I'll See You Again

by Jackie Hance

  • • •

  The next day, Thursday, was my children’s funeral.

  I suppose I got up that day and brushed my teeth, took a shower, and combed my hair—all the little daily routines that would suggest I was alive and functioning. But I wasn’t, really. What was happening was beyond comprehension, and my mind completely shut down, refusing to take in the scene. I survived the day by not really being there.

  In newspaper photographs from that day, I am in dark glasses, my face puffy and pasty. Warren is on one side of me and a police guard is on the other. Warren looks blank but determined. In survival mode, he feels the burden of making sure the day goes right.

  The costs for the funeral had soared, and a few people suggested using some of the donations that were coming in, or asking for others. But I came out of my stupor long enough to issue an ardent “no.” We would pay for the funeral. We would bury our own children.

  I had grown up as a devout Catholic, so the familiar traditions of the Church brought some comfort when everything else around me was crumbling. Having gone to church every week for most of my life, priests and blessings and hymns were the right source for consolation. All of us fall back on ritual to smooth over grief, letting rules and traditions be the guide through a time of uncertainty. Funerals become grand exercises, a kind of pomp and ceremony to mark graduation from one world to the next. Since Emma, Alyson, and Katie would never get to graduate from high school or college—or even grade school—this was all we had.

  I remember looking out the window of the limousine taking us to the church, hearing music, and wondering, Where did the bagpipes come from? Two rows of bagpipe players lined the road, blowing their mournful tunes. The four black limousines bearing our family and Danny’s pulled up behind the five white hearses. Grim-faced men hefted the white-and-gold coffins and brought them into the redbrick Our Lady of Victory church. Once they would have thought of themselves as our friends, brothers, and uncles. Now they would forever remember being pallbearers at my daughters’ funeral.

  More than a thousand people filled the pews in the church.

  Hundreds more waited outside.

  Floral Park is in suburban New York, but it is an old-fashioned town where everybody knows one another. I suppose you could plunk it in rural Wyoming or Idaho and the small-town spirit would feel the same. Warren and his siblings—including Diane—grew up here, and the family’s roots go back more than a century. Since our house had generations of history, the tangle of interconnected relationships could fill a soap opera.

  The hundreds of people who knew us or had been touched by the girls came to the service in shocked disbelief. The tragedy had seeped into their homes, and they reacted as if it were their own family. A small town like ours functions in some ways like an extended family—everyone watches out for one another. The gossipy chatter that can sometimes feel intrusive turns, in times of trouble, into a saving grace. Even people who didn’t know us lined the streets or stood on their front lawns, offering prayers and support. I didn’t realize until much later how much I was buoyed by the strength and support of the community. Warren and I felt like we had lost everything, like we had only each other. But now a thousand people wanted us to know that we had them, too.

  As we walked into the church, part of me kept thinking, This isn’t really happening. I would wake up tomorrow and get my life—and my girls—back. This nightmare would be over and we could get on with our plans for summer camp and church plays.

  One newspaper reported that as the coffins were wheeled into the church, music played softly in the background and “Jackie Hance placed a hand over her mouth, hugged her husband, covered her face and placed a hand over her heart.”

  How theatrical that makes me sound, as if I had planned each gesture for fullest effect. But this wasn’t a movie with Meryl Streep playing the part of the grieving mother. Instead, it was real life, and the grieving mother—me—was disappearing into a black hole of woe.

  Warren had decided to give the eulogy, knowing that it would have been impossible for me. I couldn’t imagine how he would do it.

  “I have one chance to tell all the people at the funeral about the girls and what’s in my heart, and if I don’t do it, I’ll regret it the rest of my life,” he had told me right after the accident. Those words came back to me as he walked forward to give the eulogy.

  Warren had never done much public speaking, and he avoided the television cameras that were everywhere. He wanted to talk only to the people he cared about—and they were all gathered at the funeral. As he stood at the front of the church, he spoke calmly, his voice steady.

  “What we ask all of you going forward is when you see us on the street, please don’t look the other way,” he said at one point. “Please don’t be afraid to talk to us. You don’t have to offer any more condolences, you don’t have to tell us how sorry you are.”

  Our own sorrow was already so relentless, pressing down so heavily, that any more might crush us completely.

  He talked about our girls and he talked about Bryan, the “miracle child” who had survived. Only at the very end did he lose his composure.

  “Cherish your children,” Warren said. “Hug your children. Kiss your children. And don’t forget—”

  But he couldn’t finish the sentence. As he gave in to his grief, the whole church seemed to be rocked by sobs. Parents clutched their children and held them tightly. The girls’ friends had tears streaming down their cheeks. When people finally left the church, some of the children sat on the curb, too stunned to move. I look at pictures from that warm, sunny day and feel sad for the pretty little girls in their summer clothes whose lives had suddenly changed. They had always felt safe and protected in our suburban community, surrounded by parents and adults who loved them. But now they had discovered the truth they shouldn’t have to face: Mommy and Daddy love you, but they can’t always protect you.

