We turned it off after a little bit and tried to sleep. Mainly I just lay there thinking about all that I had lost—my husband of twenty years, who I was with him, our future together. All our dreams, some of them really mundane. We had always talked about becoming old farts together—walking the neighborhood holding hands—and that was gone, too.
Yet I knew I had to have a future, even though we weren’t going to be buying that convertible after our youngest went off to college. I just didn’t know what that future would be.
I couldn’t curl up into a ball. There had to be a next morning when I would get up, and then a next, and then a next. But what was the next?
The week unfolded the way these weeks do, in a whirlwind of loving people coming by with casseroles and plates of ziti and meetings with funeral directors. The funeral. The wake.
At one point one of the funeral directors came up to me with a question that caught me off guard. He wanted to know what I wanted done with my husband’s wedding ring.
Did I want to take it home, or did I want it cremated and buried with him?
And I said, “Thank you, but I want that ring.”
I loved that ring. That ring was me on his hand for two decades. That hand held our vows, and it was a beautiful hand.
He was a writer, but he had worked for years before that in carpentry and construction, and he had these big, thickly muscled hands. It was a big ring on a big finger, and it had warped to his finger.
And I loved the warp. The warp was our life together.
So I brought it home, and I decided I didn’t want to stuff it into a drawer in the dark. Instead, I put it on a chain, and hung the chain on a hook in the back of my bedroom closet door. And that felt right, to have it present.
Because he was so present to me. I was so madly in love with him. Right from the beginning, we knew from the first date. Four months after that first date, we got engaged. He didn’t have the engagement ring with him when he proposed, but he went down to Manhattan on the train and saw a jeweler named Bobby Satin, of all things. We used to laugh about it. It’s like his name was out of the movies: Bobby Satin.
He came back up by train—actually got off in Hudson, and we had dinner there.
And before he gave me the ring, he explained that the central stone was not a diamond. He said there were smaller stones that were diamonds that were flanking the central stone. But he said, “I decided you’re not a diamond. You’re a ruby, because rubies are rarer.”
And that was the start of our life together.
Six months later we were married, and for the whole time I was with him, he was the most extraordinary, charismatic, brilliant, interesting, giant-hearted man. And he was also the sanest—until he wasn’t.
He left his job, became anxious. The anxiety led to insomnia, which led to worsening anxiety and depression, and it all spiraled away into suicidality. After six months, I lost him.
And having lost him, there I was with these rings on my hand that I didn’t know what to do with. I didn’t know how long to wear them, because there was nobody to tell me.
When you lose your spouse, no one comes up to you and says, “Welcome to widowhood. Here’s the guidebook.”
There’s no guidebook. There’s no etiquette. There are no rules. All we have are musty old expectations, clichés based in large part on movies and literature.
We have the idea of the old ladies in black sackcloth dresses, murmuring over their rosary beads and maybe banging themselves on the foreheads with Bibles. And I’m Catholic—I own rosary beads and I own Bibles—but I wasn’t doing that.
Instead, I was hauling myself through every day, schlepping my kids, caring for them, writing. Doing my best, laughing with my friends when I was able to, and all the while grieving my husband like crazy.
As I was doing those things, I had these rings on my hand that implied he was alive. And I didn’t know how long to wear them.
People would say, “Well, do what feels right.”
But I didn’t know what felt right. Nothing felt right. How could anything feel right?
I’d found these two online support groups for young widows, and I went on, and I checked. And sure enough, there were whole conversations about this. Some widows and widowers said they removed the ring right away, as soon as their spouse died. Some people said they melted them down into a new piece of jewelry. Some said they wore them on a chain around their necks.
And some said, “It’s been five years, and I still feel married. I’m still wearing the rings. I’ll always feel married.”
And I did feel married…the first couple of weeks. You just do. But as the weeks turned into months, and the reality of my husband’s absence set in, it became more and more painful.
When I say painful, I mean it literally. That’s one of the things nobody tells you about widowhood, is that you’ll feel a head-to-toe literal body ache. The loss of intimacy, both physical and emotional. The touch deprivation. It all makes you want to lie in bed at night, wanting to be held by the person who’s not there.
That hurt.
And what made it hurt even more was the fact that it disagreed with the rings on my hand. The disconnect was too much.
So finally, about four months after my husband died, I took the train down to Manhattan to see a movie. Because periodically studios would make me go down there. Mostly I saw movies up here in Albany, but now and then there’d be a movie that they really didn’t wanna screen for me up here. Sometimes it was because the movie wasn’t very good.
In this case it was a film called The Grey. It was a thriller starring Liam Neeson and a bunch of computer-generated wolves behaving in very non-wolf-like ways. I thought it was pretty silly. Other critics liked it. But in any case, I was down there at this screening, chatting with a colleague.
I don’t remember who he was or who he wrote for. But in the course of this professional chitchat, it occurred to me that if he saw the rings on my hand, he would assume that I was married. That I had a living, breathing spouse somewhere. And I did not.
