Widowish: A Memoir(51)

I was dreading our return to Los Angeles.

I knew that without Joel and Lucy there to greet us, our house would seem even quieter. It was making me anxious. Sophie had a month before high school, and I wanted her to feel empowered and confident starting this new chapter. I tried to think of the things Joel would say to her or want to do with her, and I kept falling short. I just didn’t know!

Sophie would be attending an academically rigorous public high school forty minutes from home. She would be taking a bus to school, and we’d have to be at the bus stop by 7:00 a.m. each morning. This would have been Joel’s job. I questioned whether or not I should let the teachers know about her situation, that they’d have a new student who had recently lost a parent. While I had no problem announcing to the world that I was a widow!, Sophie was sensitive and self-conscious, and she wasn’t sure she wanted her teachers to know. Like so many things, I wish I could have discussed this with Joel.

I feared that every decision I made would be the wrong one, that every action would be too fast or too slow or too late or too soon.

I also had no choice.

I’ve heard of helicopter parents and tiger mom parents and even snowplow parents. I felt that I was becoming a Bubble Wrap parent, wanting to protect Sophie from any kind of upset, even if the worst thing that could happen was already behind her. Of course, I failed miserably at this. She was a fourteen-year-old girl, and all the drama that comes along with that was out of my hands. There was social drama and school drama and family drama, and, oh yeah, her father had died. I knew Sophie’s life was hers to live, no matter how hard I wanted to protect her.

“I think it may be time for you to start sleeping in your own room again, Smoosh,” I told Sophie when we were back in Los Angeles.

She looked at me like she did when she was four and Joel and I had told her it was time to stop using her pacifier.

“Starting tonight?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, “I just think that, you know, you’re starting high school soon. We’ll still do our reading and memory of Daddy every night—”

“I’m sort of . . . over that,” she said carefully.

“Oh,” I said. “I think it’s important. It’s hard to remember him sometimes. Hearing your thoughts helps me.”

She looked at me. “I keep saying the same thing over and over. I feel like I don’t remember that much so it makes me sad to try to think of something new.” I felt the same way. Joel was starting to feel further away. Our memories were receding.

Joel was vegan for a second, right? Or was considering it, yes? He stopped eating red meat when Sophie did, but when did he stop eating chicken? And when he rode his bike to work, that was the summer he’d also race up the hills in the neighborhood, wasn’t it? Or was that when he still had his office in Hollywood?

Sometimes it’s the order of things that trips me up . . . Did we buy that fancy blender before Joel was diagnosed with MS? Did we go to that party downtown for our anniversary, or was it around the holidays? If I could hardly remember these things, how could I expect Sophie to? How could I honor Joel and give her a complete picture of who her dad was if I couldn’t even remember when or if he was ever vegan? I wanted her more than anything to remember the feeling of Joel. It’s one of the worst things about grief that no one prepared me for. You start to forget things about the people you love.

Joel hadn’t even been gone a year. We were still living our year of firsts. We had experienced Thanksgiving and Hanukkah and the New Year. Sophie’s birthday, Mother’s Day, Sophie’s middle school graduation, Father’s Day. All without Joel. These things happened. We made plans, got ourselves dressed, showed up. I just don’t know how.

His fifty-first birthday was approaching. I thought it was the perfect time to celebrate Joel in the same way we would have if he were alive. A party with Joel’s favorite people, favorite music, in his favorite spot, our backyard. I invited everyone who would have been invited to Joel’s birthday as if he were still alive and making the guest list himself. I then asked some of his friends to speak, to share their memories of Joel.

They all spoke of Joel’s kindness and empathy. Agreed that he was a mensch of the highest order. One even acknowledged that seeing Joel interact with Sophie inspired him to have children of his own. Of course, they all talked about Joel’s eclectic taste and knowledge of music. They admitted that they couldn’t watch a Dodgers game without thinking of him. Joel was a good, caring friend with no pretense, no ego, and they were grateful to have known him.

Like with shiva, our house was full of friends that night. Seeing people who knew and loved Joel, hearing their stories, sharing our memories, all of these things kept Joel close and alive.

Sophie did sleep with me the night of Joel’s birthday party. We read from our book of healing and shared a new memory, as we had done for the previous 260 nights.

“Tonight was nice,” she said. “Daddy had a lot of friends.”

I hugged her tight and said, “And a lot of people who loved him.”





EIGHTEEN

Widowish

The first time I brought Marcos to a party, almost nine months after Joel died, a woman I knew from the neighborhood pulled me aside and said, “You’re here on a date? Wait, when did your husband die again?”

The fact that I even went to a party, let alone with Marcos, was a big deal. That this exchange happened within five minutes of arriving had me feeling numb. I was a mix of nervousness and excitement being out in public with Marcos, but I didn’t expect to feel so judged.