Afterwife
By: Michael L. Sussman
It was sometime between Monday evening and mid-morning Wednesday that my ex-wife died. I was at work that Wednesday in an office shared with two employees. The notification that popped up on my phone displayed my older daughter’s name, which was surprising given the time of day. I tapped to accept the call and held the phone close.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Michael. This is Jacob.” Also surprising, both because my son-in-law was using Astra’s phone and because he was the one calling. It’s not that we don’t speak to each other. It’s more like, lock two introverts in a room, come back in three hours, find them sitting on opposite sides of the room reading some dusty book or dated magazine. I let him continue.
The first death I can recall was of a stranger I’ll call Grandma. Until she had been moved into the vacant apartment next door, I had never seen, heard of, or wondered about this woman. She wasn’t there, and then she was. Shortly before my eighth birthday, Grandma was moved in and laid upon the simple twin bed that would be her penultimate resting place.
Who was she? Why was she there? How come we had to take care of her? As a seven-year-old I asked a lot of questions. That was pretty much how I learned anything outside of school. Unless it was related to their profession, the adults in my life didn’t volunteer any useful information: not my parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, or random outsiders. Nor did they share with me how they felt. She’s Daddy’s mother. This apartment was empty. Someone has to take care of her.
For a handful of days, maybe a week, when I wasn’t at school, I’d go next door with Mom and watch her turn Grandma from one side to the other. Why? So she doesn’t get bedsores. I didn’t know enough to ask about Grandpa or the woman I had thought of as Grandma. There must have been a funeral. I don’t remember.
“I’m using Astra’s phone just because your number’s in here,” said Jacob. “I have some bad news.” For a split moment all I could think was Please, nothing about my daughters or grandkids. “Cindy died.”
It’s easy now to think of the myriad ways I could have reacted to those words. It’s not a calculated effort, for the most part. Our limbic system is always on, ready to control the experience and expression of emotions. But evolution did not progress in a bookkeeping office facing a spreadsheet and crunching statewide transit taxes. How to respond?
The first death I can recall of someone I actually knew was of my cousin Karen. She was twenty-five. Too young to die, but pneumonia doesn’t care. What I somewhat remember, and mostly remember, was the funeral. I trailed my parents into the funeral home, my best cheap suit loose on my skinny teenage frame, and took in the crowd of murmuring relatives and strangers. With an absolute certainty in my ignorance of what to say or how to feel, I kept to myself and spoke a practiced minimum (see introverts, above). Eventually, my mother shepherded me toward an inconsolable woman sitting by a wall, enveloped in the protective force of five or six Other Mothers.
Aunt Lily was crying, wailing, as I approached. Someone else was whispering to her, and Aunt Lily grasped their hands and wailed in response. That person soon stepped away. I was next. The Other Mothers turned their collective gaze on me. I entered what felt like an arena of desolation. I muttered something. What I recollect is Aunt Lily taking my face in her hands, weeping, rubbing my cheeks, while the Other Mothers closed in with their own hands and tears and nodding heads. This cadre of support was no place for a sixteen-year-old boy. What I mainly felt was discomfort.
What I didn’t feel was the grief so well demonstrated by the mother, or the anger shown in bursts by the husband, or the tense frustration of the barely restrained father. I needed more years of experience, more time to observe loss and sorrow. Meanwhile, acceptable human reactions remained alien to me and social connections a stretch. My takeaway: I didn’t like funerals and should never go to one again.
The fraction of a moment before replying to Jacob allowed me these flash considerations:
There was this time when some people thought me dead. It happened when I was young, adventurous, had a little money and a lot of time. With those qualifications, I bought a hang glider from a dealer also named Mike.
There weren’t many of us hang gliding back then. Some of us would gather at Cape Kiwanda on the Oregon coast, where we’d perch atop the high sand dune at the southern end of a long, curving beach. We’d talk about the wind and weather, what was dangerous and how to stay safe. About a year after I began hang gliding I ran into an acquaintance from the sand dune. He studied me for several moments, then said, “I thought you were dead.” Clearly, I wasn’t. He elaborated. “I read in the paper that a guy named Mike was killed in a hang gliding accident. I asked around. Some guys thought it was you.” Still not me. “So, you’re not the Mike that sold hang gliders. That’s the one who died.”
“Wow. I didn’t know that.” I took a moment. “He taught me.” I considered the news briefly. “That’s too bad.”
We paused, each to his own thoughts, and had nothing more to say about it.
Jacob went on. “Astra hadn’t heard back from Cindy for a couple of days, for a few texts she sent. So she went over there and found her slumped over in her recliner.”
I listened.
