“He gets fuzzier in my mind.” Duncan gulps as he grabs for air to fill his constricted lungs. “Sometimes, I can’t remember him on my own. Like he’s only a story someone told me, not a real person. Why, Mommy? Why?”
Duncan hasn’t called her Mommy in years. She pulls him closer, his shoulder blades taut under her hands. She inhales his twelve-year-old-boy scent, drenched with sweat and sadness.
This is the truth of their lives: An enormous loss has reshaped all of them, forcing the kids to grow up in ways they shouldn’t have, at least not so soon. While she would give anything to be able to take away Duncan’s grief, to lessen his pain would be, in some ways, dishonest. What Diana can do—what shehasto do—is validate his emotions. He needs to believe the parent he has left is there for him.
“Why did your dad die? I don’t know. He should be with us, helping you and your sister with your impossible math homework, teaching Phoebe to ride a bike, and, of course, playing basketball with you.”
As Duncan’s breathing calms, Diana slides her thumb along his cheek. “There’s nothing we can do to change the fact he’s not here.What we can do is keep going and look out for one another. Remember your dad loved us, and loves us still, wherever he is.”
Duncan sniffs. “Where do you think he is?”
This isn’t the first time Duncan has asked this question. A few weeks before he died, Tom was having a good day, so Diana set him up in the backyard, on a chaise under the shade from their beech tree. Despite the eighty-degree temperature, she wrapped him in a blanket and put on his head the straw sun hat with a lavender ribbon she wore to the beach.
“I look like a farmer,” Tom said, as she straightened the blanket around him.
“Not at all, love. In fact, you’re wearing the latest in vacation sun hat fashion. No self-respecting farmer would wear this to toil in the fields.” Diana bent down under the brim to kiss him, her lips gentle against his.
As Tom touched her cheek, Duncan burst out of the house, theBoston Globesports section in hand. “Can I sit with you?”
“Sure, buddy,” Tom replied, patting the edge of the chaise. “Like my hat?”
“That hat is dumb.”
“Duncan!” Diana said. They were all tentative around Tom, around each other, too. They chose their words carefully, didn’t criticize or make noise, and didn’t think beyond the next few minutes.
“You should wear mine.” Duncan settled his Celtics ball cap on Tom’s head, tossing the straw hat to Diana. “Better, right?”
“Much better. Thanks.” Tom looked at Diana with a faint smirk.
“I’ll get you two a snack.” Diana paused on the top of the deck stairs to watch Duncan and Tom huddle over the newspaper, already oblivious to her. Increasingly, she could see they were getting closer to the end, and that she and the kids weren’t ready. She worried Tom sitting outside would confuse Duncan and Phoebe. They might believe he was improving; they might hope he’d make it.
In the kitchen, Diana poured two glasses of lemonade and placed four of her mother’s chocolate chip cookies on a plate. They were Tom’s favorite, though he ate so little. She returned outside, but the conversation between Duncan and Tom froze her on the other side of the tree.
“You feeling good today? Maybe better than yesterday?” Duncan’s questions for his father were full of longing.
“Duncan, I’m not going to get better,” Tom said, softly, so softly. “I love you, buddy. More than anything else.”
“Even more than basketball?”
“Even more than basketball.”
Duncan sobbed, the first time since Tom’s diagnosis, and a stinging pain filled Diana’s chest. She wavered, the tray shifting in her hands, and the lemonade spilled, drenching the cookies.
Tom held Duncan to his chest. The more Duncan shook, the tighter Tom’s arms grew around him, until Duncan quieted, Tom’s mouth at his ear murmuring words Diana couldn’t hear.
Eventually, Duncan sat up, wiping his hand across his face. “What happens? After, I mean.”
“I’m not sure. But I’ll be with you. You can talk to me. I’ll listen, though I won’t be able to respond.” Tom took Duncan’s hand in his. “I will always, always love you. That doesn’t change because you can’t see me. I promise.”
Standing on the basketball court with Duncan now, Diana remembers how people said the acute pain she and the kids experienced when Tom first died would dissipate. It would get easier, everyone said. She’s still waiting.
“I’d like to believe your dad is somewhere good, where he can shoot hoops and watchStar Wars. Maybe he’s still with us, listening and hoping we won’t be this sad for too much longer. Maybe he’s here on this basketball court with us. No matter where he is, he loves us.”
“This sucks,” Duncan says, pulling away from her to stand on his own. He gestures in the direction of his basketball, hidden in the shadowy snow piles along the court. “Dad gave that ball to me for my sixthbirthday. I loved it so much I slept with it next to my bed. That Paul Pierce poster I have in my room? Dad gave it to me, too. I have all this stuff he gave me—but I don’t have him. What the hell, Mom?”
Diana lets “hell” go by without comment. “The weeks after your dad died, I walked around our house taking an inventory of our possessions, like our books and his CD collection and the snowblower. These objects were here, all around us. And your dad wasn’t. I was so mad about that.
“I was especially furious about a bottle of hot sauce. Your dad used it only once. Too spicy, he said, even for him. I found it in the back of the fridge. It made me so angry. I thought about driving the car over it but was afraid I’d puncture the tires. Instead, I put it in a Ziploc bag and smashed it to pieces with the hammer one night after you and Phoebe went to bed.”
