Lessons About Life in a Story of Death
By Alicia Gallegos
Standing in the grass behind the Little League field, I was hot and thirsty. Around me, the fund-raiser was alive with activity. Children yelling for hot dogs, face painters calling out prices, volunteers walking by with snow cones and a softball game, drawing ear-splitting cheers.
The temperature had to be around 90 degrees, and I just had to be wearing a black shirt. Yeah, that was a great idea, I thought, using my reporter notebook as a fan.
I kept one eye on the boy and the other on the grandmother. He was easy to spot in his dark green jersey and knee-high baseball socks. He must be sweltering in the heat, I thought, but seemed fine as he raced through the crowds. The grandmother sat on the bleachers under a big green umbrella. She was sitting next to her youngest daughter, who seemed to project this protective barrier around her. How exactly was I going to approach her? I wondered. Dark sunglasses hid her eyes, but I could see in my mind the lines of anguish underneath.
All the advice I was getting about reporting as a fellow for The Poynter Institute was pounding in my head. I told myself I was scanning the crowd in order to write down everything I was seeing. I told myself I was just waiting for the perfect moment to corner the kid. But really, I knew I was stalling for time and thinking, "Why would I want to talk to a reporter, if my daughter was dead?"
* * *
I did some meticulous reporting finding the little blurb in the newsletter. I called the number in the fund-raiser ad, looked up the name on the Web, found some articles and her obituary. Beth was 35 when she died suddenly of leukemia and left behind a son, Jonathan. I looked up the names in the "survived by" paragraph, and, easy as pie, there they were in the phonebook.
But hearing the voices on the phone was one thing. Seeing the grief up close was another.
I pictured the boy as I drove to the fund-raiser. He was 11, almost 12 they told me on the phone. Twelve was an odd age, that line so close to teen-ager but still edged in childhood. When I was a kid, I was so intense about everything, so dramatic. As early as 7, I was petrified of something happening to my parents. I have no idea why. Nothing happened to provoke that fear. Raised Catholic, I used to pray every night. Usually an "Our Father" or two, sometimes a "Hail Mary" or "Glory Be." But always my own personal prayer at the end, whispered words I had thought of all by myself: "And dear God, please let my mom, dad, brother, and me all die together, so we can all go to Heaven together, Amen."
I don't remember when I thought up that part of the prayer. I only know I said it for many years as a child and that it was the most important of all the words I prayed. It was at those words that I would squeeze my hands even tighter, making sure, if anything, God heard that last part.
Even as life and reality told me that families didn't usually die together, that I would grow up and most likely move away, and my mom and dad and brother wouldn't always be around, I still prayed that prayer every night, closed my eyes and bowed my head, pleading. There was no way I could ever live alone, without them.
I don't remember when I stopped the words of that prayer. It seemed to slip off the end of my "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys" some time ago. The thought seems silly now.
* * *
When I arrived at the Little League field, I expected to see a little boy huddled in a corner, knees pulled to his chest, crying. I prepared myself for a traumatized and uncooperative kid who would barely speak. When I arrived, I followed volunteers into the community center and they pointed in the direction of two children sprinting across the floor. The one in the lead was laughing and screaming. "Johnny," they yelled and the kid stopped mid-race. "When's your birthday?" they asked, and the boy's face lit up proudly. "July 8," he said before dashing out the door. That was him?
I watched him move through the crowd, unable to sit still for a second. He was running through the field then throwing a tennis ball against a wall then disappearing into a mass of children. I stopped him just as he was about to climb up a slide, and he surprised me by actually stopping.
Children grieve differently, a Poynter instructor later told me. His mother had been gone for a month, a lifetime for a child. And when he spoke about his mom he didn't cry, he smiled. There was this glint in his eyes that I figured would be dimmed; the shine and mischievous grin of a little boy. He talked about playing catch with his mom and going to Burger King. He spoke of her in present tense like she was right there in the bleachers. Why do you think she liked baseball? Because she loves me so much, he said.
He was a child, I thought, but he knew more than was reflected in his actions. Going on 12 and about to enter the realm of adolescence. He showed me the friction that comes when grief plays with youth.
* * *
Taking a deep breath, I trudged over to the bleachers, to ask Beth's mother if we could take pictures of the family. I told her we were doing a story about her daughter, but instead of the coldness I imagined, she took my hands in hers and held them gently. Oh, thank you, she said. Thank you for doing this. And she looked at me with the sincerest blue eyes.
The day after the fund-raiser, we sat on her porch sifting through photographs of Beth. There Beth was as a teen-ager, hands folded in her prom dress, and, later, when her son was born, with the weary eyes of a new mother.
Beth's mother talked about her daughter easily, tilted her head back remembering. She only paused at times, to wipe her the tears. I expected the breath of loss to touch me somehow, expected her grief to spread like fog around us. But we talked for hours and the air only became more comforting. I could almost see Beth charging out the door, ice chest in arm and calling her son to hurry up, before they were late for the game.
Beth's mother told me the family would go on somehow. Jonathan was entering seventh grade and had a baseball tournament coming up. We walked together down the driveway as the boy sped by on his bike. She thanked me again for choosing them for my article, for finding a story in Beth's life. I thanked her right back.
* * *
Driving away from the family's house, I wanted to feel sad. The sun had faded into darkness and purple clouds surfaced. The rain fell almost on cue with the mood.
I thought of Beth. How I had found her in that tiny blurb in the newsletter. How the blurb had transformed into a person, and onto a family and through a story I would've never known.
But I felt something closer to gratefulness, centered in the profundity that comes with life. There I was crossing the bridge above the gulf's waters, passing palm trees foreign in my Colorado hometown, going back to a program chock-full of challenges and obstacles. This was living.
I guess I had thought following the trail of someone's death would have taught me more about dying. But the story of Beth had made me take a good look at life. Every part of it. The drops pelting my windshield, the road winding in front of me and the blank computer screen waiting, just waiting for me to begin.
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