  • • •

  After the funeral, hundreds of children, parents, townspeople, and mourners streamed over to Trinity Restaurant, a popular spot in Floral Park. With everybody wanting to show their support, the owners had put up a big tent outside and asked all the local restaurants to donate food. Warren wanted to attend.

  “We can’t go to a party,” I said, horrified.

  “We have to,” Warren insisted. “All these people are trying to do something nice for us.”

  He headed over to the restaurant, but I couldn’t stay in public a moment longer. I was thoroughly drained from the funeral, and didn’t want to see anyone. My Catholic traditions got me through the wake and funeral, but enough—I had to be alone.

  A phalanx of loyal friends ushered me back to the house and I collapsed on my bed. The wails and sobs I had held back in public erupted now and ricocheted through the house. My life had been ripped away from me and I thought I would cry forever because I couldn’t think of any reason to stop. Later, neighbors would tell me that they could hear my howls of grief through the open windows, that they shivered at my pain and at the helplessness they felt when faced with the prospect of comforting me.

  But finally I stopped and lay there, as limp as a rag doll, too drained to move. Is there a limit to how many tears your body can produce? Do you ultimately cry so long that your body withers like a dried leaf and all emotion is gone?

  “I’ll go to the restaurant,” I said, getting out of bed. “I changed my mind.”

  I wasn’t sure why I was going, but I wanted to be near Warren. And I felt a wave of guilt—all these people had arranged the lunch in honor of my girls and to be kind to me. However I felt, I needed to show I appreciated their generosity. The friends who had come home with me were surprised, but I got dressed and we walked the few blocks to the restaurant, where everyone had gathered.

  With everyone from town present, the scene at the restaurant seemed as unreal as everything else that had happened in the last four days. I had a profound sense of dislocation, as if I had stepped out of my life and
gone through a wormhole. Maybe, in some parallel existence, the life I had begun with my three daughters was still going on. At this very moment, in another dimension, I was helping Emma get into her costume and telling her that she would be wonderful in the premier of the play next week.

  But in the only reality I had, I was sitting under a tent in the long driveway of a nice restaurant on Jericho Turnpike, while throngs of people dug into the platters of pasta, salads, sandwiches, and cookies that had been so generously provided. Food donated in love and grief and helplessness.

  Around me, I heard people laughing and talking. But I didn’t want to talk. I couldn’t laugh.

  What am I doing here?

  I got up to leave. I didn’t belong at a party, however kindly it was meant. Frankly, I didn’t belong anywhere anymore.

  Three

  Everyone told me that my girls were in heaven.

  On most days, I agreed.

  I grew up attending mass every week, and whether out of belief, comfort, commitment, or guilt, the Church had remained a central part of my life. The girls always came with me to mass and sometimes Warren would join us, too. He knew how much prayer meant to me.

  But after Emma, Katie, and Alyson’s funeral, I stopped going to church. How could I believe that God had been listening to my prayers? I had prayed fervently for my children’s safety, their health, their happiness, every night. Even before they were born, I didn’t stint on grand gestures. While pregnant with Emma, I wore every crucifix I owned and put twenty pins on my bra strap each morning, in honor of my favorite saints.

  One evening halfway through that pregnancy, Warren and I went out for dinner and I had three rosaries draped prominently around my neck.

  “Jackie, you have to stop. This is getting embarrassing,” he said.

  “How could it be embarrassing to protect our baby?” I asked.

  I felt a huge responsibility to shield my children from harm. If that meant putting aside my own ego and needs, I didn’t mind. Ferociously protective, I called on the saints to help me watch over my girls, and I continued wearing crucifixes and pins with each pregnancy.

  I had followed all the tenets of Catholicism and done everything right. But now my whole belief system had been spun on its head. Rosaries and crucifixes and pious prayer had not been enough to safeguard me or my children from the randomness of life. I couldn’t believe that killing three innocent children was part of any divine plan.

  But religion and rationality aren’t a good mix, and it is hard to shake free of what you have always believed. So I comforted myself with the thought that I would see the girls again in heaven, that we would be reunited.

  The sooner the better.

  “I’m going to be with the girls soon!” I started telling my friends, flashing a big smile that reflected my sense of relief. It was more than just a way to make myself feel better; I truly believed it. My little girls would not spend eternity without the love of their mother. I needed to be there to take care of them in heaven as I hadn’t been able to on earth. I clung to the promise of our reunion as my only chance of feeling happiness or joy again. And, in my deranged state, I thought the sooner I joined them in heaven, the better for all of us.

  My closest friends, who were still keeping watch at our house twenty-four hours a day, faced the reality of what I would have to do to make this heavenly connection happen. They didn’t want to keep me from the girls—but they wanted to keep me alive until I could think straight. Though I’d always been high-strung and anxious, I’d never had suicidal thoughts before, but the circumstances had dramatically changed my entire outlook on life.

  So, without telling me, my friends quietly removed anything from the house I could use to harm myself. Sharp knives disappeared from our kitchen. Long scarves were gone from my dresser. Getting dressed one morning, I couldn’t find my favorite belt. I went to cut something out of the newspaper, and instead of my usual kitchen blades could find only children’s safety scissors.

