The Very Happiest Thing

The worst part of the big dates on the calendar – anniversaries, birthdays, days we shared, days everyone still shares in capital letters on the calendar – is the anticipation.

It’s the pattern. And I know it’s the pattern. But when I’m in it, it hardly matters that it’s a predictable pattern. All that seems true is that I’m swimming in dread and remembering, and anxiety squeezes my entire body like a blood pressure cuff until I really can’t stand it one more minute and I’ll do anything – anything – to make this stop.

There was a point last week when the messages of “I’ll do anything to make this end” were louder and more powerful than the messages of “This is part of the pattern and tomorrow will be better and easier. You are okay.”

If there had been alcohol in the house, I would have drunk it all. If there were mind altering drugs, I would have taken them by the handful. Consequences be damned. Just let me end this. Let me stop feeling. I was terrified of myself.

My crisis team surrounded me, in body and on the phone. If I said the magic words, we were off to the hospital. If my therapist knew we were past the point of management, we were off to the hospital. I didn’t have the courage to say it myself, but I would have let them take me anywhere.

In my bed, weeping, I listened to Jana’s voice on the phone.

“Tricia, you are okay.”

“I am not okay.”

“Listen to me. You are okay. Your mind is wound around all the things that this week represents, with your birthday and your anniversary, and a dozen other smaller things. Your mind is begging you to stop thinking. Your number one job right now is to go to sleep. I want you to take your sleeping pill, lay very still, and whenever anything comes into your mind, you can tell it, ‘Not now. I’m not thinking about this right now. I’m going to sleep.'”

I’m going to sleep.
I’m going to sleep.
I practiced the mantra.

“That’s right. Just like that. Right to sleep. Call me in the morning, or you know I’m going to harrass you with phone calls and texts until I know where you are and how you are.”

She’s not kidding. I love this about her. There could be no better therapist anywhere, no one more suited to me.

I’m going to sleep.
I’m going to sleep.
I practiced the mantra.

“Mommy? Are you crying?” Tyler stood in my doorway.

“Yes, baby. I’m crying.” I’m crying a lot. A lot.

Tyler is a fixer. He is impelled to bring me things that might help the problem at hand. He brought me tissues. He brought me the Cinderella doll. “Here, Mommy. Here.”

“Here, Mommy. Look at this.” I opened my eyes to see the picture he had drawn and framed himself (he took a different picture out of the frame by my bedside, replacing it with this one). It’s a picture of our family of four, and we are all a bunch of floating heads. The boys and I are clustered together, and a couple of inches away toward the upper right, is Robb. He’s portrayed with a good measure of black. “Here, Mommy. I made this. Look.”

“I can’t look at that right now, lovey.”

“I’ll be right back.”

He came back with his bound book of pictures, Tyler and Daddy. “Here, Mommy. Look at this. When you miss Daddy, you should look at this.”

“No. No. No, Tyler. I cannot. I can’t.” I felt the panic rising again, and I was afraid I might lose myself and yell at him. I was supposed to be falling asleep. That was the plan.

He climbs into my bed and sprawls himselff across me, his head resting on my heartbeat. “Hey, Mommy?”

“Yes, buddy?”

“Do you remember the night when daddy died?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you remember when you needed to give him medicine, and you asked me to go away?”

I do not clearly remember this, but I can picture it. I probably needed to give Robb some dosage of something, and at the same time, three-year-old Tyler was trying to climb into the recliner and into the middle of everything. I’m sure I said something like, “Tyler, not now. Please be somewhere else.” And this is what he remembers. On the day that daddy died, I asked him to go away.

“Mommy, I watched and I watched. I stared and stared. And do you know why? It’s because I wanted to see what someone looks like when they die.”

It doesn’t matter that in this story, the part he remembers, we had no idea that death was imminent. His memory is his reality.

“And now I know what happens. They just – poof!” His hands model a small explosion of pixie dust.

“No, baby. That’s not what happens.”

“Oh, I mean the person becomes invisible.”

“No, that’s not what happens either.”

“Well, what happens?”

I am supposed to be sleeping. That’s what Jana said. But there is a six-year-old in my arms, listening to my voice through the muffled, echoed caverns of my chest.

“His spirit left his body. But his body stayed.”

“Then where is his body?”

“The doctors took it.”

“Well, I want it.”

“No, you don’t, sugar. You think you do, and I know how that feels. But you don’t want his body. It’s not how you remember him. His body is empty now. His spirit is what we loved most, and his spirit is in heaven with Jesus.”

“Oh. Well, I want his body. I want him.”

“Me too.”

And suddenly, I realized that this is another moment he will take with him. He remembers that fleeting moment when I asked him to walk away, and he was only three. Now he is six, and memories have more cognitive space to take root. He will remember this night, his mommy and her puffy eyes, her frantic voice that became softer and softer as the sleeping pill took effect. He will remember how he tried to help. He will remember that I had no answers that were good enough. He will remember this.

I breathed deeply. I stroked his hair. “Tyler, do you know you’re the happiest thing in my life?”

He lifted his head to look at me, “What? No, I didn’t know what.”

“Oh, sweet boy. You are. You are the happiest thing in my life. You’re the reason I am alive, buddy.”

His smile consumes us both. “The very happiest thing?”

“The very happiest thing.”

Dear God, let this be what he remembers of this horrible night on the edge of my existence.

Tricia Lott Williford

Comments are closed

  1. Tears. He will remember the very happiest thing.

  2. I love you, Tricia!

  3. I read this this morning and my heart broke anew for the pain and grief you endure. You write so transparently, so deeply. Thank you for sharing your most intimate emotions in a way that speaks to the core of all of us.

    And immediately after your post, I read the next on my reader: Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience. {do you read her blog? Surely you do…}
    Her post this morning entitled “How to live through anything” — oh!– just beautiful.

    And after you’ve read her words, you’ll understand when I say that Tyler (& Tucker) most assuredly are two big, gigantic fish. 😉

  4. Read with tears in my eyes….he and pray that you find the peace you need……

  5. You are an incredible mom. They are going to remember how you loved them with reckless abandon.

    Praying for all 3 of you this morning. Hugs

  6. I cried when I read this. U r a great writer

  7. So proud of you, and grieving with you sweet friend. You are okay.

    Monica

  8. Oh, I do understand what you’re saying about holidays. The week before is so, so hard.

  9. tears….. your boys could not have a better mom in all the world than the one they have now… next time doubt creeps in, know that God knew this also…

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