E.J.

The following is more of a journal entry than a story, but I had to name it something. This is a short account of  how the kids and I dealt with the untimely death of their mother.  One day I may fictionalize it and make it a short story or use it as is in my memoirs. 

She died on a Saturday, just after noon.

Though it’s probably not the best way to start a story, it’s where my journey began. When I was young, I feared death as if it were the grim reaper, clad in black with the razor sharp scythe. I had lost people around me, but most of them were older folks who had lived long, mostly fruitful lives. My life had been good up until that point. When the doctor told me my wife had less than six months to live, I remember staring at those brown shoes. One of the laces on the right shoe was frayed and coming undone. Surely, a man who couldn’t tie his shoes was wrong about the cancer that was overtaking my wife’s body. He had to be wrong.

Given that Cora was of the gentle and giving nature, I did my best to protect her from all the outside influences that could stifle her recovery.  Together we took great care in breaking the news to rest of the family. How do you tell a child that in six months, she may not have a mother? How do you tell a mother in six months, she may not have a child? We prepared for worst, but prayed for the best.

The worst is what you get when God blinks.

At seven years old, my daughter had a stronger will than most people three times her age. Telling her was going to be especially difficult because their personalities were so similar.  Telling my son came with its own set of problems. At four years old, how could he fully understand that mommy wasn’t coming back from the hospital? Worse yet, in time his memories of her would fade completely. She would only live in videos, pictures and stories. She made me promise I wouldn’t let him forget. I couldn’t let him forget.

When it was time, I had my mother help me talk to the family. I took the kids outside and we sat next to a huge old oak. They sat on my lap and the words came out of my mouth in broken sentences, veiled hints and half truths. I hadn’t really prepared myself for that moment because I prayed it would never come. I was failing miserably.  My mother was tasked with the duty of telling Cora’s parents. She was a rock. She had endured the death of her parents, my father’s parents, siblings and most recently, my own father. I knew her mind would be the ready writer with whatever words of wisdom God had for her. I was only able to find the right words when I hear the guttural wail that came from my mother-in-law when faced with the reality that Cora wasn’t coming home.

I pulled my children tight to my chest and said, “Mommy is in heaven with Jesus and Paw-paw Jerry and she’s not hurting any more.”

I don’t know if they cried because they truly understood or because it was the first time they had seen me cry. I rocked them and told them that everything was going to be alright. To this day I can’t explain the emptiness and insignificance in my heart. How was I going to raise these two beautiful, loving, brilliant motherless children? Her story wasn’t complete. She had so much more in life to do to be be struck down less than a week before her thirtieth birthday. She often joked that one of her grandmothers stopped counting birthdays at age twenty-nine. It still grieves my heart that she was outlived by all four of her grandparents. As I sat there with my kids, I tried to bargain with God. Cora was no saint, but what did I do to deserve to continue living? Children need their mothers. What could I do to take her place? What could I do to change things? My thoughts fell silent and all I could hear was the gentle weeping of  my children. One word finally found it’s way into my spirit.

Selfish.

I tried to rebuke this thought that surely had come from the deepest pit of hell. I tried to bind the thought and bring it under submission as the Word tells us to. I couldn’t. I couldn’t because the Word came from God. I was being selfish.  I was wrapped up in my own sadness. I was lost by my sense of loss. Heaven is the one place where everyone wants to go, but no one is in a hurry to get there.

Cora fought the good fight. She won the race. In Heaven God was telling her, “You have done well my good and faithful servant.”

I looked thankfully into the sky and thought to myself, “Free, free, free!” Her body was riddled with cancer, but she remained as beautiful as the day we married. Through chemo and radiation, she never lost one hair on her head. She never looked sick.

At the funeral, my daughter sat at my side and my son fell asleep on my lap. Her pain was gone. Even though I’d lost her physically, the children are so much like her, I know I’ll never forget her. Now, at fifteen, my daughter will say something sassy and I can’t help but realize that is exactly what Cora would have said. At twelve, my son could be the most loving and compassionate person I’ve ever met, another trait passed down from their mother. They are smart, beautiful and brilliant, just like their mother. Things have been rocky, but together we found our new normal. As one of God’s many miracles, children are resilient and they bounced back much easier than I did. All children want to do is play, so the children around them didn’t have to walk up to them with tears and condolences. All they had to ask was, “Do you want to play?”

As an adult, I was hugged, poked, prodded, pitied and analyzed more than one person should be expected to deal with. When I finally went back to work, one of my closest friends walked into my office, reared back in my seat and propped his feet up on my desk. He removed the toothpick from his mouth and said, “Bout time you came back to work.”

My first thought was to jump to feet and shout, “My wife just died!”

I resisted the urge and just looked at him. He smiled a bit, stood and walked out. Before I knew it, I found myself laughing. And after everything we had gone through, I know that is what she would have wanted.

D’Shawna