  Since the Church had been the foundation of my life, I began looking for answers through religion. I grew up believing that priests knew the answers to all the mysteries of life. They could tell me what God expected of me; all I had to do was follow their rules. I had turned to priests when I was pregnant with Emma and an early sonogram suggested she might have cystic fibrosis or Down syndrome. The doctor recommended an amniocentesis but I didn’t know what to do. I would never terminate the pregnancy—I had bonded to my baby from the first moment—but Warren said he wanted to be prepared. I worried about the risk of miscarriage that accompanied the amnio. What if I lost my baby? I had sworn to myself to protect her under any circumstances.

  “I’m so confused,” I had moaned to the priest. “I’m not giving up on this baby no matter what. Why would this happen? What do I do?”

  He didn’t ask for medical specifics—he just told me to follow my heart. “Do what makes you and your husband most comfortable,” he said.

  It took two weeks for the amnio results to come back. While I waited, I kept going back to the church and praying that my baby would be healthy.

  The test came back fine. Emma was healthy. I thought then that my prayers had been answered.

  After the funeral I made appointments with several different priests, visiting them and asking questions, looking for explanations as to why the God I had always trusted could turn on me with such vengeance. Nobody had answers for me that I could understand. As priests, they offered theoretical theology instead of honest, simple answers.

  “How could God do this?” I asked one.

  “It wasn’t God, it was Diane,” he said. He then went on rhapsodically about fate and destiny and free will.

  “So this was supposed to happen to me?” I asked, getting increasingly confused. “It was my destiny? I was born for this tragedy?”

  “No, no,” he said, getting slightly flummoxed. “As I mentioned, we have free will.”

  Of my own free will, I decided we were getting nowhere and I’d better leave.

  I visited a priest at another nearby parish. Like all clergymen, he had dealt often with sadness and grief, and he offered carefully practiced words of kindness and comfort. But in the face of numbing grief, platitudes are pointless. They slide off your skin like dewdrops from a leaf. I wasn’t seeking solace—I needed answers. So I began again, asking him the question that had been tormenting me.

  “Why were all three girls taken? Couldn’t one of them have been spared? It seems so unfair.”

  Danny still had his son, Bryan. The girls had each other. But Warren and I were completely alone and bereft. All three of our daughters gone? How could that be? What meaning could possibly emerge from such misery? I gazed at the priest through my haze of sorrow, hoping that he would have the bit of wisdom or ethereal insight that would pierce the balloon of pain that surrounded me.

  But he answered too quickly.

  “They needed to be together,” he said.

  I felt the anger rising in me since I’d already heard that same response over and over. The very idea infuriated me. What did it mean that they needed to be together? Didn’t the girls need to be together here on earth with Warren and me?

  I left again, disappointed in another collared cleric who couldn’t help.

  Reeling from pain, I told my friend Tricia, a mother of three and an executive at a big company in Manhattan, that I was losing faith in the Church. Tricia always found solutions, and she gave me the number of a young priest she knew, Father Brian Barr.

  When I called him, he’d already been briefed by Tricia.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said as soon as I told him my name.

  “You have to help me,” I blurted out. “You have to tell me this pain is going to go away. God won’t let me live like this, right? If you’re sick, you get pain medicine, so what do I get? I need to know he’ll take me quickly, otherwise I’ll have to kill myself.”

  He waited until I finished, then spoke firmly. “Jackie, everyt
hing is chaotic right now, but we need to stop the bleeding first. Then we can figure things out. It’s like triage. The bleeding is so severe that you can’t think rationally.”

  “If I kill myself, would I go to hell?” I asked, getting right to the point.

  He stayed on the phone with me for almost two hours, as I barraged him with questions.

  “All your questions are reasonable,” he said finally. “I need to get back to you. Please don’t do anything until I come talk to you. In the meantime, remember that the pain you feel now won’t be the same you feel in six months.”

  I thought that was ridiculous. Of course this pain would never cease. And how could this priest know, anyway? He wasn’t a mother. He didn’t understand.

  But I promised Father Barr I wouldn’t do anything drastic until we spoke again. After all, I needed to confirm that taking my own life would reunite me with my girls. I got through the next few days by waiting for him to arrive. Without solid answers, I was afraid to act.

  He pulled up to the house one afternoon in a Jeep, wearing khaki shorts, an open-necked shirt, and flip-flops. Like all the others, he didn’t have an explanation as to why all three girls had been taken. I moved on to my next series of questions. My plan to see Emma, Alyson, and Katie made perfect sense to me, but I needed to confirm the entry requirements to the Kingdom of Heaven.

  “You can’t enter heaven if you commit a mortal sin,” he said.

  “God would send me to hell for wanting to be with my children?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Suicide is a mortal sin,” he reminded.

  “Isn’t God kind and compassionate and forgiving?” I asked, near tears.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, wouldn’t a forgiving God understand that a mother needs to take care of her children? Are you telling me God would keep me from my children?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Father Barr said finally.

  “But this doesn’t make sense!”