“We don’t know when it happened. Astra talked with her Monday night, and everything seemed fine. And she was dressed like she was going to work. So probably Tuesday morning.”
“How is Astra doing?” I asked. “Can I talk to her?”
“Obviously, she’s taking it pretty hard. She’s over there now. I’m here with the kids. I think there’s someone from the sheriff’s office over there, and the coroner.”
I listened.
“So, things are, you know, kinda crazy right now. I need to call more people in between watching the kids. They don’t really understand what’s going on. Maybe Hayden does a little, but not the others.”
“What can I do to help?” I asked. “Can I come over?”
“Actually, what would really help is if you would call Sierra. Astra can’t call right now, so it’s probably better coming from you.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I think she’s at school now, but yeah, I’ll take care of it.”
“One other thing,” said Jacob. “Just so you know, my mother died the day before.”
On a good day, bookkeeping stays boring but essential. Some of the days are not good. Small fires arise: tax notices, faulty hardware, late payroll, dead clients. One of those not-so-good days was foreshadowed by a visit a few days earlier. I’ll call my client Jack, and I’ll call his fiancée Nicole. It was Nicole who came to our office to tell us Jack was in the hospital. What started out as a routine procedure became MRSA, she said. Jack was in a coma.
Nicole presented an unexpectedly positive attitude, given the upsetting nature of this news. In some ways she reminded me of Jack, always cheerful, friendly, prepared, and optimistic. He was a welcome visitor, glad to see us, bills and receipts carefully sorted and clipped, happy to chat about his new business. My staff and I shared our genuine concern about Jack with Nicole, offered reasonable assurances, thanked her for the update, and wished her well.
A few days later we heard back. Jack was dead. My employee Sarah took the call from Nicole. They cried together over the phone. I suppose it was the best thing that could be done, perhaps the only thing.
I liked Jack more than I knew him. He was a client, after all, and our relationship was a business one. While acknowledging the tragedy of Jack’s shortened life, my thoughts were pulled into a compartment other than grief. There were practical, financial, legal, and ethical steps to take. My job, in the end, was to properly manage Jack’s account, his payroll records, tax reports, and certain other financial obligations. I was glad, relieved, that Sarah took Nicole’s call instead of me. Maybe I should have called back. Instead, I sought advice from my lawyer.
Very bad news upon very bad news. My reaction and response to Jacob’s statement were quickened by its jarring simplicity and eased by my lack of calculation, consideration, or numbered list. “Oh, oh Jacob,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, she’d been sick for a while, and this was really expected.”
“Still…”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks.”
And that was that. A doubly somber interruption to what had been a satisfyingly boring day at work. I sat at my desk and pondered how to proceed, my two employees surely attuned to the situation. The three of us sat quietly. It felt okay to move on from the death of Jacob’s mother, whom I had met a few times over the years and barely knew. A far more crucial and perplexing duty remained. How was I, thoroughly inexperienced and palpably ignorant in this matter, going to tell my youngest daughter the heartrending news that her mother was dead?
My own mother died slowly, too slowly for her liking. Unless you count the first time she died.
When Mom was much younger, she would say, and I supposed she was joking, “When I get old, shoot me.” Regardless of how anyone felt, no one complied. She just lived and lived. By the time she was in her eighties Mom had already outlived her husband, her five siblings, and all of her ancient friends. She had had enough of life, was done and packed and waiting to depart. Every few years, whenever I visited her in Florida, Mom would bring out a metal box to go through. Here are the cemetery papers, she’d say, everything paid for and taken care of. There was a copy of her will. This ring goes to one granddaughter. These earrings to another. This is a list of people to call. I would humor Mom and listen each time to her instructions. Then I would promptly forget everything because, you know, it was just too soon.
When Mom had her big heart attack, she was somewhere in the traffic of Fort Lauderdale. In a way, what first saved her was that she never had a driver’s license. Despite multiple efforts over the years, Mom could not pass the driver’s test. She remained a lifelong dependent on others to transport her. So, when the pain and pressure in her chest began, she was riding in a car with a capable driver. They were minutes from a hospital, one with the right combination of time and staff to save her life. I learned of this hours later upon returning home from some Saturday outing. The answering machine blinked insistently, yearning to confess its increasingly urgent messages. By then, it was past midnight in Florida. There would be no one to call at that time, no further information. All I could do was wait and, if possible, sleep.
The next morning Mom’s doctor elaborated on the diagnosis and recommendations; my memory provides only a plain summary. Her heart attack was massive but caught and stopped in time. She was resting (sedated?). They were preparing to perform an angioplasty. He would call me later to report how it went. And with that, I waited again. There would be no Sunday outing.
