Henry's Battalion, Chapter Three
Life goes on
I am ever so consistent in my inconsistency. At least, that’s how it is with writing. My track record is better with other things, like daily hugs and kisses for my littles. If you haven’t read them or need a refresher since it’s been a while, here is the prologue, chapter one, and chapter two 💚
Also, I should mention that this chapter is special. The experience Emma has of discovering the list written by her mother is a true story from my own experience when I lost my mother. And, like the journal entries in some of the other chapters, the list is the same list my own sweet mother wrote.
Chapter Three
Ruby, Peter, Amelia, baby Thomas and I ride in the limo from the mortuary to the cemetery. Thomas, who I only met a couple of days ago, is so little, and so blissfully unaware of the turmoil. While all of our worlds collapse in on themselves, his miraculously stands unscathed. For now. I envy him, wishing I could be the one snugly strapped into a car seat, sleeping away this horrible day.
As we drive through the neighborhood to the final resting place of our mother, Peter remarks on how strange it is to see everyone else going about their business like it’s a normal day. We watch them as they mow their lawns, play in sprinklers, load up their cars with picnics, run errands, walk their dogs. I don’t think it’s strange. I think it’s rude, and I’m angry. It’s a muffled, muted kind of anger. My hands don’t tremble and my brain doesn't fog like it did last night. This is more of a smoldering, sizzling bitterness that just makes me feel tired and sweaty. Something at the back of my conscience tries to remind me of the peaceful, sweet feeling I had when I awoke this morning, but something else quickly and stubbornly smothers it. When I was younger and my family faced divorce, I resiliently (and naively) pledged myself to positivity and cheerfulness. It worked, for the most part. Everyone knew me as a happy person and commended me for my strength in adversity. It isn’t working this time. Something in me is broken, and I’m not feeling very positive or strong anymore.
Despite my resentment, the funeral ends, and the world goes on. Days become like normal days again. Eventually. For a long time after, there is so much to sort out--the bank, the credit card companies, subscriptions, the mortgage, the phone company--over and over again having to explain to strangers that we unexpectedly lost our mother, so they should no longer expect any payments, please and thank you. I only make a few calls. Peter, being the oldest, and having a house and a family and a full time job, knows things about the world that Ruby and I don’t. He knows all of the things that need to be done to pry our family from the jaws of Mom’s creditors and commitments. And he does it. I don’t know how he manages. I guess in times like these, you just buckle up and get things done even when you are certain you have reached the very edge of your endurance. I cling to that edge with my fingertips, and I think Peter knows it. He steps up and takes care of it. He doesn’t ask much of us, and I am thankful.
One of the few things he does ask of me is to call the phone company. It doesn’t seem too complicated, so I accept, anxious to be helpful. They answer and I explain.
“Hi...uh...so I’m just calling because I need to cancel my mom’s cell phone service. She passed away last week, so...we don’t need it anymore…”
“Sorry for your loss, let me transfer you.”
“May I help you?”
“Yeah, hi. I just need to cancel my mom’s cell service. She...she passed away unexpectedly last week, so…”
“Oh, so sorry for your loss. I’m going to need to transfer you.”
The tears that stream down my face are boiling with my frustration, sorrow, and fury long before I can explain, for the third time, why I called. It’s like I finally divulged a horrible secret I was trying to hold as tightly to my person as I could, but now it’s out, and like the windborne seeds of a dandelion, it will spread in every direction and everyone will know. She is gone.
We spend the entire summer cleaning out the house. Peter takes a practical approach. If none of us can use it, and its sentimental value isn’t great, it goes. We haul away loads and loads of stuff. Just stuff. Ruby and I, being more transient, don’t really know what to say. Do I want a toaster? Could Ruby use a vacuum cleaner? Then there are the clothes. Some are easy, but some...that blouse she always wore, or that jacket she loved, or that dress that she looked so bright and happy in, even that t-shirt we all hated...for some reason, throwing them out feels a bit like losing her all over again. They go in a box that we’ll deal with later.
Some days are fine, even fun--there is something liberating about getting rid of junk. Some days are desperately difficult. Some days are just...days. Numb, ugly days.
One day, somewhere between desperately difficult and numb, we chance upon something invaluable. We are sorting through more stuff...did it belong to a grandmother, or come from a supermarket? Is it valuable, or hardly worth bothering with? Is it mine? Ruby’s? Peter’s? Gosh it’s tedious. We come to a large, ceramic pitcher residing in a large, ceramic bowl. No one has any idea where it came from. It has been carefully packed in bubble wrap, so it must have some worth. Yet it had been stuffed in the deepest corner of the closet. Antique? After a few moments of deliberation, we decide it’s fit for Goodwill. Into the pile it goes. I hesitate a few moments later and decide it’s worth taking a closer look. Once the bubble wrap is off, I see, tucked inside, a scrap of paper. My hand barely fits inside and gets stuck briefly as I pull it out again. The paper is folded into quarters, and has other notes and a child’s scribbles all over it. When I unfold it, I read the title, written neatly across the top and underlined. 10 Most Important Things That I Want My Children to Know and Learn, with her name written in small letters next to it. Seeing her handwriting is like hearing her voice, and like a house of cards so carefully and delicately stacked, I fall apart again. We take turns reading the list, Peter and Ruby go first while I attempt to wrestle my emotions back into their cage. My turn comes, and I read.
