Who's That Girl?

After being asked to leave the scene of the accident, I was faced with the task of telling Jacob that his well-loved sister, and best friend in the world was dead.  I barely remember someone driving me the short distance from the scene to my house.  I think someone may have had to help me out of the car.  I remember feeling my legs buckle underneath me, and how one of the bystanders picked me up, carried me up my driveway, and deposited me at my back door.  Jacob was inside, waiting…waiting to be told we were going to the hospital to see Cory, that she was hurt, but would be okay.  I wanted more than anything to tell him just that.

I made it into my dining room to find him waiting for news.  I fell to my knees, and took his worry- crinkled little face between my hands.

“Jacob.”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Your sister…”  I stopped hear, bowing my head, so ashamed to tell him I had killed his sister with my stupidity.  “your sister got hit by a car…and… she didn’t make it.”

His head went down so fast I barely caught a glance of his face that was horror stricken, and full of a sick fear that no ten year old should ever know.

I grabbed him up, and he let me.  We clung to each other, crying.   When we parted, I have no idea where he went or what he did.  I remember trying to sit on the couch in the living room with family members milling about.   I sat there staring stupidly and fixedly at ordinary, everyday objects.  There was the DVD case from the movie we watched part of last night.  There was the throw the kids always forgot to fold up when they were finished using it.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t scream as I sat there-  mostly because people left me alone. No one came over to shush me, which I know my mom would have done.  So what I’ve figured out, looking back, is that while I was sitting there trying to process what I had just seen, what I had been told, and what I had been forced to leave covered with a sheet down the road, I was screaming at the top of my lungs...but on the inside.

Eventually, I staggered to the bathroom and threw up the water I had been talked into drinking.  I peered into the mirror after flushing the toilet, but could not recognize my own face.  It wasn’t that I looked so different that I didn’t know myself, it was that I didn’t feel real.  I touched my face with my fingertips, and watched as the woman in the mirror did the same.  Well, that was interesting, but I had no idea what it meant.

My mother tried to get me back on the couch but I went into the kitchen, and sat on the cold tile that really needed a good sweeping.  I put my head in my hands, and sobbed until I couldn’t breathe and began having sharp pains behind my skull.  This cannot be happening.

More family members arrived- some crying, some dry-eyed with shock.  Some of them tried to approach me, talk to me, touch me.  I couldn’t piece out anything they were saying.  I was still back on the road.  I was watching the rescue workers turn her over.  I saw this over and over and over again, endlessly.

Everything had happened in such slow motion.  I hadn’t been able to run fast enough.  When I got there, no one would let me near her.  We had to wait for the ambulance.  I watched as it finally approached, so slowly, lights on and sirens blaring.  It was unbelievable how different the sirens sound when they are coming for your child...so ominous and final.  My eyes never left her body sprawled out there on the pavement.  Rescue workers tried to distract me with mundane questions.  I answered what they wanted, but never took my eyes off her.

Finally, they made to turn her over.  It was a gentle, dream-like cascading motion as they turned her over, revealing a little more of her, bare degrees at a time.  I craned my neck to get as close of a look as I could.  It wasn’t until I saw her mouth- her lips a deep, dark blue- that I began to feel like I might lose my mind.  

And that’s the moment I was reliving over and over again as I sat in my slightly cluttered house, surrounded by family and friends.  I think I may have stayed in that moment of time for days, maybe weeks.  Everything else just sort of slipped away.

The last time I purposely connected with my son- connected, not just going through motions or offering the most basic care- was when I told him Cory was gone.  Everything else that followed was Cory-driven.  I was lost in my grief, immobile.  My heart closed in on itself, and refused any traffic in or out.  If you’re gonna play dirty, we’ll just shut this shit down right now, it seemed to say.  My heart has made illogical and selfish decisions before.  This tragedy brought out its ugly side better than ever.

I didn’t see Jake much the first few days after the accident.  People took him, cared for him, played with him, talked to him, and fed him.  On any given day, I had gone from one of the most protective mothers I knew to one who had absolutely no idea where her son was.  Seriously, I didn’t.   On one occasion, Tim and I drove over to pick him up from the pastor’s, got into some discussion about arrangements, and were halfway home again before we realized he wasn’t in the car with us. We had forgotten to put him in the car.   How’s that for crazy?

