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Authors: Rita Volpe

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BOOK: Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child
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It remains a comfort all these years later to Rita and her husband that, while fate did not allow them to be present at Michael’s death, his uncle was there to ease Michael’s passage from this earth.
Rita: “I wish I was there, Michael, the moment you died, to hold you. I would have stroked you and rocked you and held you so tight.”
Many of our own brothers and sisters were and continue to be a great source of comfort.
Phyllis: “My brother Joel is extremely supportive. He tells us to this day that we are handling this with grace and dignity. I like that.”
Barbara E.: “My sisters came and spent time with Brian in the hospital. Now they come and spend his birthday, holidays, special days with us.”
Lorenza: “My brother Ralph has been a constant source of support. He never forgets an anniversary or Marc’s birthday. Each Mother’s Day he continues Marc’s tradition of sending me three roses.”
Barbara G.: “My brother was the first one I called when we had to fly to Virginia after Howie was hurt. He stood by us then, and continues to stand by us twelve years later. Each winter now I am in Florida on Howie’s birthday; I send my brother a package with a shell, a rock, or something I’ve chosen for Howie and he goes to the cemetery for me. As our parents have aged, we have made a pact to spare them the agony of listening when I am feeling down. Instead, I call my brother; he is my listener.”
So many other relatives—brothers, sisters, in-laws and even close friends—stepped forward and were there for us when we needed them so desperately. We cannot mention everyone’s name here, but they are the people that held us together and held us up.
These are the people who went with us to the morgue; they brought back personal belongings from the accident scene; they selected caskets; they phoned people, made food, drove us where we had to go. They know who they are. We know who they are. We are forever in their debt. We will never forget all they did for us.
Well meaning as relatives may be, it can be painful when extended family gather. Family dinners mean togetherness. It is not who is there that hurts us so much as who is missing from the table that is heartbreaking.
Of course, there is always another side and so we have learned to grin and bear it when family obligations force us to meet with relatives who cannot seem to recall that we ever had the child whom we lost. If
we can do so without disturbing the whole family dynamic, we try to distance ourselves from those unthinking relatives and friends who cannot fathom that we could continue to grieve even though the time they view as appropriate for our mourning has long passed.
Barbara G.: “Both of our sons had few people from our family at their weddings … . Any family that did not cry with me, I did not want at the wedding to celebrate with me. The list was cut considerably.”
Maddy: “I made decisions about whom I wanted in my life and whom I no longer wanted in my life. Now the friends I have are real friends.”
If we could, we would return to our former lives in a minute. We cannot do that. Life is not what it once was. But it is also more than we thought it would ever be again.
We never really understood our middle son Howie. His life—and his death—remain an enigma to us. With us he was quiet; with his friends he was outgoing. He was serious and yet he had a wry sense of humor. He was deeply concerned about his fellow man. He would give you the shirt off his back or the keys to his car. He saw good in everybody. He was a beautiful young man with blue eyes and blond hair in a family of dark-haired people. When he died, so much promise died with him.
Howie was in the gifted program in his public school, but he was the least pretentious kid around. When he was nine, he came home from a college-level computer class one Saturday somewhat baffled and announced, “I think I’m overqualified.”
In high school, Howie was seldom challenged by class work, but he was excited about taking on such things as a fight against censorship. Things were right or wrong, never gray. If he saw injustice, he railed against it.
By 1991 Howie was well on his way. He was twenty-one years old, a senior at Johns Hopkins University, a prelaw student doing an internship in the Department of Justice. He was president of his fraternity and the type of guy that people just seemed to gravitate around. Howie was so busy with his life that we used to say he had to come home to recharge his batteries.
And now we are left to ask ourselves how it all came to such a horrific end one night in October of 1991.
Bruce and I had gone to Lincoln Center for an afternoon performance of
Most Happy Fellow
. Even today, I am struck by the irony of that title. We came home early, spent the evening at home with our youngest son, Eric, and went to bed early.
At about three in the morning, we were awakened by a loud banging at our front door. Bruce went down to investigate and there stood “the other Goldstein.” We had always referred to our neighbors at the opposite end of our block as “the other Goldsteins.” Our address was not listed in the phone directory, so they often received our calls. That night
they received a hideous call. There had been an accident; our son was in a hospital in Virginia. We were to call our neighbor’s wife for details.
I immediately screamed “Howard” and I could not stop screaming. I was hyperventilating and retching all at the same time.
Eric, tried to deal with me. Here I was, his own mother, unrecognizable, acting as he had never seen me act in all of his sixteen years. I could hear Bruce talking to someone at the hospital in Virginia.
“Do all you can to keep him alive,” I heard him say.