The doctor called that afternoon. He had momentarily stepped out of surgery to phone me with an update. The angioplasty, the threading of a thin catheter through an artery and toward the heart, had been proceeding slowly and carefully. Vital signs were watched steadily. Monitors showed the catheter reaching the heart. A contrast dye was injected through the catheter. X-ray images were searched for blockage in the coronary arteries. Mom died.
The doctor explained, nervously, that my mother had a severe reaction to the iodinated contrast dye. The multiple vital signs, monitors, and X-rays all agreed, showing the opposite of what anyone wanted. Basically, Mom coded on the table.
If one is going to have a cardiac arrest, there may be no better place for it than in an operating room. All of the desired expertise, drugs, and medical equipment were at hand. The personnel were thoroughly trained and prepared for the event, both as individuals and as a team. Their reaction was immediate. The response was swift. Whoever those masked strangers around the table were, they brought my mother back to life. The odds of staying alive, while not great, were improved. Mom was dead. And then she wasn’t. The doctor’s closing statement to me was brief and unequivocal. “You should come now.”
While I felt the stress of the event, this was not a time for sorrow. The following hours were taken up by more immediate tasks: delegating the usual activities of my mundane life, packing for an indeterminate period, booking the next available flight, and getting from wherever I landed to some unknown hospital. With these accomplished, I reached the intensive care unit, where I was met by a registered nurse. She briefed me on what I pretty much knew: (1) my mother had coded in surgery, and (2) they brought her back.
Mom was sleeping in her space within a row of other ICU patients, their territories defined by limp, white curtains weeping from their ceiling tracks. She lay still now, eyes closed, life implied by the whirring and pumping of attendant machines and tubes. Time passed, not a lot, not a little, but sufficient for my mother to blink her eyes open. She looked around, slowly focusing through the light and the drugs, and reached a semblance of cognizance. I watched as she found me standing close by, as she worked her tongue and lips to speak.
“What am I doing here?” Mom asked.
A pause. “You died.”
Mom considered. “Well, I got that over with.”
And with that, Mom began her next life. The coming decade saw her move across the country, undergo open-heart surgery, make friends again, take up new hobbies, and watch her grandchildren grow. She would hold on for years, enduring shingles, beating skin cancer, even outlasting her sanctioned time in hospice. When the second time to die dawdled in, we were ready. I had the metal box.
A hospice nurse had explained to me that hearing is the last sense to go. Those final days, then, had me sitting by Mom’s deathbed, talking to her still, silent body. That which needed to be said was said. Only a few remnants of sadness were felt, the long lingering dissipation of sorrow having served to dilute the grief. What tears were due by then were long since shed, a mist in the passing breeze.
How can I give Sierra the worst possible news in the best possible way? She would not be home, I thought. Her courses were mostly remote, but Wednesdays required lectures on campus in Portland. Sierra could be in class, or in-between classes, or perhaps on her way by car or train. If I had to leave a message, what would I say? If she answered the phone, what would I say? Overthinking this would not help. It’s just one of those hard calls that many people are obliged to make, and many are destined to receive.
“Hello,” said Sierra. Her voice sounded weak and a little hoarse, as if just awaking.
“Hi. Um…were you asleep?”
“Kind of. I’m sick. I’m home.”
“Oh.” This I didn’t expect. But we were talking, albeit by phone. There was no going back. “What is it? A cold?”
“My throat’s really sore.” Her words come slowly. “And I’m coughing a lot. And have no energy.”
“Are you doing anything for it? Able to drink something?” I care, but really I’m stalling.
“Not really. I’m mostly sleeping.” She coughed. “And coughing.”
She does sound pretty sick. And I have to make her bad day worse.
“What’s up?” she asks.
Okay, here goes. “I have some bad news.”
“What? What is it?” I recognize the shift in tone. Sierra’s senses have gone on alert.
“It’s about your mom.” My weak attempt to soften the delivery.
“Tell me!” There is alarm in her voice.
And I told her. I don’t remember what words I chose, or how many I needed. I do know that there was absolutely no delay, no consideration, no questioning or doubt for my daughter to cry and cry. My response was to sit still and listen with all of my heart.
The right amount of time passed for this expression of our genuine selves. Sierra, through her tears, spoke next.
“I want to go to Sissy’s.”
I went to Sierra’s home and waited as she labored through body aches and sorrow, wrapping herself in layers against the chilly January day. We then drove to Astra’s house, where there were hugs and tears and talk. Others would arrive that day for more hugs, tears, and talk. I had felt, by then, my own time of grief and of mourning, but this was not my time. I took a seat to the side of the room and observed with silence. My daughters grieved in their own ways. My feeling was for them. My way was being there.