Even my observations of him when he was around were hazy at best.  I never saw him cry again until the service.  I noticed that he was hungry every 10 minutes or so.  We were eating fast food and take out constantly.  He would no more finish gobbling down a hamburger and fries, then he was asking for pizza.  At one point, the first day we were allowed to see Cory privately at the funeral home, he stood in front of her casket silently.  When I asked him if there was anything he wanted to say to his sister, he turned away from me, and asked Tim if we were having Burger King for dinner.  I stumbled away in horror, asking Tim to please take him in the hallway, just take him out of the room.  What I didn’t say aloud, but clearly meant, was please take him out of my sight.

Then there was the most horrendous phenomenon:  I could barely stand to look at him.  Such a foreign and dark swirl of emotions had temporarily replaced the love and pride I normally felt when feasting my eyes on my sweet, kind, handsome, and witty son.  Instead, every time I glanced at him, I felt stabbing guilt and fear that gnawed at my insides…when would he figure out this was my fault and start to hate me?  As confusing as it was to me, I couldn’t look at him because it just wasn’t fair.  It didn’t make any sense to me.  Why was he here and Cory had to be gone?  Never once did I wish he wasn’t, you understand.  But looking at him and knowing I’d never see his sister sitting or standing beside him ever again just ripped my guts out.  Why?  Why?  Why?  Why?

So the days passed, sometimes with agonizing slowness, other times in the wink of an eye.  Before long, someone had the bright idea that putting me in charge of Jacob’s care (i.e.  leaving me alone with him) was just what I needed to pull me out of it.  I think it was the first day Tim returned to work.

I remember feeling terrified, and just blatantly angry.  You want to leave him with me?  Like, really people, have you lost your minds?  Just look at me…what part of my face or body language says I am capable of caring for another human being?  Didn’t you see what happened to the last one who depended on my decision making skills?

I couldn’t even care for myself, what in the hell was I going to do with a child?

So there we were, in a house that yawned enormously with doorways Cory would never pass through again…stairs that brooded silently without her feet to tread them…furniture that I couldn’t bear to sit on lest I turn to the side, and see that empty space where she used to be.

So the two of us sat in separate rooms…neither of us talking…neither of us finding any reason to approach the other.  Jake sat on the couch in the living room and watched tv.  I huddled in my bed, not sleeping, just staring straight ahead as if I had gone stark raving mad.

I didn’t check on him.  I didn’t talk to him.  I didn’t comfort him.  Worse yet, I didn’t even feel the urge to try. 

Twice a day I would set food in front of him.  Other than that, that poor boy was on his own, like a small boat out in the middle of the ocean somewhere.  This grief was no joke.  It was every man for themselves.

Each night, he crept into my bed and took up residence beside me.  In his sleep he would reach for me, and I would hold him, staring at the ceiling at those brightly colored ladybugs and wondering just what in the hell had happened here?  I’m sure that as he sat on the coach, cuddled with his favorite  stuffed animal, he was wondering the exact same thing.

It was nearly two months later when I was able to look at Jacob and think about how he might be feeling and what he might need.  We were at the cemetery, which had become our new daily routine.  We were taking pictures of ourselves near Cory’s spot to put in a scrapbook I was making.  Everything I said, did, and breathed was Cory.  I had ceased to see anyone else in the world…not my son, not my husband, no one.

All at once, I glanced over and looked- really looked- at Jacob’s face.  It had been weeks since I had even bothered. I knew he had played with cousins and friends.  I had seen him smile, and even laugh.  But had he ever seen me do either?  No wonder he didn’t want anything to do with me, I was likely scaring the hell out of him.  He must be not only afraid to spend time with me, but afraid I would be this way forever…that not only had he lost his sister in this feckless situation, he had somehow lost his mother.  His mother used to be fun, crazy, and silly.  Now she was just a shadow that trailed by and set food in front of him ever so often.

I took a deep breath, feeling horribly ashamed of myself…something I’d gotten a lot of practice at lately.  Suddenly I changed direction, moving the focus of this little photo shoot from Cory to Jacob.  Jacob looked at me as if I become possessed. 

 “Mom, are you ok?”  he asked, so honestly surprised that I would be paying attention to him for no reason related to his sister.

“Yes, Jake, let’s make silly faces…want to?”  I asked him.

“Yeah!” he said, his face lit up, and his eyes relieved to see that at long last I had returned, and please, please could I stay and play just a little longer?

So we played at the cemetery beside Cory’s spot, taking silly pictures, which is something Cory loved to do.  I knew somewhere she was looking down and liking what she saw.

When I went home and printed out those pictures, I saw a smile on my face for the first time since I could remember.  I had thought I would never smile again.  

There wasn’t a better person to give that first smile to than my son. 

 I know Cory would have wanted him to have it.  She loved him so.