The few hours until daylight seemed interminable. In the morning, we asked our eldest son, Philip, who was living in Boston, to come home and stay with Eric. I turned down his offer to fly to Richmond with us and in so doing denied them both a chance to say good-bye to their brother. I feared having both of my other sons on a plane at the same time.
In Washington, we rented a car and drove to Richmond, all the while staying in touch with the hospital where Howard was undergoing brain surgery. We arrived at the hospital just as the surgery was completed.
From the outset, we were told that Howie’s chances were very slim. But, I insisted he was young and strong and would recover. He might be paralyzed or vegetative. I knew I could not have him back as he had been, but I wanted to have him in any shape or form.
We went into the Intensive Care Unit. When Bruce spoke to him, Howie knew we were there. Until that moment, I had prayed his identity had been a mistake, but that was not to be.
We were told to touch and speak to our son as much as possible. I touched Howie and spoke to him and a tear rolled down his cheek. There was so much equipment attached to his body that I was afraid I might dislodge something if I touched him. I held his hand and kissed it; I told him to put up the fight of his life and come back to us.
We stayed the night in the hospital, sleeping fitfully on chairs and making regular forays into the ICU. The empty hospital cafeteria echoed with my shrill screams of “I will not lose Howie.”
Bruce was able to grasp the situation far better than I. After seeing Howie in the ICU, he said, “Golden Boy is going to be with Grandpa.” Bruce’s late father had nicknamed Howie “Golden Boy” when he was a
baby. I slid down the wall to the floor outside the ICU crying, “No, No, No!”
At one point in the night, there was a ray of hope. Howie’s pupils reacted to light and he pushed away the doctor’s hand when he was pinched. By morning, he was worse. A minister was assigned to stay with us. We were placed in a room by ourselves, and I curled up on the floor under a blanket in a fetal position.
Finally, the doctors came to tell us they were keeping our son alive artificially, that his brain had swollen and he was brain dead. We were asked if we wanted to donate his organs. I hastily said we did not, and it is a decision I have regretted to this day. I also refused permission for the hospital to perform an autopsy. At the time, of course, I was in severe shock and the mere thought of anyone touching my child made me recoil in horror. It is impossible to think rationally at such a time.
We were offered the chance to go into the room for a final good-bye. I barely comprehended what was being suggested, and Bruce and I agreed not to do so. Bruce later told me that his uncle had died in his presence and he had been haunted by the scene ever since. He wanted to spare me that memory.
Later, I realized it had been a terrible lapse in judgment. I wanted so to retrieve those last minutes with my child. I later wrote to the hospital chaplain urging him to encourage all parents facing such a tragedy to spend those last few precious moments with their child. I was there when he entered this world, I should have been there holding him when he left this world. I would later spend a great deal of time in the cemetery asking Howie to forgive my mistake.
When we arrived back in New York, I fell into my mother’s arms, crying, “No more Howie, Mama, no more Howie.” I so needed and wanted to go home and once again be a child in the arms of my parents.
We will never know exactly what happened to Howie. All we have ever learned from the police and from a private investigator, whom we hired, is that Howie was at a party in a club with his fraternity brothers. Everybody there saw him and then he went into the bathroom and was not seen again until someone found him in an alleyway alongside the
club. He had no broken bones, no bruises … just the massive head wound that killed him.
The police theorized that Howie fell from a second-floor balcony. They dismissed the matter as just a college kid who may have had too much to drink. But the second floor doors were locked, and Howie was found under a fire escape. Was he dragged there? Was he mugged? Was he hit by a car?
If there’s been an illness or an accident at least there is a reason. We have no reason. His case is no longer under active police investigation. You hear of cases that are solved many years later and the thought haunts you. We try not to dwell on what it was that took our beautiful son from us.
Eric, who was so devoted to his older brother, later told us he was glad the investigation had not pointed to any person as the cause of Howie’s death. He said he would have felt an obligation to track that person down and kill him. Then we would have lost two sons.
Barbara J. Goldstein
Redefining Our Existence
T
here is the before and there is the after. As mothers of children who died, we are now in the after. We will never be as we were before. On the day our child died, our former selves died along with them. Even if we have other surviving children, we are changed individuals.
Still, not all the changes that have occurred in our “after” lives are permanent ones. With time, we find we return to our former selves in some ways … usually the more shallow ones. Beneath the skin, we are never again the same people we used to be. Some of the changes are obvious and almost shocking, some are subtle and occur less abruptly.
Carol: “For almost twenty-five years, I was the proud mother of three daughters. It is very hard to think of myself now as the mother of two surviving daughters. Lisa’s death left me feeling somehow incompetent, diminished.”
Phyllis: “I think back to before Andrea died. I was smug. I had the perfect family; three children … two daughters and a son in the middle. I had it all.”