It was sometime between Monday evening and mid-morning Wednesday that my ex-wife died. My surprise was honest, subtle, and fleeting, such as it would be for the sudden passing of a minor acquaintance or a distant celebrity. The sadness for our children, the two girls we raised together, was more profound. They would be the ones to fully bear the sorrow. My own feelings for my ex-wife were mitigated by years of therapeutic indifference. Such apathy, admittedly solving nothing, at least afforded a hope of solace, a way out from the stressful, vigilant tolerance I had adopted during the aftermath of our marriage.
There is no need here to recount the details of what led into and beyond our divorce. I’ll say only that any models for assertiveness had failed. Our home had become a harsh and lonely place, a den filled with bitter thoughts and empty hearts. We could not continue together, and so we broke apart.
There had been good times, of course. The last we know of a person is not the whole of what we knew. What I can do, now that she’s gone, is to feel my way into the past, long before the harshness and loneliness and emptiness. I can take time to remember how she once was, how we both were, young and happy and filling our good lives. We had years of easy laughter, dashes of romance, episodes of unplanned passion. I can remember so easily when I needed you most and you were at your best.
The aching phone call from Florida came in the early evening. After five remarkable years of regression, Dad’s liver cancer was back for the win. I don’t remember you taking me to catch the red-eye, nor my later drive from Miami International Airport straight to the hospital. The memories I do have, forever branded by the heat of emotion, begin when I beheld what had become of Dad. The tentative steps into the hospital room, the harrowing sight of invasive tubes and alien equipment. The sudden, alarming constriction in my throat. The wan mix of light from ceiling lamp and shaded window. The disturbing balance of sound, at once too soft and too loud, where the human voice had succumbed to the hum and beep of machine surveillance. The utter, pointless anger upon finding that Dad’s hearing aids had been removed, not knowing if he could hear me, sadly realizing that he could not.
It was in the low seventies that next February day in south Florida, some forty degrees higher than back home. The warmth and stress and change in time found me fitfully sleeping in that morning. The first sound I heard, half-covered by a thin blanket in the condominium apartment, was my mother bursting into the bedroom and crying out, “Daddy is dead! Daddy is dead!” And I rose, all blurred senses and groggy knees, partially wrapped in the light coverlet, and went to Mom and held her as she cried and the day began.
There were phone calls to make. I called you first, then dialed others, spoke some words, and listened back to the shock, the sorrow, the anger from aging relatives, from the remaining friends of four, five, and six decades. Neighbors appeared, and strangers whose friendships were measured in mere years. They came to clean and to cook and to console, and all the needed things became done.
There was a funeral the next day. It had all been arranged, fully anticipated and planned. The location had been set, a rabbi was ready, the customs followed. I sat up front, in the row reserved for close family. For the most part, I don’t remember where others were seated. Except for the man next to me. I had known him my entire life, always regarding him with tender wonder and occasional surprise. This man, my Uncle Murray, was my father’s identical twin. I turned to him and was moved, not only by his semblance, but by the realization that I would never again be this close to my father. Thousands of days would come and go before Murray died at age one hundred and three, but that was the day I watched my uncle cry.
Later, at the cemetery, a small group encircled Dad’s burial site. Fitting words were spoken. Praises for the deceased, comfort for the bereaved. Gentle touches were shared, some murmurs, a shuffling of feet. Proper tone, volume, and demeanor were achieved. Through it all I stood there, as you would expect, a part yet apart. An observer still, of loss felt and sorrow expressed, of practiced compassion. I was drained by events of the past two days, muffled by the relentless intrusion of care and condolence. There was nothing left for me to say or show. I’d had my way of grief. My time for tears had passed.
Afterwards, you might have pictured me standing by his grave, having thoughts of you at your best. Thinking of that aching phone call in the early evening two days before, my voice becoming hushed, as covered by a thick shadow. When you stood nearby, then turned my way, somehow aware. As I surrendered to that certain, personal grief, then eased the phone into its cradle, and you walked with calm assurance toward me. When I remained seated, giving in at last, you came close and sat on my lap and faced me and held me and kissed away the salty droplets streaming down my cheeks.
Michael L. Sussman, raised in New York, now lives, writes, and fosters cats in Oregon. His work includes a bundle of songs, a handful of scripts, a boxful of jokes, and a collection of film reviews, essays, and poems. His short stories appear in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Piker Press, and other journals. Learn about his forthcoming debut novel, Under a Tie-Dye Sky, at www.mlsussman.com.
