counselor welcomed her back to school and were sensitive to her situation. So were her fellow classmates and friends. They were so sensitive, in fact, that none of them even mentioned what happened. It was confusing. She was afraid of what people might say, but they said nothing. Which in some ways was worse. She was in eighth grade. The brink of adolescence. In middle school the goal is to be just like everyone else. But Sophie was now “the girl whose dad died.”

“It’s so weird,” she told me over dinner one night. “Other than the twins who wanted to talk to me about their goldfish dying, no one ever mentions Daddy.”

“They just don’t know what to say,” I offered.

“But it’d be easier if they said something instead of just ignoring it.”

I had heard about a grief camp for kids who had lost a family member. Not necessarily a parent—it could be a sibling or a cousin or even a grandparent. It took place over one weekend in the summer, but applications were due in the spring. Sophie absolutely refused to go.

“I think it would be really good for you to meet other kids in a similar situation,” I said.

“Maybe if I had a friend to go with, but I don’t want to go alone.”

I often thought how things would be different if she did have a sibling. It was in these moments when I wished more than anything that she did. Someone to commiserate with and share in this tragedy with. Someone who was close in age, someone on her level, so she didn’t feel like the only thirteen-year-old in the world who this had happened to.

I made an appointment for us with Cheryl, a therapist I had started seeing earlier in the year when the MS was at its worst. If Sophie wasn’t going to go to a grief camp or a grief group, then I wanted her to have someone other than me to talk to.

As we sat on Cheryl’s couch together, I mentioned my concern that we were grieving so differently. I explained why I felt it was important for Sophie to have someone to share her feelings with. Cheryl listened to me while also keeping an eye on Sophie, who sat quietly, staring at her hands.

During a pause from my soliloquy, Cheryl looked at her and said, “You know, Sophie, I don’t usually talk about myself in here, but I want to share something with you.”

Sophie looked up at her, her expression unchanged.

Cheryl continued. “I lost my father when I was the same age as you.”

Sophie gasped and sat up in her seat a little taller. Even though some of her grandparents had suffered the loss of a parent in their childhoods, hearing it from this stranger, who had a nice office, and was a kind person, was reassuring. I saw a flash on Sophie’s face, a reckoning that perhaps this was something that she, too, might survive. Sophie quietly started to cry. I squeezed her hand.

Because Cheryl was my therapist, we agreed it would be better for Sophie to see Julie, a therapist in training who was still working on getting her certification hours. Julie was young and pretty, with long dark hair and big brown eyes, and she had a tattoo. Sophie liked her immediately. Cheryl was Julie’s supervisor, so I knew Sophie would be in good hands.

Jillian came over every Monday. “Melissa Mondays” she called them. She’d bring lunch and help me sort out medical bills and my finances. She called the repair man when my washing machine broke and offered to go with me to the social security office to make sure that Sophie and I received death benefits (an oxymoron if there ever was one).

Ellie took me to the post office and to the market so I wouldn’t have to go alone. She also, per my request, told the masses about Joel. My fear was that I’d be at the drugstore, or the dry cleaners, or somewhere with Sophie, and run into someone who didn’t know. I didn’t want to have to explain or say the words Joel died if someone were to ask me, How’s your husband doing?

We had open invitations, no matter the day or hour, to our friends’ homes and family events. Our neighbor Roxanne would often ring the bell and simply sit with us and play with the dogs, just so our house had some life to it.

Regardless of the love and support and care we were given, I was overwhelmed with what my life now was. Money was a concern. I had written a script before Joel was admitted to the hospital, but the thought of pursuing that now had me reeling. Even when I had been working steadily and had been nominated for prestigious awards, every meeting was a question of What have you written or worked on lately? For me, lately had been a long time.

I hadn’t worked a “real job” in years. Ellie and I had dissolved our business, and I no longer had any kind of career or even a resume. As a longtime freelancer, I was accustomed to months of not working, but without Joel’s steady income I was worried how I would manage financially. So many widows and widowers have financial concerns. There may be mouths at home to feed and bills to pay. It’s the trickle-down effect of losing your partner. Financial worries only add to the stress of grief.