A Vow to Cherish (10 page)

M
artin Sinclair was buried on a cold day in October. The wind swept through the trees in sporadic gusts, carrying the last dead leaves of autumn in frenzied circles, dipping and diving between the marble gravestones.

Julia Sinclair, Martin’s young widow, sat under the canopy with the casket, her eyes red-rimmed, the skin around her nostrils ruddy and raw. She had shed a myriad of tears in the past three days; no amount of makeup could hide that fact. But her eyes were dry now, her demeanor dignified.

She sat erect, her short dark hair brushed away from her face, her slender hands clasped in her lap.

The air was gray with a dense fog that muted the colors of the landscape to muddy greens and browns. The cemetery was wrapped in the stark tracery of a black iron fence. Against this backdrop her beloved husband, the father of her sons, was laid to rest.

The minister wore traditional black over his starched clerical collar. He stood before the people, intoning the ancient psalm: “‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul…’”

The contingent of mourners swayed imperceptibly, a sea of dark coats on the side of the hill. The silence was broken now and then by muffled crying, the dark fabric relieved by the white flash of handkerchiefs.

“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’”

But there was no comfort for Julia, or her young sons, who stood protectively by her, one on either side of her chair.

Julia’s silence was incongruous with the voice that cried out in her mind, struggling to fathom the reality of this funeral. It was still like a dream. The phone call…the panicked trip to the hospital. The words played an abrupt staccato in her mind: “Rain-slick roads…an accident…nothing we could do…Martin…gone…so sorry.”

With agonizing pain, she saw again the stricken looks on her son’s faces as Sam and Andy absorbed the news that their beloved dad was gone.

At fourteen, Sam had tried valiantly to be brave, and Julia marveled at how he’d comforted her that first awful day. But he couldn’t contain the sobs that racked his adolescent body as he lay in his room that night. Julia stood at his door and prayed to be given some perfect words that would make his pain go away.

Andy, not yet twelve, was the tender one. He fell into her arms and cried inconsolably when she told him the news. It made Julia feel stronger, for the moment anyway, to be needed by someone hurting so badly.

She watched her sons now as the coffin was lowered into the dank hole. Sam’s face was unreadable, but she feared she saw anger in Andy’s eyes and in his posture. A crazy thought flitted through her mind:
Martin will know how to handle this.

“‘Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’”

Oh, Martin. It’s true. You’re really gone. How will I ever make it without you? How will these boys live without their father?

The final prayer was offered, and the pallbearers walked out from under the canopy. The mourners swarmed slowly toward the row of seats where Julia and the boys, her parents, and Martin’s mother and brothers were seated.

As the people passed by wearing sober frowns like masks, she nodded a mute reply to each expression of sympathy. She was moved by the sheer number of friends who had come to pay their respects to her husband. Martin was so loved.

She felt small, each condolence given from a height above her. At one point she tried to stand, but the ground beneath her was spongy under a grass carpet. Her heels sank into the uneven sod, and her legs would not hold her. She fell back onto the hard chair and buried her head in her hands, trying to compose herself before the next mourner paraded by.

Julia’s parents had flown in from Indiana for the funeral. They stayed at the apartment with Julia and the boys for a week. On the morning they were to fly back home, Julia woke with a start a few minutes before five o’clock. Martin’s antique alarm clock ticked a steady cadence, and the old refrigerator hummed out in the kitchen, but the rest of the house was quiet.

She tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use. Slumber eluded her. Finally she threw back the covers and crawled out of bed. Pulling on a robe, she padded into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee brewing. As much as she had needed her mother and father at her side during these difficult days, she knew the real work of grieving Martin could not begin until her parents had gone home. She was anxious to tell them goodbye and begin the unavoidable task.

She carried a steaming cup of coffee to the table by the big kitchen window and sat down. The apartment that had been her home—their home—for over a decade was a renovation in Chicago’s old Lakeview neighborhood, one that the real-estate listings had touted as having “lots of character.” And in spite of the temperamental plumbing and the inefficient utilities, Julia had grown to love the rooms’ high ceilings and creaking hardwood floors. She looked through the kitchen into the open living and dining areas beyond, and memories came flooding back.

It seemed to her that Martin had been gone forever—and yet it also seemed as though he might walk into the room at any moment, his booming voice holding a smile that one could hear.

“Up so early?” Her father’s voice startled her, brought her back to the moment. He was freshly showered and smelled of the spicy shaving soap he’d used for as long as she could remember.

“Oh, I couldn’t sleep. I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“It’s okay. I couldn’t sleep either.”

“Here…I’ll get you some coffee.”

She started to rise, but he waved her away and went to pour himself a cup.

He brought the carafe and refilled her cup before sitting down across from her to doctor his coffee with sugar and creamer.

She felt his eyes on her as he stirred.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?”

She sighed and took a cautious sip. “I’m dreading this day…I’ll miss you and Mom. And yet…I know that until I face this apartment alone and see how the boys are really handling all this, I can’t begin to…to recover.”

She broke down then, putting a tight fist to her forehead. “Oh, Dad…how can I ever recover? I just never thought this could happen to me. I never thought I’d be alone.” Panic rose inside her as she faced the reality of the life before her. “I can’t raise these boys by myself! I can’t do it, Dad! They need a father! They need Martin!”

Her father pushed back his chair and came around to stand behind her, placing his hands firmly on her shoulders.