It was sometime between Monday evening and mid-morning Wednesday that my ex-wife died. I was at work that Wednesday in an office shared with two employees. The notification that popped up on my phone displayed my older daughter’s name, which was surprising given the time of day. I tapped to accept the call and held the phone close.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Michael. This is Jacob.” Also surprising, both because my son-in-law was using Astra’s phone and because he was the one calling. It’s not that we don’t speak to each other. It’s more like, lock two introverts in a room, come back in three hours, find them sitting on opposite sides of the room reading some dusty book or dated magazine. I let him continue.
The first death I can recall was of a stranger I’ll call Grandma. Until she had been moved into the vacant apartment next door, I had never seen, heard of, or wondered about this woman. She wasn’t there, and then she was. Shortly before my eighth birthday, Grandma was moved in and laid upon the simple twin bed that would be her penultimate resting place.
Who was she? Why was she there? How come we had to take care of her? As a seven-year-old I asked a lot of questions. That was pretty much how I learned anything outside of school. Unless it was related to their profession, the adults in my life didn’t volunteer any useful information: not my parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, or random outsiders. Nor did they share with me how they felt. She’s Daddy’s mother. This apartment was empty. Someone has to take care of her.
For a handful of days, maybe a week, when I wasn’t at school, I’d go next door with Mom and watch her turn Grandma from one side to the other. Why? So she doesn’t get bedsores. I didn’t know enough to ask about Grandpa or the woman I had thought of as Grandma. There must have been a funeral. I don’t remember.
“I’m using Astra’s phone just because your number’s in here,” said Jacob. “I have some bad news.” For a split moment all I could think was Please, nothing about my daughters or grandkids. “Cindy died.”
It’s easy now to think of the myriad ways I could have reacted to those words. It’s not a calculated effort, for the most part. Our limbic system is always on, ready to control the experience and expression of emotions. But evolution did not progress in a bookkeeping office facing a spreadsheet and crunching statewide transit taxes. How to respond?
The first death I can recall of someone I actually knew was of my cousin Karen. She was twenty-five. Too young to die, but pneumonia doesn’t care. What I somewhat remember, and mostly remember, was the funeral. I trailed my parents into the funeral home, my best cheap suit loose on my skinny teenage frame, and took in the crowd of murmuring relatives and strangers. With an absolute certainty in my ignorance of what to say or how to feel, I kept to myself and spoke a practiced minimum (see introverts, above). Eventually, my mother shepherded me toward an inconsolable woman sitting by a wall, enveloped in the protective force of five or six Other Mothers.
Aunt Lily was crying, wailing, as I approached. Someone else was whispering to her, and Aunt Lily grasped their hands and wailed in response. That person soon stepped away. I was next. The Other Mothers turned their collective gaze on me. I entered what felt like an arena of desolation. I muttered something. What I recollect is Aunt Lily taking my face in her hands, weeping, rubbing my cheeks, while the Other Mothers closed in with their own hands and tears and nodding heads. This cadre of support was no place for a sixteen-year-old boy. What I mainly felt was discomfort.
What I didn’t feel was the grief so well demonstrated by the mother, or the anger shown in bursts by the husband, or the tense frustration of the barely restrained father. I needed more years of experience, more time to observe loss and sorrow. Meanwhile, acceptable human reactions remained alien to me and social connections a stretch. My takeaway: I didn’t like funerals and should never go to one again.
The fraction of a moment before replying to Jacob allowed me these flash considerations:
- My daughters’ mother has died. Be sensitive and compassionate.
- I was speaking with Jacob. He is calm, analytical, and humanistic. A lot like me. Also, he is married to one of my daughters. Be caring and to the point.
- In the eight years since our divorce, I have moved past a host of leftover grudges, mistrust, and antipathy. But in shedding the bad feelings, the good ones got sloughed as well. Maybe just be honest.
- My ex just died. Don’t make a numbered list.
There was this time when some people thought me dead. It happened when I was young, adventurous, had a little money and a lot of time. With those qualifications, I bought a hang glider from a dealer also named Mike.
There weren’t many of us hang gliding back then. Some of us would gather at Cape Kiwanda on the Oregon coast, where we’d perch atop the high sand dune at the southern end of a long, curving beach. We’d talk about the wind and weather, what was dangerous and how to stay safe. About a year after I began hang gliding I ran into an acquaintance from the sand dune. He studied me for several moments, then said, “I thought you were dead.” Clearly, I wasn’t. He elaborated. “I read in the paper that a guy named Mike was killed in a hang gliding accident. I asked around. Some guys thought it was you.” Still not me. “So, you’re not the Mike that sold hang gliders. That’s the one who died.”
“Wow. I didn’t know that.” I took a moment. “He taught me.” I considered the news briefly. “That’s too bad.”
We paused, each to his own thoughts, and had nothing more to say about it.
