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The Face of Grief

Edith Gallagher Boyd

    Alex was the one who called me. I didn’t get his message until my shift was done. “Call me,” he said softly. I was walking through the underground parking lot of the radio station where I worked. Checking the back seat which my father taught me to do, I climbed into my car looking around for danger, another of Dad’s lessons in life.
    No physical danger accosted me.
    I pushed the call back button, and Alex picked up right away.
    “Where are you, Jen?”
    “In my car. Just finished my shift. What’s up?’
    He hesitated and my throat tightened.
    “It’s Dad, isn’t it?”

    “Erica just called me. I have sad news, Jen. Dad died at 2:20 this afternoon.”
    I knew Alex would not hang up on me as I searched for something to say.
    “I’m in a parking lot and I checked the back seat before I called you. He taught me that,” I said quietly, trying to absorb what I heard.
    “Are you sure? Is this real?” I said.
    And then I let out a wail and banged the steering wheel.
    “Alex, NOOOO!”
    “Don’t drive, Jen. Get an Uber or something,” he said. “No. Forget Uber. Leave your car and walk to Snyder’s Diner. Go in, and I’ll come meet you.”
    “O.K.” I said, looking around to see if I’d been heard.
    Who cares if somebody heard me scream, I thought, my mind in a jumble of images. Alex had just given me the news that I’d dreaded my entire life.
    Alex...always there, always strong...often the answer to any question. He who stayed closer to Dad after we lost Mom, after her replacement took the reins of our lives and snapped them at us, carefully guarding her turf.
    “Jen, your father was offended you didn’t join us for Thanksgiving. Your father is nursing his tennis elbow right now, and isn’t up for a chat. I’ll have him call you.”
    I resented Erica so much she could even ruin a simple word like father.

    She wasn’t there when Dad taught me to ride a two-wheeler. She wasn’t there when he sat with Mom in the chemo room, charming the staff and her fellow patients. She wasn’t there when Dad and Mom walked me to school in third grade when I was being bullied.
    And yet, she took over my father’s life in every way imaginable.

    As I was walking towards Snyder’s Diner, I pictured the stricken look on my father’s face when I snapped at Erica saying bratty things like, “This is a family photo, Erica. You take the picture.” Or “Dad, you’re taking her to The Grover Inn, Mom’s favorite?”

    It was at times like this, if Alex was around that he would remind me that Dad was free to choose company of his liking, and I should not throw Mom’s death at him, as if he weren’t a victim of her absence like us.
    Mom herself would be appalled at my pettiness. However, if she saw her beloved Henry’s arm draped casually around Erica’s back, she may feel things I can’t even imagine.

    As I pushed open the heavy door to Snyder’s, I saw that Alex, whose office was near my job, was already there, and I choked back tears at seeing him looking so pasty and lost. When he saw me coming towards him,he smiled as best he could and said “Jen.” He got out of the booth walked a few feet and hugged me tightly.
    I started to cry as he steered me to his booth.
    “She didn’t blame him or anything, but she said he stopped taking his meds,” Alex said in a flat voice. I didn’t trust myself to speak, and felt a choking sensation picturing a world without my father in it.
    Images of his being given a grave medical diagnosis became friendly thoughts as I hoped that the depression which had plagued him long before he married Mom wasn’t the cause of his death.

    “She’s getting an autopsy. Not sure if .....it happened naturally. He called to her that he was going to take a nap. She found him.”
    “Oh Alex, what are we going to do?”
    “Think of Erica. She lived with him and his mood swings. Jen, I was glad he had her,” Alex said quietly. And even before Mom got sick, things weren’t perfect between them,” and then he bowed his head into his chest and started to cry. I came around to his side of the booth as the server backed away from our booth. It was one of those small kindnesses which are all too rare. It’s imprinted on my heart forever.
    We sat together and cried quietly, as I grabbed paper napkins from the old-fashioned dispenser to wipe the tears from our faces. I even wiped the maroon rubbery seat we were on, memories of Mom and her neatness causing me to cry harder.

    The server brought over two coffee cups, cream, sugar and quietly filled them for us without our asking. She disappeared into the kitchen and Alex and I began to drink it.
    “We should go to see Erica,” Alex said.
    “He was our father. She’s not even family,” I said not caring how my brother would react.
    “Stop it, Jen! She stuck by him when he was too depressed to work. She talked him back from the edge of the roof that time. Give her a break! Mom was right. You’re a spoiled brat!” And then he winced, and muttered “Sorry.”
    “When did Mom say that?” I asked, stricken to the core, but able to picture Mom’s saying that when she was mad at me or Dad.
    She might have added, “She’s like her father FEELING everything” or something like that. But I didn’t let my mind rest on the fact that things between my parents weren’t perfect. Then I’d have to make a little room for Erica and that door was tightly shut.

    “Jen,” he said gently. “Let’s not do this today. I’ll walk you to your car.
    You OK to drive?”
    I sniffed and smiled weakly at him and the server, as Alex placed a big bill under his plate, generous, even in grief, I thought as he cradled my elbow out into the street.

