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Upstate Muse

Last Sunday, my 45-year-old daughter-in-law died unexpectedly in the ER after falling ill at home late the previous night. Though she was beautiful and active, she had suffered a serious and nearly fatal stroke seven years before and had pulmonary hypertension as well as other health issues. But no one expected her to die.

My son called 911 at 3 a.m. and his lovely Jean was pronounced dead at 8 a.m. He howled at the news after being shuffled out of the room before they performed CPR for nearly 60 minutes. An hour later I was in my Jeep with three dogs headed for New Jersey and a week of grief so terrible it seemed to choke the air. Jean left five children, ages 2-19, four of them still at home.

For the first few days, we all walked around in stupor. Those who have been through the death of a loved one, particularly a “death out of time” as my friend Jude called it, know what I mean. Emily Dickinson’s words kept clicking in my head, “This is the hour of lead, remembered if outlived, as freezing persons recollect the snow. First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.” It felt like lead; our feet did seem to “mechanically go round.”

I was there to comfort and care for the children and my son. I certainly did my best. But what I did most was just be there. That’s the gift we offer at such times, our presence, isn’t it? We sleep on the floor or the sofas, we shuffle through the hours. We smile and touch an arm. We butter a bagel and make coffee. We do the laundry.

My son is 6 feet 5 inches and a real Viking, tough and manly; he keeps his feelings close and his words few at such a time. His eyes stayed steady and steel gray. He busied himself with logistics and wrote a loving eulogy. He made the hard choices at the funeral home. He ordered an autopsy. One afternoon he cleaned the entire garage.

All the children were stalwart. The two youngest children, 2 and 6, were bravest of all. For the first few nights little Cassidy would wake weeping at 2 a.m. On Wednesday morning, three days after her mother’s death, she appeared at my side in the middle of the night with her blanket flying, her face haunted and lost, crying she couldn’t find her mommy. There is no refuge for such grief.

Little Brennan did not cry in front of me or anyone, though caught by a camera lens, he looked stricken. Like his father, he is funny and deep, smart and silent. He mentioned his mother to me twice in eight days, once as we were watching “The Karate Kid” on television to say his mother used to call him Daniel-son (and he smiled as he told me) and once to say, now mommy will not see me learn to write in school next year. He said it simply. His jaw was tight. To speak of his loss was too great.

It was an honoring, I realized, not to say it aloud. It was a deliberate not speaking of her name which became his fortitude.

On the fourth day I took the two youngest to a nearby park. By that time, Uncle Aryl, my older son, had arrived too, with his kind eyes and gift for laughter. That warm spring day as they played and ran and climbed until they stumbled exhausted back to the car, I marveled at them, bound together by this such loss at so young an age. Little B climbed the children’s rock wall; Uncle Aryl stepped in to aid him. Cassidy climbed into a dark tunnel, arms akimbo, then swept out the other side into the light into my arms.

And so it is we deal with grief and loss. We show up. We catch each other when we fall. We hold hands. These are the acts of family and loved ones, the seemingly small but enormous things that sustain us.

Sandy Robison is a retired professor of communications who now teaches part time as a substitute teacher for Jamestown Public Schools and writes for The Post-Journal. She is the author of “Writing and Understanding Poetry: For Teachers and Students” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015) and three chapbooks of poetry. She earned degrees from SUNY Fredonia (B.A. English,1977), the University of Arizona (Master of English Education, 1983) and Walden University (Ph.D., 2007).

Upstate Muse

Last Sunday, my 45-year-old daughter-in-law died unexpectedly in the ER after falling ill at home late the previous night. Though she was beautiful and active, she had suffered a serious and nearly fatal stroke seven years before and had pulmonary hypertension as well as other health issues. But no one expected her to die.

My son called 911 at 3 a.m. and his lovely Jean was pronounced dead at 8 a.m. He howled at the news after being shuffled out of the room before they performed CPR for nearly 60 minutes. An hour later I was in my Jeep with three dogs headed for New Jersey and a week of grief so terrible it seemed to choke the air. Jean left five children, ages 2-19, four of them still at home.

For the first few days, we all walked around in stupor. Those who have been through the death of a loved one, particularly a “death out of time” as my friend Jude called it, know what I mean. Emily Dickinson’s words kept clicking in my head, “This is the hour of lead, remembered if outlived, as freezing persons recollect the snow. First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.” It felt like lead; our feet did seem to “mechanically go round.”

I was there to comfort and care for the children and my son. I certainly did my best. But what I did most was just be there. That’s the gift we offer at such times, our presence, isn’t it? We sleep on the floor or the sofas, we shuffle through the hours. We smile and touch an arm. We butter a bagel and make coffee. We do the laundry.

My son is 6 feet 5 inches and a real Viking, tough and manly; he keeps his feelings close and his words few at such a time. His eyes stayed steady and steel gray. He busied himself with logistics and wrote a loving eulogy. He made the hard choices at the funeral home. He ordered an autopsy. One afternoon he cleaned the entire garage.

All the children were stalwart. The two youngest children, 2 and 6, were bravest of all. For the first few nights little Cassidy would wake weeping at 2 a.m. On Wednesday morning, three days after her mother’s death, she appeared at my side in the middle of the night with her blanket flying, her face haunted and lost, crying she couldn’t find her mommy. There is no refuge for such grief.

Little Brennan did not cry in front of me or anyone, though caught by a camera lens, he looked stricken. Like his father, he is funny and deep, smart and silent. He mentioned his mother to me twice in eight days, once as we were watching “The Karate Kid” on television to say his mother used to call him Daniel-son (and he smiled as he told me) and once to say, now mommy will not see me learn to write in school next year. He said it simply. His jaw was tight. To speak of his loss was too great.

It was an honoring, I realized, not to say it aloud. It was a deliberate not speaking of her name which became his fortitude.

On the fourth day I took the two youngest to a nearby park. By that time, Uncle Aryl, my older son, had arrived too, with his kind eyes and gift for laughter. That warm spring day as they played and ran and climbed until they stumbled exhausted back to the car, I marveled at them, bound together by this such loss at so young an age. Little B climbed the children’s rock wall; Uncle Aryl stepped in to aid him. Cassidy climbed into a dark tunnel, arms akimbo, then swept out the other side into the light into my arms.

And so it is we deal with grief and loss. We show up. We catch each other when we fall. We hold hands. These are the acts of family and loved ones, the seemingly small but enormous things that sustain us.

Sandy Robison is a retired professor of communications who now teaches part time as a substitute teacher for Jamestown Public Schools and writes for The Post-Journal. She is the author of “Writing and Understanding Poetry: For Teachers and Students” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015) and three chapbooks of poetry. She earned degrees from SUNY Fredonia (B.A. English,1977), the University of Arizona (Master of English Education, 1983) and Walden University (Ph.D., 2007).

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