Jacob went on. “Astra hadn’t heard back from Cindy for a couple of days, for a few texts she sent. So she went over there and found her slumped over in her recliner.”
I listened.
“We don’t know when it happened. Astra talked with her Monday night, and everything seemed fine. And she was dressed like she was going to work. So probably Tuesday morning.”
“How is Astra doing?” I asked. “Can I talk to her?”
“Obviously, she’s taking it pretty hard. She’s over there now. I’m here with the kids. I think there’s someone from the sheriff’s office over there, and the coroner.”
I listened.
“So, things are, you know, kinda crazy right now. I need to call more people in between watching the kids. They don’t really understand what’s going on. Maybe Hayden does a little, but not the others.”
“What can I do to help?” I asked. “Can I come over?”
“Actually, what would really help is if you would call Sierra. Astra can’t call right now, so it’s probably better coming from you.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I think she’s at school now, but yeah, I’ll take care of it.”
“One other thing,” said Jacob. “Just so you know, my mother died the day before.”
On a good day, bookkeeping stays boring but essential. Some of the days are not good. Small fires arise: tax notices, faulty hardware, late payroll, dead clients. One of those not-so-good days was foreshadowed by a visit a few days earlier. I’ll call my client Jack, and I’ll call his fiancée Nicole. It was Nicole who came to our office to tell us Jack was in the hospital. What started out as a routine procedure became MRSA, she said. Jack was in a coma.
Nicole presented an unexpectedly positive attitude, given the upsetting nature of this news. In some ways she reminded me of Jack, always cheerful, friendly, prepared, and optimistic. He was a welcome visitor, glad to see us, bills and receipts carefully sorted and clipped, happy to chat about his new business. My staff and I shared our genuine concern about Jack with Nicole, offered reasonable assurances, thanked her for the update, and wished her well.
A few days later we heard back. Jack was dead. My employee Sarah took the call from Nicole. They cried together over the phone. I suppose it was the best thing that could be done, perhaps the only thing.
I liked Jack more than I knew him. He was a client, after all, and our relationship was a business one. While acknowledging the tragedy of Jack’s shortened life, my thoughts were pulled into a compartment other than grief. There were practical, financial, legal, and ethical steps to take. My job, in the end, was to properly manage Jack’s account, his payroll records, tax reports, and certain other financial obligations. I was glad, relieved, that Sarah took Nicole’s call instead of me. Maybe I should have called back. Instead, I sought advice from my lawyer.
Very bad news upon very bad news. My reaction and response to Jacob’s statement were quickened by its jarring simplicity and eased by my lack of calculation, consideration, or numbered list. “Oh, oh Jacob,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, she’d been sick for a while, and this was really expected.”
“Still…”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks.”
And that was that. A doubly somber interruption to what had been a satisfyingly boring day at work. I sat at my desk and pondered how to proceed, my two employees surely attuned to the situation. The three of us sat quietly. It felt okay to move on from the death of Jacob’s mother, whom I had met a few times over the years and barely knew. A far more crucial and perplexing duty remained. How was I, thoroughly inexperienced and palpably ignorant in this matter, going to tell my youngest daughter the heartrending news that her mother was dead?
My own mother died slowly, too slowly for her liking. Unless you count the first time she died.
When Mom was much younger, she would say, and I supposed she was joking, “When I get old, shoot me.” Regardless of how anyone felt, no one complied. She just lived and lived. By the time she was in her eighties Mom had already outlived her husband, her five siblings, and all of her ancient friends. She had had enough of life, was done and packed and waiting to depart. Every few years, whenever I visited her in Florida, Mom would bring out a metal box to go through. Here are the cemetery papers, she’d say, everything paid for and taken care of. There was a copy of her will. This ring goes to one granddaughter. These earrings to another. This is a list of people to call. I would humor Mom and listen each time to her instructions. Then I would promptly forget everything because, you know, it was just too soon.
When Mom had her big heart attack, she was somewhere in the traffic of Fort Lauderdale. In a way, what first saved her was that she never had a driver’s license. Despite multiple efforts over the years, Mom could not pass the driver’s test. She remained a lifelong dependent on others to transport her. So, when the pain and pressure in her chest began, she was riding in a car with a capable driver. They were minutes from a hospital, one with the right combination of time and staff to save her life. I learned of this hours later upon returning home from some Saturday outing. The answering machine blinked insistently, yearning to confess its increasingly urgent messages. By then, it was past midnight in Florida. There would be no one to call at that time, no further information. All I could do was wait and, if possible, sleep.
