He became a
watched child at every age. These days not a child exactly at 28, but still, her child.
At night there are moments when she stands in his room after a he’s had a bad
dream, if that’s what it was (she doesn’t know for certain why he wakes up from time to time shouting,
“No!” over and over), until his eyes close again and his breathing seems less
apneic. She watches him chew his food in fewer bites than is healthy, saying, “Slow
down, Cutie Pie. I don’t want you to choke.” She watches him for signs of illness
or for boredom, for dry skin or hunger, for icy patches on the driveway he
could fall down on, for speeding cars in the road, and for proof he is unaware
of people's stares. She watches because he
is a child who must be watched; the probability she’ll miss something is too
high. Lately, she’s been watching him for other signs she keeps expecting to
see but that haven’t materialized yet. What the hell she’s looking for is not
so clear, but she’s hoping to recognize it the way one might recognize a watermelon
growing in a strawberry patch.
There is a slim
hope nothing will materialize, and that would be best. Considering how close
her son was to his grandfather, however, she knew down deep that line of thinking was
unrealistic. Each time they travel to visit her mother, she is certain he senses
his grandfather’s absence in the rooms he wanders through. On their most recent
visit, when Grandpa had been gone for a month, her son listened to the music on his iPod, rhythmically
pacing Grandma’s living room. He stopped for long moments to gaze at Grandpa’s
picture as he passed it, the one taken at Christmas and placed prominently on
the piano. The last time he’d seen it was at the funeral home on a table next
to the casket. In the picture, Grandpa is sitting in the dining room with his
arms crossed, looking slightly over his right shoulder directly at the camera.
It reminds her of paintings in a museum, the ones with eyes that appear to follow
you wherever you move. Except, Grandpa’s expression is more benign, and seems to say, “I’m still here,
watching over you, loving you beyond this life” …so it doesn’t surprise her
that her son is mesmerized by it.
“In this moment, I am halfway into the next.” The
quote from a Saul Bellow novel was the best description she’d ever heard about
the nature of anxiety. It was how she had lived her entire life, a bothersome
thing that created disasters in her head—car crashes, planes falling from the
sky, broken bones, broken hearts, failures. Each day she fought against it, winning some
days and losing others. Most times she kept the sound of it at a steady hum, but from time
to time it would rise to a crescendo before she beat it back down into
manageable beats.
On one
particular day, when her family had traveled to Grandma’s house to
celebrate his birthday, she was especially worried because his birthday was one
day before Grandpa’s and he would expect Grandpa to be there like he always
was. He knew that Grandpa had died but she thought he might not remember or understand the permanence of it. Every birthday they had sat together and sang, wore silly hats and blew out
candles. Together, always together.
When the
time arrived to sit at the table in front of his birthday cake, she sang as
well as she could though her throat had swelled until it felt like she had
swallowed a walnut. But this was the best day of the year, better even, than
Christmas, so he was smiling and singing along in his atonal style. Her sister
had the idea to sing a second rendition of Happy Birthday to their father, in
case he was present in an Other-Dimension. Her son sang to his Grandpa and
looked around at his aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings, laughing and
laughing. He didn’t cry, nor did he yell, “No!” in the manner of his nocturnal
disturbances. His face showed no confusion at singing to someone we couldn't see.
Sometime later, after the cake and presents, her
daughter said excitedly, “Mom, do you see Cliff?” and pointed to her watched brother,
his new birthday headphones closing off all but the music in his ears. A sudden quiet descended on the room, because everyone had stopped talking to look over by the piano where he lingered in front of Grandpa’s picture.
She understood something essential at that moment, in the midst of grieving and watching,
waiting for the anvil to fall: The more she watched, the less she could see. Watching
was not free; there was a cost. Her daughter’s delighted observation of her brother brought clarity to
the epic fail of the past weeks. All the watching and waiting and
worrying had made no difference, except that she had missed so much. At that
moment, she did see. It is not within her power to prevent pain or sadness in this child or in her other children for that matter. In seeing, she allowed herself to let go and simply be.
Cliff swayed
in small movements with the music, his head tilted as if contemplating where to place a puzzle piece. Gazing at the expression on my father’s face, Cliff laughed because
Grandpa was there after all.