Barbara G.: “After giving birth to three children, my expectation was to spend my later years surrounded by children and grandchildren. In preparation, I purchased dinnerware service for sixteen and made certain to have a dining table with room for all. Now my dishes go unused. My table is empty. There were times after Howie’s death when I would open the kitchen closet and fight the desire to hurl the dishes across the room and smash them the way my hopes and expectations were smashed.”
Once we were so innocent. We never envisioned ourselves as bereaved parents.
Audrey: “Tragedies only happen to nameless people in the newspapers. I could never have imagined one hitting home.”
Ariella: “My only child is gone. He was my life, my purpose. Am I still a mother? Are Bob and I still a family, or are we now just a couple?”
That awful question, those terrible words, “How many children do you have?” are among the worst a bereaved parent can hear. Am I still a mother? If I had three children and now I have but two, am I the mother of two or three? We know that our identities are forever altered, but what do we say to those who ask that question … and they always ask.
Lorenza: “I generally include Marc and say two. Once when I was at the dentist, the hygienist asked that question, and I didn’t want to go into it. So, I said I had one child and then I felt so guilty. Still, sometimes if it’s a very new acquaintance, you just don’t want to go there.”
Barbara G.: “I always include Howie and say three sons. If they pursue the topic and ask where they are I say two live with their families in Connecticut and one is on Long Island (where Howie is buried). Then I try to drop the topic. I have found on many occasions when I have to say that one son died, I end up consoling the questioner. They feel badly for having broached the subject. I try to avoid having that happen.”
Phyllis: “I include Andrea. I say three. But my husband usually says two. The anticipation of that question is always there. It used to put me in a panic.”
Audrey: “Of course Jess was my only biological child, but Debi, my stepdaughter, is a daughter to me. So I generally say I have two children.”
Ariella: “I say I had one. If they are really listening and they are sensitive and catch the word ‘had,’ they will ask what happened. It just goes right past some people. They never notice. It hurts me when Bob chooses to say he has no children. I feel he is then denying that Michael ever existed. But I do understand why he says it.”
Maddy: “In the beginning, you tell everybody what happened. You feel compelled, but later on you adjust according to the situation. Usually I say two. If they pursue it, I might even make up a phantom life for Neill. I know that’s like denying his death, but it’s easier on me and the questioner than the truth might be.”
Carol: “At the beginning, we were very confused about it. I said three; Don said two. Now we both say three. If we are going somewhere, like on a cruise when we know the question will come up, we make plans ahead so we’ll be prepared with the answer. That way we don’t get so upset. Of course, when people persist in asking more questions and you only speak about two of the children, people wonder. I try to go on to another topic.”
There are times when we truly have no compunctions about responding rudely to a prying question.
Lorenza: “I was in the school office one day and this woman was asking questions of everybody. She looked me right in my face and asked, ‘What’s your story?’ I told her everything. It emptied the office.”
Maddy: “Sometimes I actually tell people, ‘You’ll be sorry you asked me that.’”
One of us uses a sharp retort as a cudgel for hitting the world over the head.
Barbara E.: “I always include Brian and say two, and depending on how I feel at the moment, I might go further and punish people by telling them the whole story. Many times I make sure to mention it.”
It is not only the question of how many children we have that rankles us. Many times we have to sheath our conversations with people in layers of strong skin. When our children died, numb and grief
stricken as we were, we took for granted that acquaintances, friends and relatives would be our safety net, that they would gather round us and comfort us.
Instead, we have found that a great many people whose lives have not been fractured by the death of someone very close cannot deal well with it. It has not intruded on their personal world and they can neither understand nor handle it. So, they make insensitive, unthinking remarks. We have grown to anticipate their words and to steel ourselves against them. Just knowing a cutting remark is coming, takes away some of its edge.
Ariella: “One woman even told me that if she was in my shoes she could not survive. I wanted to say to her that I didn’t choose this and that I didn’t think I would survive it.”
Rita: “Michael had a close friend and I was friends with his mother. At the funeral, she said to me, ‘I can’t see you; it’s too painful for me because I have this one son.’ She couldn’t see me anymore because I would be a reminder of the thought of losing him. I didn’t see her for two years and then, when I ran into her, she told me there’s not a day goes by that she doesn’t think of me.”
Barbara E.: “One of my neighbors said she could understand how I felt because her daughter was marrying and moving to a foreign country. She said it would be as if her daughter had died. Now her ‘dead’ daughter has two children.”
Maddy: “People told me to pretend Neill had gone to Australia. I know where Australia is, but I don’t know where Heaven is, or if it even exists.”
Phyllis: “Someone said that I was lucky to have had Andrea for twenty-two years. Would they have felt lucky if they had a limit on how long they would have their child?”