The next morning Mom’s doctor elaborated on the diagnosis and recommendations; my memory provides only a plain summary. Her heart attack was massive but caught and stopped in time. She was resting (sedated?). They were preparing to perform an angioplasty. He would call me later to report how it went. And with that, I waited again. There would be no Sunday outing.
The doctor called that afternoon. He had momentarily stepped out of surgery to phone me with an update. The angioplasty, the threading of a thin catheter through an artery and toward the heart, had been proceeding slowly and carefully. Vital signs were watched steadily. Monitors showed the catheter reaching the heart. A contrast dye was injected through the catheter. X-ray images were searched for blockage in the coronary arteries. Mom died.
The doctor explained, nervously, that my mother had a severe reaction to the iodinated contrast dye. The multiple vital signs, monitors, and X-rays all agreed, showing the opposite of what anyone wanted. Basically, Mom coded on the table.
If one is going to have a cardiac arrest, there may be no better place for it than in an operating room. All of the desired expertise, drugs, and medical equipment were at hand. The personnel were thoroughly trained and prepared for the event, both as individuals and as a team. Their reaction was immediate. The response was swift. Whoever those masked strangers around the table were, they brought my mother back to life. The odds of staying alive, while not great, were improved. Mom was dead. And then she wasn’t. The doctor’s closing statement to me was brief and unequivocal. “You should come now.”
While I felt the stress of the event, this was not a time for sorrow. The following hours were taken up by more immediate tasks: delegating the usual activities of my mundane life, packing for an indeterminate period, booking the next available flight, and getting from wherever I landed to some unknown hospital. With these accomplished, I reached the intensive care unit, where I was met by a registered nurse. She briefed me on what I pretty much knew: (1) my mother had coded in surgery, and (2) they brought her back.
Mom was sleeping in her space within a row of other ICU patients, their territories defined by limp, white curtains weeping from their ceiling tracks. She lay still now, eyes closed, life implied by the whirring and pumping of attendant machines and tubes. Time passed, not a lot, not a little, but sufficient for my mother to blink her eyes open. She looked around, slowly focusing through the light and the drugs, and reached a semblance of cognizance. I watched as she found me standing close by, as she worked her tongue and lips to speak.
“What am I doing here?” Mom asked.
A pause. “You died.”
Mom considered. “Well, I got that over with.”
And with that, Mom began her next life. The coming decade saw her move across the country, undergo open-heart surgery, make friends again, take up new hobbies, and watch her grandchildren grow. She would hold on for years, enduring shingles, beating skin cancer, even outlasting her sanctioned time in hospice. When the second time to die dawdled in, we were ready. I had the metal box.
A hospice nurse had explained to me that hearing is the last sense to go. Those final days, then, had me sitting by Mom’s deathbed, talking to her still, silent body. That which needed to be said was said. Only a few remnants of sadness were felt, the long lingering dissipation of sorrow having served to dilute the grief. What tears were due by then were long since shed, a mist in the passing breeze.
How can I give Sierra the worst possible news in the best possible way? She would not be home, I thought. Her courses were mostly remote, but Wednesdays required lectures on campus in Portland. Sierra could be in class, or in-between classes, or perhaps on her way by car or train. If I had to leave a message, what would I say? If she answered the phone, what would I say? Overthinking this would not help. It’s just one of those hard calls that many people are obliged to make, and many are destined to receive.
“Hello,” said Sierra. Her voice sounded weak and a little hoarse, as if just awaking.
“Hi. Um…were you asleep?”
“Kind of. I’m sick. I’m home.”
“Oh.” This I didn’t expect. But we were talking, albeit by phone. There was no going back. “What is it? A cold?”
“My throat’s really sore.” Her words come slowly. “And I’m coughing a lot. And have no energy.”
“Are you doing anything for it? Able to drink something?” I care, but really I’m stalling.
“Not really. I’m mostly sleeping.” She coughed. “And coughing.”
She does sound pretty sick. And I have to make her bad day worse.
“What’s up?” she asks.
Okay, here goes. “I have some bad news.”
“What? What is it?” I recognize the shift in tone. Sierra’s senses have gone on alert.
“It’s about your mom.” My weak attempt to soften the delivery.
“Tell me!” There is alarm in her voice.
And I told her. I don’t remember what words I chose, or how many I needed. I do know that there was absolutely no delay, no consideration, no questioning or doubt for my daughter to cry and cry. My response was to sit still and listen with all of my heart.
The right amount of time passed for this expression of our genuine selves. Sierra, through her tears, spoke next.
“I want to go to Sissy’s.”
I went to Sierra’s home and waited as she labored through body aches and sorrow, wrapping herself in layers against the chilly January day. We then drove to Astra’s house, where there were hugs and tears and talk. Others would arrive that day for more hugs, tears, and talk. I had felt, by then, my own time of grief and of mourning, but this was not my time. I took a seat to the side of the room and observed with silence. My daughters grieved in their own ways. My feeling was for them. My way was being there.
