“How do you go forward from that?”, I thought, the very first time my uncle told me. I couldn’t have put it in those sophisticated words, but the pain and empathy I sensed then, I now can name. I would’ve asked you, but in the same breath, he also exhorted me never to bring up your loss.
We moved back near you when I was about to turn ten. I was ecstatic to live near my grandmas and grandpas again. Upon hearing the news of our permanent return, yours was the face of the father who looked to see the prodigal.
One morning, when eleven, while sitting at your long table while others slept, you, sipping your coffee and smoking a cigarette, sat silently and smiled at me. As I mindlessly followed the patterns in the wallpaper, I considered then that I now had a brother who is the age she was when you lost her. This sharpened the pain of empathy, for me. I sensed hopelessness in imagining if we were to lose him.
How do you go forward from that?
They had told me that you were a preacher, and that she would dance in the aisles of the sanctuary. She would sing songs of praise to God. In my lifetime, I only saw you enter a church for a funeral or, on a couple of occasions, when I was preaching. In a grace-filled world, parents shouldn’t stand at the graves of children.
Every time I left for home — a twelve-hour drive away — you wept. I wanted to be annoyed; after all, why should I feel guilty every time? Somehow, though, I knew that you wept not only for me, but for her. You, more than others, perceived the painful potential of the word “goodbye.”
I sat there with you during a solo trip to Oklahoma — a rare occurrence, with a wife and two kids back in California. You were still sipping that same cup of Folger’s and smoking that same cigarette. I, with my own three-year-old back home now, even more sensed the urgency of that question burning inside.
How do you go forward from that?
But despite the years of warning, now grown, and knowing that each visit with you could be my last, I was more afraid not to ask.
“How do you go forward from that?”
You inhaled the cigarette, then you sipped the coffee. You sat, silently. Nothing seemed much to change. Except I saw seventy-year tears moving down your cheek. No words; only silence and tears for several minutes.
You asked me when my flight left. I told you a story about my three-year-old playing in the pool. Others soon awoke. The day went on. We all went forward from that moment.
Except you. Despite your best efforts, you stayed behind. You had been staying behind. You had to, at least in part. I guess a mother couldn’t leave her daughter behind.