The Hammer

It hit me on the way into church this morning, a trip the boys and I have made countless times, a trip that we never made with her, that Melissa is not coming to the Rock with us. You’d think I would have already made that connection. Before she had those last days in the hospital, before her Holy Week, she and I would talk about how she was feeling stronger, and how we hoped that not only could she come on Sundays, but maybe during the week, she could come in with me and if she got tired, she could go rest at Steve’s house. How quickly things change.

John is sad, Joe is mad. That will be the way of things, it looks like. Joseph seems to think she will be coming back. For four months now, she has been absent, in a way that was more thorough than even the transplant hospitalization. And she came back. So it seems that to him, this is another long absence. You can come back from heaven, he thinks.

The phone rang a few days ago, and John asked, “Is it Mommy?” It’s hard to do the little things like get rid of her cell phone. I was the last person to call her, the Sunday afternoon before she died.

When I told the boys that Melissa had died, we were in my mom and dad’s hotel room. Joe kind of blocked it out, but John got really agitated and said he wanted to go into the bathroom and cry. I went with him. He asked me, “Are you going to get another Mommy?” He has asked that two more times since, and I was not sure what he was asking. Last night, he says, “Are you going to get another Mommy?” We were having dinner with my brother-in-law and his wife and in-laws. We were all a little uncomfortable, and what am I supposed to say? Then John explained what he meant: “Mommy in heaven can be our special mommy and the new one can be our Take Care Mommy.” Poor little thing—Melissa spoiled him and Joe so much with love and affection, now they’re feeling lost. And it hit me at that moment—we are mourning in different directions. Each of us feeling a different loss acutely, looking for completely different answers, solutions. I hope and pray that the very thing that keeps us close—our loss—will not become a source of friction when we realize we have different needs, desires, and hopes for outcomes. John is afraid he won’t be taken care of how he was used to. Joseph is on edge about absence. Me? I am not sure.

And there’s still that messed up layer of guilt. There’s was always this “when you get better” talk, about how things would be. Well, those things are in various ways coming to pass, and perhaps more will, and others will be revealed. Only she’s not here to be part of it. Steve said, “she did get better.” And that’s true, more deeply than we know, but that’s not at all what I had in mind.