And this was not me worried about dating. That’s not what this was about. It was just the pain of knowing that my husband wasn’t there and my hand said something different.
So I went home, and I talked to the kids. I wanted to make sure it was okay with them. And it was. They totally got it.
I went and I bought a very nice gold chain. As I removed the rings from my hand, my hand felt lighter and naked and really weird. And it hurt.
But it was an honest pain. It was a pain I knew I had to learn to live with. And I did. I learned over two years.
Then about three months ago or so, I don’t know what impulse made me do this. Just a random impulse. Curiosity. I sat down on my bed with my rings and put them back on my hand. And I held it out. And it was an alien hand. It wasn’t my hand any longer.
With those rings on my hand, it looked like a hand from another life and another me. Too much time had passed.
And so I removed the rings, put them back on the chain, and hung them on the hook on the back of my bedroom closet door, with my late husband’s.
AMY BIANCOLLI is the author of Figuring Shit Out: Love, Laughter, Suicide, and Survival (2014, Behler Publications), a memoir of life after the death of her husband, writer Christopher D. Ringwald. Currently an arts reporter and columnist for the Albany Times Union, she previously served as film critic for the Houston Chronicle. She is also the author of Fritz Kreisler: Love’s Sorrow, Love’s Joy (1998, Amadeus Press) and House of Holy Fools: A Family Portrait in Six Cracked Parts (2004, Lulu Press), which earned her Albany Author of the Year. She lives in Albany, has three children, and blogs at figuringshitout.net.
This story was told on March 22, 2014, at the Kitty Carlisle Hart Theatre at the Egg in Albany, New York. The theme of the evening was Lost and Found. Director: Meg Bowles.
I had a perfect pregnancy. I saw a specialist every week, though, because I was an elderly primigravida, which is a sweet wa
y of saying they felt I was too old to be carrying my first child.
I saw a maternal fetal specialist every week. And every week the doctor and nurses would gather around the ultrasound and look at the baby and say, “What a perfect baby. This is a miracle at your age.”
I spent nine months wondering what this was going to be like. What was it going to be like to give birth? What was it going to be like to see this person I had been growing all this time?
Especially—what was that rush of love that new mothers talk about? What was that going to be like? And of course, being a stand-up comedian, I relished the new market that motherhood was going to thrust me into.
But most of all, the thought of leaving the house one day as the two of us and coming back home as a family filled me with wonder.
When the time came, they told us to prepare for a very long labor. But no, I pushed for twenty minutes. And Lucia Esperanza was born at 10:59 p.m. that evening on 11/10/11 (not 11/11/11, the birthday that we hoped for, the perfect birthday), just to let us know that she would do things when she wanted to.
They put her on my chest, and I soaked in this little person I’d been carrying around. I saw her little chin and her heart-shaped mouth, her button nose and her folded ears.
I saw her almond eyes, and my heart stopped.
I asked my husband, Jayme, “Does she look like she has Down syndrome?”
Jayme said, “No.”
Instead of the rush of love, I felt a wave of fear and anxiety.
They brought me to our recovery room, and they took the baby to do some routine tests. Jayme went downstairs to get everyone. It felt like I was alone for hours.
My worry turned to fear, and my fear turned to panic, and I finally rang for the nurse, hysterical.
I was like, “Why is it taking so long? Is there something wrong? What is wrong with my baby? Can you bring her back to me?”
She brought back the baby, and I called Jayme, sobbing, and I asked him to please, keep everybody away just for a few more minutes while the nurse helped me calm down.
Then fifteen people came in to meet her, and they said, “How are you feeling?”
I said, “Wonderful.”
But I was terrified.
The next day the pediatrician came in our room, and he said, “Congratulations! Your baby is perfect.”
It was such a relief. I could breathe again.
He said, “Her Apgar score was great.”
And her hearing was fine. And she had ten fingers and ten toes—and he suspected that she had Down syndrome.
He gave us a packet with a number on a Post-it note on top for us to call.
As he was leaving, he said, “You know, now is the time to have these babies, what with all the research. I mean, some of them even read.”
We spent our days in the hospital in the room with the door closed, and the shades pulled. At night Jayme slept in the single bed with me, behind me. And he held me really tight. I think he held me so tight so I wouldn’t fall out of the bed from crying so hard.
It was confirmed. She had trisomy 21, which is three copies of her twenty-first chromosome instead of two. That first few weeks was just a blur of tears and forms and doctors’ appointments and lists I made of all the things that were never going to happen now—all the things that she would never do.
I slept on the couch with her for four months, with her skin on my skin, so she could feel loved. But every time I looked at her, all I thought is, Where is my baby? Whose baby is this? When do I get to see my baby?
I had begged Jayme to please let me change her name. Esperanza was my grandmother’s name, and Lucia was just a cute reason to call her Lulu. Together it means light and hope. But I didn’t call her Lucia. I didn’t call her Lulu. I didn’t call her anything, because she wasn’t my baby.
That made him so, so sad, but he said, “Just give it some time. She’s our Lulu. Just give it some time.”