It was sometime between Monday evening and mid-morning Wednesday that my ex-wife died. My surprise was honest, subtle, and fleeting, such as it would be for the sudden passing of a minor acquaintance or a distant celebrity. The sadness for our children, the two girls we raised together, was more profound. They would be the ones to fully bear the sorrow. My own feelings for my ex-wife were mitigated by years of therapeutic indifference. Such apathy, admittedly solving nothing, at least afforded a hope of solace, a way out from the stressful, vigilant tolerance I had adopted during the aftermath of our marriage.
There is no need here to recount the details of what led into and beyond our divorce. I’ll say only that any models for assertiveness had failed. Our home had become a harsh and lonely place, a den filled with bitter thoughts and empty hearts. We could not continue together, and so we broke apart.
There had been good times, of course. The last we know of a person is not the whole of what we knew. What I can do, now that she’s gone, is to feel my way into the past, long before the harshness and loneliness and emptiness. I can take time to remember how she once was, how we both were, young and happy and filling our good lives. We had years of easy laughter, dashes of romance, episodes of unplanned passion. I can remember so easily when I needed you most and you were at your best.
The aching phone call from Florida came in the early evening. After five remarkable years of regression, Dad’s liver cancer was back for the win. I don’t remember you taking me to catch the red-eye, nor my later drive from Miami International Airport straight to the hospital. The memories I do have, forever branded by the heat of emotion, begin when I beheld what had become of Dad. The tentative steps into the hospital room, the harrowing sight of invasive tubes and alien equipment. The sudden, alarming constriction in my throat. The wan mix of light from ceiling lamp and shaded window. The disturbing balance of sound, at once too soft and too loud, where the human voice had succumbed to the hum and beep of machine surveillance. The utter, pointless anger upon finding that Dad’s hearing aids had been removed, not knowing if he could hear me, sadly realizing that he could not.
It was in the low seventies that next February day in south Florida, some forty degrees higher than back home. The warmth and stress and change in time found me fitfully sleeping in that morning. The first sound I heard, half-covered by a thin blanket in the condominium apartment, was my mother bursting into the bedroom and crying out, “Daddy is dead! Daddy is dead!” And I rose, all blurred senses and groggy knees, partially wrapped in the light coverlet, and went to Mom and held her as she cried and the day began.
There were phone calls to make. I called you first, then dialed others, spoke some words, and listened back to the shock, the sorrow, the anger from aging relatives, from the remaining friends of four, five, and six decades. Neighbors appeared, and strangers whose friendships were measured in mere years. They came to clean and to cook and to console, and all the needed things became done.
There was a funeral the next day. It had all been arranged, fully anticipated and planned. The location had been set, a rabbi was ready, the customs followed. I sat up front, in the row reserved for close family. For the most part, I don’t remember where others were seated. Except for the man next to me. I had known him my entire life, always regarding him with tender wonder and occasional surprise. This man, my Uncle Murray, was my father’s identical twin. I turned to him and was moved, not only by his semblance, but by the realization that I would never again be this close to my father. Thousands of days would come and go before Murray died at age one hundred and three, but that was the day I watched my uncle cry.
Later, at the cemetery, a small group encircled Dad’s burial site. Fitting words were spoken. Praises for the deceased, comfort for the bereaved. Gentle touches were shared, some murmurs, a shuffling of feet. Proper tone, volume, and demeanor were achieved. Through it all I stood there, as you would expect, a part yet apart. An observer still, of loss felt and sorrow expressed, of practiced compassion. I was drained by events of the past two days, muffled by the relentless intrusion of care and condolence. There was nothing left for me to say or show. I’d had my way of grief. My time for tears had passed.
Afterwards, you might have pictured me standing by his grave, having thoughts of you at your best. Thinking of that aching phone call in the early evening two days before, my voice becoming hushed, as covered by a thick shadow. When you stood nearby, then turned my way, somehow aware. As I surrendered to that certain, personal grief, then eased the phone into its cradle, and you walked with calm assurance toward me. When I remained seated, giving in at last, you came close and sat on my lap and faced me and held me and kissed away the salty droplets streaming down my cheeks.
Michael L. Sussman, raised in New York, now lives, writes, and fosters cats in Oregon. His work includes a bundle of songs, a handful of scripts, a boxful of jokes, and a collection of film reviews, essays, and poems. His short stories appear in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Piker Press, and other journals. Learn about his forthcoming debut novel, Under a Tie-Dye Sky, at www.mlsussman.com.
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