Signs of Life (2 page)

“Just this little bite, Nat,” he says. I eat it. He lets a few minutes go by and hands me another one.

“Here, Nat. A little more.”

There are a lot of people at the hospital. People hug and cry and stare out the window with red, swollen faces. A little after
three o’clock in the afternoon the doctor comes out. Everyone sits together. I sit next to Deedee, Josh’s mom, and hold her hand. Ashley, Josh’s little sister, sits on the floor in front of her mom. The doctor says something about the injury, the trauma to the head, how they had to wait so many hours and examine it again, just to be sure. And then he says that Josh Taylor was pronounced dead at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 17, 2007. He was twenty-seven years old. It is Father’s Day.

The next morning I wake up early. I walk around my parents’ house. I sit on the couch in the family room. I get up. I try to pee. I feel like I have to pee, but I don’t. I lie back down. I get back up. I try to pee again. I look at the clock. Is it too early to go up to my parents’ room? Yes. I walk around the house some more. I sit. I stand. I open the fridge. I shut it. I lie back down. I get up. I turn on the TV. I turn it off. Finally. I go up into my parents’ room and get into their bed. I start to cry. They cry too. My mom rubs my back. A few minutes later, I get up again.

“Where are you going?” my mom asks.

“I don’t know.” I say.

Ads wakes up.

“Nat. Breakfast?”

“Sure.”

“Eggs?”

“Sure.”

“Omelet?”

“Sure.”

He cooks. I lie on the couch.

“Nat, what do you need? Coffee? You want to read the paper? You want to put in a movie?”

“I don’t know, Ads. I don’t know.”

•  •  •

Chris, Josh’s little brother by less than one year, got on a plane this morning. He lives in Denver, but he was fishing in Estes Park, about twenty miles outside of Denver. The park ranger had to go and find him and tell him. He had to drive back, get a ticket. It was almost a full day before he knew anything. I try to call him but it goes straight to voice mail. I don’t leave a message. What the hell would I say?

Deedee stays at the hospital all night. All of Josh’s organs are in perfect working order. We decide to donate as many as possible. This process will take a few days, she explains to me over the phone. Then she says, “You understand why I need to be here, don’t you?”

“Yes. I do. And you understand why I can’t be there, right?”

“Yeah. I do.”

We hang up.

People come over. Tons of people. All my friends are here. Katie Battersby and Jen, whom I’ve known since the sixth grade, lie on the floor with me. Terrah, my friend from college, calls all of our friends from out of town. Everyone keeps asking, “Nat, do you need anything? Water? Food? A back rub? A bath?” I shake my head.

I fall asleep on the carpeting in my parents’ family room. I wake up, and almost everyone is gone. I go to bed on the futon in my old room. My friend Maggie sleeps with me. Maggie was Josh’s close friend growing up, but she and I became close once Josh and I got married. We used to joke that Josh had two wives. She was always telling him what to do, pointing her finger at him. “Josh, I don’t mean to preclude you from eating these cupcakes,” I heard her tell him last weekend, “but we do need to wait until—” and then he stuck his finger right in the icing. She got all flustered. He gave her the typical, “Oh, Margaret, calm down.” She uses words like
preclude
. She is the only person
I know who can conjugate
swim, swam, swum
correctly in a conversation. Now she hardly says anything. What do we have to talk about?

The next day my mom takes a small white package from the fridge.

“I bought these burgers on Saturday. I was going to cook them for dinner on Sunday night.” She stares at the white label on the package.

She says, “It seems like a lifetime ago.”

Later that night I hear the front door of my parents’ house open. Chris walks in the door. There is a small group of people around him. He has his blue visor pulled over his eyes a little. Finally, he gets to me. I hug him. We both start to cry. We hug for a long time. I cry into his shoulder. We don’t say anything to each other.

Days pass. Josh donates seven organs. We meet with the people at the funeral home. They call us several times a day. We have to answer all sorts of questions about flowers and caskets and times and we have to pick out pictures. Pictures we just took. Someone tells me I have to go to my house to pick out clothes for Josh. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.

But Moo and I get in the car. We stop at the light at Fourteen Mile and Woodward, one block away from my house. I start to cry hysterically.

“I’m never going to be happy again.” I say this over and over. My voice is high. There are tears and snot all over my hands and shirt.

“I’m never going to be as happy as I was.”

“Don’t say that,” Moo says. She looks at me. She cries too.

“Don’t say that. Josh would hate to hear you say that.”