Jayme went back to work, and I was a wreck. I was pining for the little family that I thought we’d be, for the home that I thought we’d have. And I hated the place we lived now, filled with all the baby-shower gifts and the strollers and the bassinets and all the stuffed animals. The things that used to make me daydream and smile, but now just wrenched my gut.
I felt guilty when I looked at the shower presents. I felt like somehow we had deceived our friends and family, and that I should return all the gifts and apologize to everyone. I felt deeply, deeply ashamed that I wanted a baby at my age and didn’t get the testing.
The tests come with a risk of miscarriage. And I already had two miscarriages after the age of forty.
I was terrified to have another miscarriage and maybe never have a baby. So Jayme and I told each other that, no matter what, this was our baby, and everything would be fine. But now I knew that, for me at least, that was not true.
I lay in bed at night with my stomach in knots, and the broken record playing in my head: I cannot do this. I am not supposed to be this kind of mother.
I am not cut out to be this kind of mother.
I knew that no matter whose baby we had, she had to be cared for. She had to be raised. It wasn’t her fault I felt the way I did. She didn’t deserve to suffer for it.
Robot Bethany kicked in.
I went to every conference, every workshop, every lecture about Down syndrome. I read so many books, and I would go with an armful of my books, filled with neon tabs, to every specialist appointment, and I’d ask a hundred questions.
I got every service I could get from early intervention. At three months old, she had a massage therapist.
At night I’d watch YouTube videos of children with Down syndrome reciting the alphabet, or playing guitar, or driving a car, until I fell asleep.
I learned what sorts of activities could benefit children with Down syndrome, and I took her to everything. I took her to music classes. I took her to swim classes. I took her to the museum, to play groups, all with typical kids, as if that would make the world see her that way. I joined a mom group.
As a rule I never talked about Down syndrome, just the things that new moms talk about. But one time I was feeling bold, and I started to talk about the particular concerns that my family had.
One mom said to me, “But why don’t you have her with her own kind?”
I thought of Jim Crow, and I thought how separate is never equal. Only equal is equal.
And I told that mom, “She is a child. This is her own kind.”
But I learned to never talk about what I was feeling again. I never talked about how scared and lonely I was. I never talked about how I ached. I never talked about how much I hated Down syndrome. I never talked about how ashamed I felt about that.
At the time I was still performing. There was a burgeoning market for mom comedy, so I just kept writing about new-mom things, never about what my personal challenges were.
I landed an audition for a mom TV comedy in Los Angeles. I went. The audition was fine. But as I was walking out, I heard the other mom comics having a conversation.
One said, “I mean, you know my kid’s a little retarded, right?”
They all laughed.
She said, “I mean, you’ve seen her, right? You have to admit she’s a little bit Downsy.”
My heart broke into a million pieces, but I didn’t put the comics in their place. I made an excuse. I told myself that sometimes comedians say really nasty things (like that time a comedian said to me, “Aren’t you too old to be pregnant? Isn’t your baby gonna be retarded?”).
Back at home my loneliness consumed me, and it turned to anger. At family members who lived a mile away from me, but were never around. At friends who disappeared. I had friends who were there, but acted as if everything was fine. I was angry at anyone who had a typical child, or a typical baby, or anybody who was pregnant and joyful.
My anger turned to despair; I was completely hopeless. Doing the right thing for the baby was my only motivation, and I went from ac
tivity to activity like a zombie.
I felt that I couldn’t be the mother that she needed me to be, and be a good wife to Jayme. I told him that I wished I could move out. But really, I wished I would just die, so they could find someone better.
Then some friends invited us to vacation with them in Key West, with friends of theirs. It was all couples, with no children. I was very worried about being the one to bring the kid to the party, especially our child.
I didn’t know what the couples had heard about her. I didn’t know what they would think of her. I had no idea what to expect. I walked in the door, and they had a gift for her. They had a little book about vacations.
They all tried to play with her, but she’s a little shy. She’s afraid of strangers, so she cried. When night came, we put her to bed, and the Jameson came out, and we started telling stories and getting to know each other.
I gravitated to one woman in particular, and over the course of seven days, I told her everything. I told her I was afraid that we could never travel again, and that the baby wouldn’t love the beach the way I love the beach.
I told her how I was afraid that I wasn’t doing enough for the baby and that I would never be able to do enough for her. And I was afraid that she would never appreciate the things that we do do for her and how ashamed I was about that feeling.
She didn’t judge me. She didn’t say, “Well, at least…” or “It could be worse….” She just listened. She did point out that actually we had traveled—we were in Key West. And that it was on the beach, and the baby was loving the beach.
She said that things were going to be however they were going to be—because of us and in spite of us. And that was such a relief to hear her say. She lifted a weight off my soul.
On the last day, the baby played with everyone. She threw her beach ball, and they’d catch it, and everyone would cheer. They said this was the best day of the vacation.
I had watched them get to know her, and I watched her through their eyes.
The Moth Presents All These Wonders Page 26