His voice was thick with emotion, but he spoke with the strength that Julia remembered from her childhood. His words poured over her like a soothing ointment. “Julie…oh, Julie.”

He hadn’t called her that for twenty years. “Honey, I don’t know why God has seen fit to put you through this. If I could take away the hurt…if I could bring Martin back, you know I’d do it in a heartbeat. But I can’t.”

He appeared to be wrestling with his own emotions, and when he spoke again, Julia knew the strength came from somewhere outside of himself. “I know this, though, you’re not in this alone, honey. You know that God is able, above and beyond all that you can imagine, to take you through this. I have not a doubt that Mom and I are leaving you in good hands when we get on that airplane today. Don’t you forget that.”

“I know, Dad. I know. Just…please pray for me.”

“Oh, honey. We’ll be praying for you every single day.”

She stood to meet his embrace. “Thank you, Dad. Thank you for everything.” For more than forty years her daddy had always been there when she needed him, and never had she needed him more than today.

Six months later Julia stood in the same kitchen surveying the apartment through new eyes. Her father’s words had proven true. Though there had been times of despair, the Lord had comforted her in miraculous ways. But the memories of Martin were painfully close here in these rooms they had shared.

At first it had comforted her to be reminded of him at every turn. She’d tried to keep their family traditions alive—taking the boys to breakfast at the Pancake House before church each Sunday, grocery shopping together every Wednesday night, out for pizza afterward. She had renewed their season tickets to the symphony and invited a friend to use Martin’s ticket. She had continued to jog the route they had jogged together each morning.

But now she had begun to be angry that he wasn’t there sharing these places with her. She’d begun to resent whatever friend sat in Martin’s seat at the symphony. She dreaded the jogs because they only reminded her of how lonely she was.

The apartment was full of Martin. He’d had such a presence about him. Without being obnoxious or overbearing, Martin had held court in any room he entered. He was charming and affable, and he had been the indisputable head of the Sinclair family.

Three months after the funeral, Julia had cleaned out his closet and packed up his toiletries from the bathroom. In a fit of anger, she’d rearranged the furniture in their bedroom, grunting and huffing to move the huge bed by herself. She took his sailing trophies off the mantel and threw them in a box. How dare he leave her alone like this! How dare he leave his things to remind her, everywhere she turned, of the great love they’d shared. But try as she might to banish his ghosts from the apartment, his presence permeated every room.

The boys were haunted by memories, too. Sam and Andy both refused to sit in Martin’s big recliner in the living room. It had been “Martin’s chair.” When he was alive, the boys had argued over the chair if Martin wasn’t home, and wouldn’t have dared to sit there if he was. Now that they were free to take it over, it was as though the chair was abhorrent to them.

Not understanding their feelings, Julia had made a terrible mistake about that recliner one night.

The three of them were watching a movie in the living room when Sam and Andy started to argue over the couch they were both sitting on. Sam sprawled across the length of it, and plopped his huge feet on Andy’s lap. When Andy complained, a shoving match ensued, and Sam pushed him to the floor. This made Julia furious.

“Sam, if you want to stretch out so bad, sit in the recliner. It’s sitting there empty—the best seat in the house. You can stretch all you want.”

“No, Mom. I was here first.”

“Fine. Then sit up so Andy will have a place to sit.”

“Why don’t you make
him
move?”

“Because he’s not the one who wants to hog the entire couch.”

Sam ignored her and stayed recumbent on the couch.

“Sam, get off right now.”

No response. The movie blared in the background, and Sam feigned interest in the action on-screen.

“Hey!”

He sat up, eyes wide. She had his attention.

“Don’t make me tell you again, Samuel James. Go sit in the recliner.”

“Forget it. I’ll sit up.” He made a halfhearted effort to start moving.

“No,” she said through clenched teeth. “It’s too late now. You just lost your couch privileges, buddy. You sit in the recliner.”

He stood and started to move a straight chair from the table in the adjoining dining room, dragging it off the rug and across the bare wood.

“Sam! Stop it. You’re scratching up the floor. Don’t drag that in here. What’s wrong with the recliner? Just sit there.”

“No!”

He was so adamant she should have sensed it was something more than just losing his place on the couch. But she only heard his defiance. He was standing right in front of the recliner now, and she gave him a shove that neatly seated him in the big chair.

The anguished cry that rose from his throat was barely human. It was the wail of an injured animal. No, she realized too late, it was the wail of a boy who had sat in the lap of a ghost.

Sam struggled to pull his gangly body from the chair and fled to his room, sobbing.

Julia was shocked. She turned off the TV and stared at Andy as though he might have an explanation. He started crying then, too. Through tears he tried to make her understand.

“Mom, you shouldn’t have made Sam sit in Dad’s chair. That’s
Dad’s
chair. He should be sitting there. It’s not fair.”

Julia pulled his head to her shoulder and sat with him until his sobs subsided.

She ruffled his hair affectionately. “You’d better get to bed, bud. We’ll finish the movie tomorrow, okay? You gonna be all right?”

He nodded.

She steeled herself and went down the hall and knocked softly on Sam’s door.

His reply was a muffled “Yeah?”

He was lying on his stomach in bed, the pillow bunched into a ball under his chin. She rubbed his back tentatively, testing his response. He didn’t reject her.

“Sam, I’m sorry…it wasn’t about the chair, was it?”

“Uh-uh.”

“It’s about Dad? That’s what Andy says.”