I keep crying.

I open the door to my house. I walk through the hallway. I
try not to look at any of the pictures. I walk into our bedroom. His T-shirts. His shoes. Our bed. His boxer shorts. His dirty laundry. His balled-up socks. His hanging shirts. His pillows. His alarm clock. His carry-out from Friday night in the fridge. His razor in the shower. Everything. Every single thing in the house indicates that two people live here. That one should be back any minute now. I am hysterical. Moo, Deedee, and Ashley start pulling out T-shirts. We pick out clothes for him.

We get to the funeral home in the middle of the afternoon for the first viewing. The funeral home is packed with people. I am wearing a black dress from Banana Republic. That morning I went to Banana Republic with Maggie, Battersby, Terrah, Jen, and Lauren Gentry and Angela Anagnost—my college friends. Just over a year ago, they were all my bridesmaids. Today they helped me pick out an outfit for my husband’s funeral. They all walked around me, my secret service, making sure I didn’t have to carry anything or drive or walk too far without a snack or something to drink. I bought two dresses. I spent over three hundred dollars on two dresses.

At the viewing, people stand in small circles. They hug me and stare at me.

“Thank you for coming,” I say. People say things like “You’re going to be okay.” “You’re strong.”

I try not to cry at all in front of anyone at the funeral home. I say nice, comforting things to other people.

“We’ll be okay.” I nod. I don’t know why I say this or what it means; it just comes out of my mouth.

Josh’s aunt Barb looks at the pictures. She cries. I hug her and try to say something nice. “It’s okay, Aunt Barb.”

She looks at me, her red eyes serious.

“It’s not okay, honey.” She looks right at me. “It’s not okay.” She starts to cry. “It’s
not
okay. You were robbed. You were
robbed.
” I am not mad at her for saying this. I am not upset because I cry in front of people. She’s right. I know she is right.

There are over a thousand people at the funeral. First Deedee and Chris speak. Then Pug, one of Josh’s best friends growing up, goes next. Then I speak. Somehow I speak.

Then it is over and Vito, my dad, drives us all home. There are six of us crammed in his Volvo. The car is full of orchids, cards, flowers, and the posters with all of our pictures. I feel like we are in the car forever. I feel like I am going to throw up or pee my pants. I feel like I am suffocating in the backseat of my dad’s car. We get home. I run to the bathroom. I don’t throw up. I try to pee but can’t.

I put all of the boards with pictures into my old room at my parents’ house. I shut the door. One by one I take all of the pictures down. One by one I look at each picture. I cry and cry and cry.

His credit cards, our gym memberships, his cell phone, his car, his insurance, his bills, his work. Days go by of these phone calls.

“Yes, my husband, Josh, died suddenly in an accident. I would like to cancel his debit card.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. We’ll get that taken care of right away.”

“Thank you.”

I get seven copies of his death certificate. I sit in my old room and read his death certificate over and over: “Date of birth: December 21, 1979. Date of death: June 17, 2007. 1:21 a.m. Trauma to the head.”

I call Social Security. I get a check from them for $273 and zero cents. There is a formal letter attached.

“This lump sum has been issued to you as a result of the death of your husband, Joshua Raymond Taylor.” Another segment
reads, “The marriage of Natalie Taylor and Joshua Taylor was terminated on June 17, 2007, due to the death of Joshua Taylor.”

More days pass. My mom, Hales, and Moo come with me to my obstetrician’s office. I called and told them what happened. There are six doctors in the practice. Today I am seeing Dr. Ford. I’ve never met Dr. Ford before.

We crowd into the small examination room. I lie on the table. My mom sits next to me. Moo and Hales stand in the corner. A tall, slender man with thick black glasses slinks in the door. He has a large forehead and looks awkwardly at the four of us. He doesn’t say anything. I take a deep breath. We all sit in silence for a moment and wait for Dr. Ford to say something. Or are we supposed to say something?
Great
, I think to myself. Of course the one time I need a doctor who has a sense of emotional connection, I get the scientist. This jackass has no idea what he has just walked into. My throat starts to tighten at the thought of my mother and sister trying to explain what has happened to me. Finally the silence breaks.

“I know,” he says in a clear, soft voice. “I know what happened.” He pauses. “I’m very sorry to hear about your loss.”

“Thank you,” I mutter.

A few moments of silence go by. Then he starts to talk.

“How’s your brain?” he asks. He stands still as he says this.

“It’s okay,” I shrug.