10 Most Important Things That I Want My Children To Know and Learn
Heavenly Father loves you and knows the intimate details of your life.
Becoming a disciple of Christ enhances the quality of your life in every way, diminishes nothing.
Truly, if you have done it unto the least of your brethren, you have done it unto Him.
The Gospel laws are present and in effect whether you choose to acknowledge them or not.
Life is not fair. Sometimes people are not fair, but those two facts do not change who you are and what you know about eternal truths.
People are so much more important than jobs, meetings, projects, deadlines, etc…
Right behind the essential qualities of kindness and selflessness and a loving heart are honesty, integrity, purity, and humility.
This one should have been after #1. That is: talk to and listen to that Father who loves you so much and so well.
We are ingrained from birth with an aversion to and avoidance of death. But it is only the loneliness and the longing of being left behind that is difficult. Death is actually an advancement, a joyous promotion, which if we could, we should celebrate. Live each day with those you love as if it were your last together. Let there be no regrets, no unfinished business. And yet remember that the great principle of forgiveness exists. There will be time beyond the grave to finish all business, but peace and happiness can be yours whenever you want it enough.
As your earthly parent, I want you to know how very much I love you. I loved you before you were even born, and wanted you and anticipated your arrival with great joy and longing. I am grateful that you chose to accept me as your mother, and I am happy for every moment that we have been together, and for the eternity that we have to continue in our love.
My heart struggles between relief, gratitude, and that lingering awful bitterness. A joyful advancement, huh? Just the loneliness of being left behind, is it? And number ten…loved me before I was born...of course, I know that well. Despite her little imperfections that seemed so huge to teenage me, I never questioned her love. She always listened to me with her absolute attention. If she was reading a book, she closed it the moment I started talking to her. She laughed at all of my jokes, she was aware of every material need I had, and she somehow found ways to support me in all of my endeavors. And never a complaint or a sigh or a “you better be grateful.” She didn’t say a word about it when she was in the hospital for two weeks the year after the divorce, following a complication with a surgery, and I came to see her a grand total of one time. She never scolded me for hiding out in my room when the six and a half foot, twenty-five-year-old son of a neighbor, who had suffered a serious brain injury during birth, was at our house so his father could go to work. She never chided me for my lack of patience with him, or my refusal to help when he wet his pants or dumped a gallon of milk on the kitchen floor. She never expressed disappointment in me when yet another neighbor with mental disabilities, a thirty-year-old woman who behaved like she was four, sent me running once again to the comfort of my bedroom. I could always hear her, clear across the house.
“Lisa! LISA! Tell Emma to make you spaghetti for dinner tonight!”
“Lisa! LISA! Call Peter and tell him to come back home and mow the lawn!”
“Lisa! LISA! Tell Ruby her room is too messy! She needs to clean it right now!”
No, she became that woman’s best friend. She went to get ice cream with her. She went to the play she was in with other special needs adults. She carefully wrote down notes, as dictated by her friend, and delivered them to each of us.
“Dear Emma, I love you. You are my friend.”
Even when I yelled at her that she had to do something, preferably something permanent, about that dang dog! she didn’t raise an eyebrow or argue back. I reached the end of my rope with Jake after he found a doll I bought from a little old woman in a village in the Andes--handmade, down to spinning and dying the wool herself--and had torn it to shreds. After offering to drive him to the pound myself, she simply said, “If we don’t love him, who will?”
And now this list. I want to be upset. I want to hurt, to be angry, to suffer and sorrow and ache. I don’t want to celebrate or “get over it.” I don’t want to accept things as they are now. I want them back the way they were before. Way before! I want to be a happy, ignorant child again, only worrying about when I’ll have my next popsicle or how long I can get away with playing outside before having to come in and do chores. In the end, despite myself, her words tame my raging heart. They help me, slowly, to move on.
The house finally sells, as does her car. We finally get the autopsy report back. I pick it up from the coroner’s office and sit in the car in the parking lot to read it. Cardiac arrest, for reasons unclear but possibly related to medications. And that is that.
Peter and Amelia have another baby. A girl, this time. Lila. Even Ruby, who swears herself to a life of adventure as she gallivants across the globe after graduation, meets Owen and decides that marriage is a good adventure, too.
I start working at a local greenhouse. I spend my days unloading boxes and boxes of hyacinths, tulips, cacti, ornamental grasses, and so on. I do the watering and the potting as well. In the winter months especially, being around so many living things breathes life back into me. All day long I take slow, deep breaths, smelling the rich soil and the sweet fragrances of the plants and flowers around me. Mom used to bring me to the nursery. We would be there for what felt like hours while she carefully chose which little lives to bring home with us. Being there is therapy like nothing else so far has been able to offer. I feel the pieces of my life and my soul begin, slowly, to fuse back together.
