Ten Degrees of Reckoning (16 page)

We often went out on the deck of Babe and Ian’s house to enjoy the staggeringly beautiful panoramic views. Looking in a northeast direction, we could easily see the Poor Knights cluster of islands, the remains of a once massive volcano. Farther to the south, from the back of their house, we could see the Hen and Chicken Islands. It all seemed peaceful, and Judy didn’t mind the ocean views, except when a ship would steam through and take a shortcut between any of the islets and the coast, rather than take the ocean route farther offshore. Then she would get agitated, and we would go to safer territory, far from the sight of water. We went on walks around the property. The pohutukawa trees were no longer in blossom when I arrived, but the tuis, birds native to New Zealand, loved the nectar of the yellow and golden flowers on the kowhai trees. Closer to and surrounding the cottage were the ubiquitous flax, the manuka scrub, and the cabbage trees that looked like funny palms.

We went on a lot of tiki tours, the New Zealand equivalent of little adventures and side trips. We had an ongoing contest like a game of Ping-Pong; we’d throw each other sentences that contained a word or phrase unfamiliar to us but part of Judy’s adopted country’s vernacular. Since there were no words that would ever adequately describe what had happened to her family, why not try a new vocabulary that completely disconnected us from any of the events? “Chuffed” and “knackered” and “ranch sliders” entered our newfound dialogue. Drinking was incompatible with all the medications Judy was taking, but that didn’t stop us from introducing our new favorite phrase into every conversation: “Yikes, I had one glass of wine too many, and biffed a chunky last night.”

We dressed up, put on name tags (Fifi and Trixie), and went to Ian’s place of business to serve cookies to a seniors’ group taking a tour of his Natural Wood Creations factory and shop.

We went with Babe far up north to visit a woman who wanted to give Judy a weaving loom. We went with Ian to a fishing tournament banquet, with Judy dressed in a swordfish costume the entire time, only her red shoes visible. We went on a fund-raising 5K run with more than a hundred staff members from Whangarei Hospital. In repose, when Judy thought no one was watching, her face would collapse and she would look ravaged and absolutely haunted.

On one of our early-morning three-mile walks, we reached Wellington Bay and lay down in the grass at Matapouri Beach. It was a beautiful day with a clear blue sky and puffy clouds above. I held her hand.

“Do you ever see shapes in the clouds?” she asked.

“Not really, at least, not often, but John has taught me how to tell what kind of weather’s coming by their contours,” I said.

“No, I mean something else. On one of the first walks I took here, I saw in the formation of the clouds a caravan of carts, like on a merry-go-round, but in a straight line. Mike was in the first one, and he looked happy,” Judy said. “Mike said to me, ‘Don’t worry, Judith, we’re all together.’”

She went on, “He was pulling the second cart, and there was Ben, grinning, and he told me he was having fun, and told me to have fun, too. Ben was pulling the third cart, with Annie in it, and Annie was pulling a fourth cart, which was empty. Annie said to me, ‘This will be for you, Mommy. But take your time, Mommy; we’ll wait for you forever.’”

Judy and I were both sobbing by then, and I cradled her in my arms.

“I wouldn’t even get out of bed each morning if it weren’t for Mike,” Judy said. “He comes to me and tells me to get up, be strong, and be happy.”

Whenever we were home for dinner at the cottage, we ate on our laps in the lounge. One night I suggested that it might be more comfortable for Judy’s back if she were sitting at a table.

“We could go to the next auction and get a small collapsible one,” I suggested.

“No, I can’t stand the thought of sitting down properly for a meal, in my own place, and no one fighting to sit beside me.”

In the early months of Judy’s survival, it was almost impossible for her to take comfort in kind words and deeds. She had great medical care, social services, physiotherapy, medications, and sessions with a psychiatrist, but a cure has yet to be discovered for heartbreak of this magnitude. Some days she was actually happy, delighted by her new surroundings and social activities. Some days she felt she had been condemned to go on living. Some days she just willed herself to live.

Fifteen

Realities

IT WAS APRIL 1996, THE DAY AFTER JUDY’S BIRTHDAY, the first one without her family, the first one with no cause for celebration. But she had been crying less and sleeping more. She felt she could finally manage the long trip to California. Perhaps it was time to seek comfort in the United States.

