I had a beautiful phone conversation with my father on Valentine’s Day. Whenever we talk, he admits his difficulties dealing with his only daughter’s death, and I always feel uncomfortable telling him I don’t think I am suffering as much as he is, although we both know I was probably closest to Alex in the family. We were the two youngest in the family, often relegated to suffer each other while the parents were away at some function and my older brother was gone because he was over 16 and could drive, and we were left in the house, often choosing to spend time alone, but just as often choosing to watch television together, to watch movies, to play board or card games, to discuss ideas, to read and talk about our reading with each other. Our souls recognized each other as kindred spirits. We did not always antagonize each other as some siblings relentlessly do.
My father told me a story, which I’d like to relate to you, and ask you one question: Can you figure out what’s missing?
My parents had just arrived at the house for an evening, out with four other couples for dinner bringing the final count to ten, even and base. They arrived and immediately immersed themselves in conversation, splitting from each other, to grab a drink and converse with the different gendered groups. Glasses of wine, of Mojitos, beers, and water held by all in the amber light, the house paneled in dark wood. My father immediately began to involved himself in a conversation about the latest sermon, about the things he was learning in his Biblical Greek classes he takes at night at the Center for Biblical Studies, and about any new revelations. My father has long been highly regarded in the church despite his distance from leadership–year after year refusing to become a deacon because he does not fully support the doctrine of the church, though he goes to church every week, and has gone every Sunday for over twenty years.
My mother gravitates toward the women and the kitchen. She grabs a glass of wine, white wine because it is usually sweeter. She talks about her job. She works in the library. She loves public service, and often spends much extra time unspooling and fixing audio tapes returned when a patron’s machine unexpectedly destroys the slender shiny tape. She talks about the new names she has discovered on the computer sign-up, discussing how upsetting it is to ask a belligerent library patron to sign off because the computer is needed for another, the next on the sign up sheet. She always, fastidiously, refers to every person in the library as a patron, even the homeless who spend their days in the building, especially in the winter.
The other men in my father’s conversation take his cue, and discuss aspects of classes they may be taking or teaching. They talk about their work and the trials they are facing there. One man, Mike, discusses his business, asking my father about his experiences as a small business owner. They talk about the impending tax season. My father listens and reflects on how things, even in a few years, have changed so much since he was running his own business, happy to be rid of it and retired. He gives advice where he can, himself serving on our church’s Finance Committee and a regular co-teacher of Crown Ministries’ finance course based in biblical doctrine, co-taught with my mother. Mike listens diligently, asking for details or explanations, feels relief when my father gives him the advice he has decided is the wisest of all the advice he has heard thus far. The conversations moves on to Bob, who begins to talk about moving.
Most of the women do not work like my mother does, getting her job at the library when I was in sixth grade, realizing it was never to early to prevent empty nesting syndrome, my sister about to graduate from eighth grade and my brother already over halfway through high school, looking into colleges. The women fill in conversation about their volunteer work with the church, with schools, with charitable enterprises in the city. They talk to my mother about how much they admire that she has a job, that she’s maintained it. They joke that she is now the breadwinner of the family since my father’s retirement. They all laugh after this statement. My mother laughs. She has often made this joke as well.
The dinner is ready to serve. Everyone takes a seat, couples ultimately deciding to sit across from each other, as tradition would dictate. The women and men are mixed. More drinks are poured, more wine is drunk, more conversation about work and commitments and church is had with many bad jokes, equal parts laughter and groaning depending on the quality (laughter for societal observations, groaning for puns). They talk about traveling, missions trips, upcoming fundraisers and the church yard sale and the massive numbers of volunteers needed. The end date of construction near a major intersection is hotly debated. Discussion of the ever-changing speed limits is brought up and just as quickly moved past. Observations about possibly moving from one couple elicit questions of where and what kind of property they are looking for. Will they live near the husband’s or wife’s family?
Soon enough salads, chicken, ham, green beans, mashed potatoes, and brownies and ice cream are eaten, and the couples disperse for the night, my parents walking to their own car, my father driving, my mother sitting in the passenger seat with the back support (necessary after an old injury).
“Did you notice–?” my father began to ask, leaving the question unfinished as he looked over at my mother, hoping he wasn’t being paranoid.
“Notice that no one spoke about their children?” she answered. “Yes. Everyone seemed to be trying very hard to avoid it.”
“Because of Alex?” he asked.
“Because of Alex,” she confirmed.
Happiness In Grief 