A few months later I meet Jack. We go to church together, and he’s nice enough, but I don’t want anything to do with him. Not that there's anything wrong with him, I just don’t want anything to do with anyone. He gently persists, however, and we start spending time together. First with other friends, then alone. For our first real date, he takes me to a nearby nature conservancy where we walk and talk, enjoying the birds, the wildflowers, and popsicles.
I speak my mind and say how I feel because I don’t care what he thinks of me, at least not at first. I’m more honest and real with him than I’ve ever been with anyone else. It begins as an effort to repel him, but becomes an unexpected source of connection and comfort. He is honest with me, too, and out of apathy springs understanding. Since losing Mom, I’ve been more or less numb to everything. But he makes me laugh, and he reignites my imagination. I used to write stories when I was a kid, but long since abandoned that particular craft. So did Jack. We start writing a story together and we go on lots of adventures that, in the magical universe we begin to weave, are grand and exciting. He makes the cold, empty world fill with color and warmth again.
Still, I don’t make it easy on him. My mind is not in a place for romance, and I fight that aspect of our relationship. Even when I find out that we have the same favorite restaurant that we both always go to on our birthday, or when he gives me a music box he handmade at the shop where he works, with a butterfly burned beautifully on the lid, I can’t admit that what I am feeling is love. I have never been so at ease, so free to be myself, around anyone. Ever. I try going on dates with other people, even some of my oldest friends, but none of them make me feel as at home as Jack does. With Jack, I feel vulnerable and exposed, and yet safe.
Thanks to his patience, I finally learn how to love without hesitation and we, too, get married. We choose the Fourth of July, my favorite holiday, as our date. The ceremony is small, with just our immediate family and a few of our closest friends. That evening, we have a party at Dad’s house for a slightly larger crowd. There are sunflowers and strings of white lights everywhere. We serve watermelon, corn on the cob, peach pie, and lemonade. There are lawn games, picnic blankets, water balloons, big band music, and, of course, fireworks. It is a perfectly joyful beginning to a new chapter.
Even Jake gets to start again. My dad graciously takes him in and, after he adjusts to his tiny black kitten, of which he is terrified, he becomes the best he’s ever been. He gets the love he deserves, the kind of love my mom gave him, with the active lifestyle he needs. His neuroses continue, but he is in a safe, happy place with someone who loves him despite it all, just like Mom did. I can tell that it is good for Dad, too. I forget, sometimes, that despite the divorce, he didn’t stop loving Mom. His heart is also broken.
A year passes, two, then three. The last time I really cried was Christmas Eve that first December. I was heading home after spending a lovely evening with Jack and his family, and decided to stop by the cemetery to wish Mom a Merry Christmas. I was feeling warm all over, excited and happy to be with my soulmate for the holidays. My boots crunched through the snow. It was so cold that the first inch or so was solid ice, and my foot hesitated for a moment with every step before breaking through to the powdery stuff beneath. My cheeks stung and my lungs ached with the cold air--it was what we like to call “stupid cold.”
Then I reached her spot. I stood there, for a moment, staring at the marker with her name on it. The warmth whooshed out of me and I was as cold inside as I was outside. I was suddenly overtaken not by a wave, but a tsunami of emotion. I collapsed in the snow and, between sobs, told the headstone that this wasn’t fair! She should be here! It’s Christmas, and she should be here, and she wasn’t, and I wasn’t okay with that. I wanted her back. My grief felt uncontainable, like a reservoir whose dam had just broken. That raging sorrow, that horrible, savage, wretched pain filled me all over again.
After a few minutes, my body stopped shaking, and the crisp winter air cleared my head. I drew in a long, deep breath and let it out slowly, watching it form a cloud in front of my face. I stared at the clear sky, filled with dazzling stars. Then, still sniffling and with the cold biting at my face where the tears persisted, I managed to sing one verse of Silent Night for her. My voice quivered and shook. It wasn’t pretty. The moon was bright overhead, and annoyingly cheerful, like it, too, was there to wish her a Merry Christmas. Resigning myself to reality, I stood, brushed the snow off my knees, blew a kiss to her memory, and stalked back to my car.
The only time after that that I cry is the first anniversary of her death, the same day a nephew on Jack’s side is born. The sadness of missing my mom, coupled with the joy of a new life beginning confuses me and, of course, leads me to tears and silence. I don’t look a single soul in the eye all day. In fact, I don’t look anyone in the eye again until the day after when I hold that new baby. He looks me right in the eye as I feed him his bottle, and things are okay again. After that, the pain starts to ease. Her absence is always felt, but life just...moves on. I don’t give it permission to do so, it just does, and eventually thinking of her is a comfort, not a stab of pain. Eventually, I start to grow again.
You so perfectly captured that excruciating period of having to reorganise to become who you are after the loss of someone. How beautiful, how loving, that your mother wrote this list. These kind of gifts show that time travel is, and always has been, possible. Thank you for this, dear Hannah. Such a beautiful read 💜
Just, just beautiful. I had been waiting for an uninterrupted time to read this. My face is wet. Going through a bit of a hard time. Balm it is. Thank you, Hannah.