    The blaring horns and traffic jams reminded me that nobody cared that my world had just collapsed, that my father had left me. I held onto Alex’s forearm not trusting myself to walk to my car.
    When we got to my car Alex took my keys, opened the door and hugged me.
    “Jen, can you drive?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll text you when I leave Erica’s place,” he said.
    “Please do,” I said, and made a point of strapping in and preparing to drive, even though I knew I would only go around the block to the park near Snyder’s.
    Alex stepped back about six feet knowing I wasn’t too skillful driving in crowded places.
    We waved to each other and a knife went through my heart at how much he looked like Mom and Dad. And yet he was going to do the right thing and comfort Erica. Better he than I, I thought as I navigated my car beyond his view and headed for the park.
    The fresh air felt so good as I chose a bench behind a tree where fewer people strolled by, and I started to cry. I’d lifted a few extra diner napkins when Alex wasn’t looking, and rubbed them gently down my cheeks. Henry Hartman died this afternoon. Daddy left me. I didn’t believed he somehow joined Mom, and I braced myself for any well-meaning mourner who might say that to me...out of Erica’s loop of control, of course.
    But maybe he really was with Mom, and I pictured her saying “Hank”one of her names for him when she was exasperated with his sensibilities. “Hank, you couldn’t hang on for the kids? You let this thing beat you?”
    “Mom,” I said aloud looking around to see if anybody heard me, “Erica doesn’t talk to him that way.” A jolt of shock went through me, that I allowed that thought in, especially today, when I knew Erica would suck Alex in like a whirlpool.
    A little girl with multi-colored ribbons in her hair walked by me clutching her mother’s hand, and a fresh wave of tears overtook me. If I did have kids of my own, neither parent would get to meet them... get to love them. The little girl stopped short of the sliding board, pointed, made her way to the first rung, then stepped back and clutched on to her mother.

    My grieving thoughts fixed on to my mother and her patience with me when I stopped going to kindergarten, shyness and awkwardness besieging me, and her gentle explanations of why I needed to do this new thing without her or Alex.
    And here I am Mom, all these years later without you, Dad, and Alex, I thought, quickly correcting myself that Alex was still with me but he was going to see Mom’s replacement to console her.
    Was I just as sexist as guys I called out when there was even a hint of misogyny coming from them? Was the real reason I disliked Erica was that she was a woman? But Mom wouldn’t have liked her either with her hugging and sweetness and smiley-faced notes to my Dad.

    But maybe that’s what Daddy needed through the years, simple middle-class expressions of affection, not a patrician restraint shown by my mother even in her features.
    Maybe Alex was right that Erica was more suited to my Dad and more patient with his dark spells.
    I sat in the park until the sun slanted across my feet which knocked me out of my reverie, knowing if I lingered further, I’d be driving home in the dark.

    When I put the key in the door of my place, I hesitated and implanted in my heart that this is the first time I came home without Dad, without his being alive. I hoped Alex took his time texting me about his visit with Erica. But that feeling only lasted five minutes until I sent him a text “How goes it?”

    It took Alex over an hour to return the text.
    “She’s mute with shock. Her sister Lynn is here.”
    “Then you’re free to leave,” I answered.
    ‘Yeah. Sleep well, Sis,” his childhood name for me almost breathed through the text.

    My return to work a few days later felt oddly good. Many co-workers told me they were sorry, but asked me to work on a taping due soon. I felt they were trying to help me by keeping me busy. I was preparing to host a live show soon, and my segueing into a song needed work.
    “Don’t wait even a split second to push the song tab” the tech guy was telling me during my practice session.
    “Lower your voice,” said another. “Remember you are setting the mood for the show, Jen.”

    I found ways to avoid actually visiting Erica although we did talk and text a few times before the service. She asked for my opinion of the format of the service as they never discussed these things and on the phone she choked up and said, “Henry always said you kids would know,” and I nearly lost my footing on the staircase to the radio station.

    “Dad said that about us?”
    “It made me jealous sometimes, all the respect he had for you guys.”
    I stopped ascending the staircase and grabbed the railing with my right hand.
    “Erica, whatever you plan, Dad would be fine with it,” I said, and added, “Thanks for sticking by him,” surprising both of us into an awkward silence.

    Our slight rapprochement didn’t completely cure me of my bad feelings about Erica, but I did fully intend to visit her before the service. And I didn’t.

    She combined the visitation and the service into one day, which Alex and I appreciated.

    Erica arrived at the funeral home earlier than I. As I was inching my way into the family-only area, I caught a glimpse of Erica’s face. The sincerity of the pain she felt cut right through me. It was the face of grief itself etched deeply into my father’s wife.

    I approached her gingerly and pulled her to me in a hug, and said, “I’m sorry about your loss, Erica. You were a good wife and Dad loved you.”
    She practically gasped and hugged me to her in a way my mother never did, and said, “Means the world to me you said that.”

    We got through the service and I went to the radio station and asked them to dedicate the song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to Erica and Henry Hartman...their favorite.

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