At Los Angeles International Airport everything seemed so familiar, but where was Mike? He should be picking her up. That was the problem with returning. Everything was too familiar. Everything reminded her of her family. Judy bent over in agony. Strangers had familiar accents and wore clothes like the ones her family would choose. She kept thinking she saw Mike or Ben or Annie among the crowds. Judy realized she was completely unprepared to resume life in her home country.

The Sleavins still had a house in the Santa Clarita Valley, about thirty-five miles northwest of Los Angeles. It was rented out but full of their belongings. Just before they left, Mike and Judy had built a shed in the backyard for storage. They put Sheetrock on the inside and assigned a wall for each person. Ben and Annie stood against their walls while Mike drew an outline of each of them. Judy helped them fill in the outlines, painting the outfits they were wearing, discussing with excitement how big they might be when they returned. Then there were the messages they had scribbled, to be read when they completed their voyage. The burden of that memory made it impossible for Judy to return to her home.

On September 11, 2004, at an anniversary memorial service in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg talked to the families still grieving for the ones they had lost in the World Trade Center. A portion of his talk went something like this: “We call a child who loses a parent an orphan, a man who loses a wife a widower, a woman who loses her husband a widow. But for a parent who loses a child, there is no name, because there are no words to describe that kind of pain.”

Sixteen

The Burden of Memory

NO ONE WOULD HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF SOMEONE IN Judy’s circumstances had succumbed to behavior that was out of the ordinary or even extreme. In fact, there were a few by-standers ready to set the stage for a dysfunctional performance. She vividly remembers the ones who would plague her with unfortunate questions such as “How do you get up in the morning?” “How can you keep on going?” and especially “Why didn’t you go back for Ben?”

Mostly, though, people were concerned and deferential when she returned, but she felt unable to respond to their offers of support and reassurance. There was no solace for her anywhere in the United States. At the homes of relatives, she looked away from the framed family photographs on the walls. As she drove past the streets of strangers, she imagined cozy domestic lives, with the evidence of tricycles and balls and pets in the yards. It was impossible to go into a neighborhood store without remembering Annie’s excitement over stuffed animals or Ben’s leisurely examination of all the Lego sets.

Judy felt she had taken a giant step backward. In New Zealand, her psychiatrist and therapists had regularly questioned her about any suicidal feelings she might have. She had answered that her worst times were in the mornings, when she awakened with such strong memories of the children. Each morning she had to make a concerted effort to get out of bed, but she had not experienced the desire to kill herself. She wondered, though, if it was the result of the antidepressant medication or all the attention she received. She was aware that it had been enormously helpful to be in a new country where she had to forge new pathways, a country unrelated to her own history or reminiscences.

Now, in the United States, Judy realized her mental well-being was precarious. She didn’t want to be assaulted by the memories of her old way of life at every turn. Visits with old and dear friends weren’t reassuring; the conversations with them reinforced just how different she had become. Although both her mother and Mike’s mother invited Judy to stay with them, she knew that would only remind her of what she had lost. She didn’t want to live in her old house or her old neighborhood. She didn’t even want to live in homes where her family had visited on holidays, or want to sleep in the beds they had slept in on those visits. For the first several months at home, she shut out Mike’s family, especially her beloved nieces and nephews. Seeing them would trigger memories of the shrieks of laughter as they played with her own children. Her sense of what could bring peace had radically changed since the collision.

Aside from New Zealand, the only place Judy thought she might find any peace was with Tim Rooney, Mike’s best friend. Tim was more than a friend really; he had been an unofficial sibling in the Sleavin home in Tacoma when Mike was growing up. The two boys went to the same school, and Mike’s dad had taught both boys how to sail. When it was time for college, Mike and Tim decided to attend the same one, Western Washington University in Bellingham, so they could be roommates. Judy had known Tim almost as long as she knew Mike. And she couldn’t forget Mike’s final advice in the dinghy, while she, Annie, and Mike were still together, hanging on: “If anything happens to me, call Tim. Don’t worry, Judith, he’ll look after you and Annie.”