Some people tend to give what they can in the way of consolation and then dismiss the subject. These are the people who care but wish we would “get over it” and get on with our lives. Unfortunately, these are our lives and we cannot “get over” them.
If we try hard to step outside ourselves, however, we have to admit that we might well have behaved in a similar fashion in our earlier lives, before we came to know death so intimately.
Lorenza: “At the beginning, you are sensitive and you are needy and you have neither the time nor the energy to try to read behind what people are saying. With time, you tend to give them more of a benefit of a doubt.”
Phyllis: “Probably our expectations were not real. Should we have expected everyone close to us to call and to understand? Like the occasion of Andrea’s first birthday after she died; to me that was so real but to other people it wasn’t. They didn’t call and that hurt me.”
While those in the “civilian world” may think we are consoled when they tell us they could not survive losing their child, some of us dissect such words and unfortunately attach a very different meaning to them.
Barbara E.: “It’s almost as if they are saying that we are able to survive because we didn’t love our child as much as they obviously love theirs.”
We try hard to tell ourselves that parents who are not bereaved tend to personalize what happened to us and say to themselves, “There but for the grace of God, go I.” But, we want to scream out, “Look at us, we are having to deal with this, comfort us, don’t shy away from us. What we have is not contagious.”
Rita: “To sum it all up, nobody can really give us the comfort we crave; that could only be achieved by getting our child back. There is no solution to our problem. Eventually, the remarks don’t hurt as much. That’s because we are in a different place now.”
Carol: “The outside world goes on despite our loss.”
Of the nine of us, Audrey is most able to allow for people’s shortcomings in this regard.
Audrey: “They are not attacking us in any way. Rather they are saying that it is so difficult to even imagine what we are going through. There were so many people who came forward with extreme concern and comfort, people who did find the right words.”
And, occasionally, comfort does come from unexpected quarters.
Barbara G.: “Many I would have counted on to be at our side did not come through for us. Fortunately, in their place, others did, people such as the neighbor who dealt with the cemetery regarding the vault I ordered for Howie’s burial, or the friend who called once a week whether or not I was able to speak to her.”
Sometimes we feel like strangers trapped in our own bodies, foreigners who have to find a new route in an alien country if we are to find a degree of tranquility ever again. Contentment is something we may never know again, but it is possible to reach a place eventually where our everyday existence is not excruciatingly painful.
As time passes, the pain dulls, but we continue to define the place on earth we now occupy as a shadow life … . We call it “shadow grief.” We have been dumped here by some force far beyond our control, and it means we now experience every event, every set of circumstances, every morning, noon and night, every relationship, every nuance, every grain of sand in a new way … engulfed in shadow.
Audrey: “I live with a veil of sadness that permeates my very being. The excitement and passion that used to bubble up inside me no longer exist. The passion is gone.”
Phyllis: “The view from pain brings an entirely different perspective of the world. It was easier to live in denial.”
But in a strange way, we cherish the shadow. It is cast by the death of our child, and it is all we have left of him or her, and so we would not wish it away if we could. It is now part of us, the person we have become in the after. If we are to be mothers of children who died, we will live with the shadow, but we will find ways to walk in it, and eventually be able to see the sun rise and set, to forget ourselves enough to laugh out loud on occasion and to look positively on the new life that has been given us. It will never be the old life, but it will be livable.
Rita: “You can never return. But joy and laughter do come back, sometimes in spite of yourself … . Still the sun never shines as brightly as it once did”
.
Before we were changed, we were by-and-large spirited, animated and extremely active women. Some of us had high-profile careers, others of us were quintessential homemakers. We were active in church, synagogue and civic groups; we enjoyed a vast range of activities.
Barbara G.: “I had been a vivacious person. I now describe myself as a flatliner. I no longer experience emotional highs, nor do I want any, and I have certainly had more lows than I ever dreamt possible. I am not the person I once was. How could I be, when I have had an amputation?”
But with the passage of time, we learned to pick up some—if not all—of the pieces. The deaths of our children ultimately did not take our careers away. Indeed, when we awakened each morning to the realization that our children are no longer on earth, we were saved by having the responsibilities of our jobs and having some place to go.
Rita: “It is important to have something to do each day … to put your left foot in front of your right. I didn’t even want to be off from teaching for any extended time such as summer vacation. When you are idle for a long period of time, you can take a thought and go further and further with it. At work those thoughts occur to you, but there’s no time to take them further. Over the summers, I’d get very depressed. At times, I couldn’t handle a week of freedom.”
Ariella: “The thought of not working was frightening. I dreaded waking up in the morning and having no direction. I needed the distraction of work.”
Audrey: “My husband had retired, but he went back to work after Jess’s death.”
What we have found in our newly defined lives is that we lack the gumption and interest to move further along the career path, or to undertake anything new and exciting.
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