“That’s a lie.” He then slides down the wall behind him and sits on the floor, still holding his clipboard. In any other context, it would be completely bizarre and inappropriate for any doctor to sit on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest. But right now, it feels completely right. He has put all of us at ease. He just wants us to know that this is not a normal doctor’s visit and he realizes that.

He goes on to tell me that my body is fine. Everything is
moving along wonderfully. He says I can get an ultrasound today or any other day I want. I tell him I’m nervous. I’m nervous because my whole body is in so much pain, it’s hard to imagine something growing inside of it. I have this strange anxiety that my grief will somehow physically manifest itself and attack the baby. He does not acknowledge this as a crazy emotion, which I deeply appreciate. I tell him I haven’t been eating as much as I used to, my appetite has decreased substantially. He says, “Natalie, there are women on this earth who eat dirt and ice for nine months and deliver perfectly healthy babies. You will be fine. Your body knows exactly what it needs to do.” He pauses. “But you need to work on your brain. Your brain isn’t fine, and it shouldn’t be.”

I feel the tears well up in my eyes.

He asks me a few questions. Then he takes a card out of his breast pocket:
DR. ELLEN GURIZA, PHD. PSYCHOLOGIST
.

“I’m not suggesting that you go see her,” he says. “I am instructing you, as your obstetrician, that you
have
to go see her. The sooner the better. Call her today. If she doesn’t answer the phone, leave a message and say that I referred you and that you would like to come in as soon as possible.” I nod. He looks at my mom.

“Make sure she does this. It is
imperative
that she does this.” She nods too.

I don’t go back to my house. I stay at my parents’. I sleep on the futon in my old room every night. Maggie sleeps with me every night. Mathews doesn’t go back to work. He spends the night in my parents’ basement for over a week. He and I never talk about Josh, but in a strange way he is the most comforting person I have. He is the only person who can make me smile. A few days after the funeral we went out to dinner with our friends
from out of town. Mathews and I sat next to each other. I told him if he was still single at thirty and hadn’t found a man yet (he’s gay), we should get married for the tax break. We could be Will and Grace, but I’d be a much more pathetic, less attractive version of Grace. Maggie overheard us and said she wanted to marry Mathews too; we’d have to flip for it. After she turned away, Mathews leaned toward me and said, “I’ll marry you, but I am
not
marrying Maggie.”

During the days before the funeral, people kept dropping off food. Platters and platters of fresh fruit, cheese, lunch meats. It was so generous. We never had to think about food. After a few days Dubs (Moo’s husband, David—we call him Dubs) asked if we could do something different for dinner—he was “kind of sick of cold cuts.” Mathews and I heard him say this and exchanged a look, a “what a jerk” look. Later that night, Mathews found me in my room, lay down with me, and said, “Nat, are you so sick of cold cuts or what?” Mathews provides me with glimpses of relief. A few seconds where I smile. These moments are nearly impossible otherwise.

I lie on the futon in my old room. I cry hysterically. I heave and sob. I can hardly see. My mom is there next to me. She cries too. Her hand is on my head.

She says, “If I could take this away from you I would.” I know she would.

“If I could do this instead of you, I would do it in a second.” She sounds desperate, as if she is truly negotiating with someone.

“I never want to be alone again,” I say, through my heaves of air. She shakes her head. “You don’t have to be. You don’t have to be.”

I look at the ceiling. I try to wipe my face off. “I never want to go back to my house and I never want to be alone again.”

The last book I read with my eleventh-grade class before school got out a few weeks ago was
The Color Purple
. In the beginning of the book there is an epigraph based on Stevie Wonder’s lyrics that reads: “Show me how to do like you, show me how to do it.” After reading the book, it is obvious that the epigraph speaks to the larger themes of self-discovery. The main character, Celie, is a poor black woman living in rural Georgia at the turn of the twentieth century. She is physically, sexually, emotionally, and psychologically abused. But she “finds herself” and she has a sexual, emotional, and religious reawakening owing to the help of some tremendous friends. People show her how to do things. I think of Celie all the time. I think of that epigraph every day.
Will someone please just show me how to do this?
I want to go around asking people who have gone through this, “Okay, what is the second month like? What is the third month like? How about six months? What happens after a year? What did you do to make yourself feel better? What did you eat? What did you drink? How often did you pee? How do I make myself feel like I’m not going to throw up all the time? What movies did you watch? What books did you read? Who did you talk to? Can I have their numbers? Just tell me how you did it, and then I can do it.”