What Judy had wanted then, and what she wanted now, was to be with her husband. She wanted him to hold her, and to cry and grieve with her. Who but Mike would be able to comprehend and share in the depth of this terrible mourning? Only Mike would have the same hole in his heart, the same numbness in his brain, the same barren future without the children as she.

Judy thought Tim might be the only living person who could right her capsized life. Over the years, just as he had informally adopted Mike as his brother, he adopted Judy and the children as his family. He would be able to appreciate at least some of the immensity of her loss. He was brainy and handsome and sweet-natured, but he was often tormented with episodes of depression. Everyone worried that Judy might have to look after Tim.

In anticipation of Judy’s arrival, Tim called me with the request that I use my professional contacts to set up an appointment with a highly recommended psychiatrist in Seattle, a forty-minute drive from Tim’s home in Tacoma. He told me he was more than willing to provide refuge and companionship.

“I owe her, Hester. I loved Michael, and I can only hope that when I die I’m as happy and content doing what I have chosen. Judith helped him fulfill his cruising dream, and maybe I can help her heal,” he said. “Actually, I could use some healing myself. I wrecked a wall in my home when I got the news.”

Judy moved into Tim’s house on Sunset Drive in Tacoma, with its beautiful view of South Puget Sound and the snow-topped Olympic Mountains. They took long walks every day. They both cried as he told her stories about Mike’s childhood. In the evenings Tim played the piano or they watched videos or she told him stories about the
Melinda Lee—
not stories of the collision but of the bedtime rituals, of Ben’s many questions, of Annie’s wanting a puppy. Tim’s yard was large and untended, overgrown with blackberry bushes and weeds, and Judy liked it that way. It made his home seem inhospitable and forbidding. She had found her hideout. Judy felt comforted and safe, and we all felt relieved. At first, they settled into an unstructured routine. Judy woke up late in the morning, they ate at unusual hours, and they left the house only to take walks, buy groceries, or rent videos. Tim had no clocks in his otherwise well-furnished home.

Tim took her to her first appointment with the psychiatrist in Seattle. That evening, in the midst of their familiar routine of eating dinner and watching a video, Judy began to sob. This time she could not stop. Perhaps she had delved into new territory in her therapy. Perhaps it was the movie itself. There was a scene in which a young girl is surprised with a birthday party. Judy can’t recall if it was the sight of the cake and candles or the appearance of the little girl, but she remembers wailing in anguish and then screaming, the same inhuman, unstoppable screams she had screamed in the dinghy. Tim rocked her until the screaming stopped, and he held her while she sobbed, “They killed my babies, they killed my husband, and now they have really killed me.”

All those feelings she had attempted to fend off—that her life held no meaning, that it was pointless to heal, that she had survived for nothing—came rushing in. She had nothing to celebrate, nothing to mourn. She told me later that if it had not been for Tim’s patience, she probably would have killed herself. Her psychiatrist wanted to hospitalize her, but Judy was adamant about staying with Tim. She couldn’t sleep, so she paced. She couldn’t eat. Tim doled out all her medications, one by one. He locked up every pill in the house, and he stayed close by. When she did lie down, he brought a mattress upstairs to her room and slept on the floor next to her bed. The psychiatrist insisted on seeing Judy seven days a week, and Tim was there in the waiting room at every appointment.

She managed to muddle through her days and gradually she acquired new coping skills. Judy and Tim, with their usual humor, assigned categories for the level of care he was providing according to her mental state: babysitting was at the bottom rung, adult supervision meant a moderate amount of attention, and twenty-four-hour surveillance was full guardianship. She loved Tim’s irreverence. He was the perfect protector and her willing partner in deflecting the serious issues with mockery and laughter. Judy and Tim both had a kind of impudence that got them through the daily chore of living.

Eventually, Judy was able to decrease her appointments with the psychiatrist to several times a week, but there was a profound shift in her sense of well-being. In New Zealand, she had been frightened to take her first shower, frightened to climb the five stairs to the pool for her first hydrotherapy, frightened to leave the hospital. With each step, though, her anxiety had decreased, so she wasn’t aware she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder until it became evident on a motor home excursion through parts of the South Island, a month before she returned to the United States.