Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [67]
When we came home, Cate had left a note about her whereabouts and her journal, which she allowed us to read. Her journal was more pained this time than I remembered it being. Her brother’s comfort with himself, which was so hard-won, seemed to her to be a part of his being, and she longed for it: the wide respect and popularity, the easy way he seemed to take it all in stride. I had to remind her of weekends he sat with us, when his friends, all older, all drivers, had forgotten to pick him up or assumed someone else would for a party or a concert, remind her of his disappointments and frustrations. I hadn’t any doubt of the end of Cate’s story, but it was natural that she should.
At church that Sunday, I missed him terribly. As soon as I sat down in our pew I knew I could not do it. I left and walked the blocks around the church until midway through the service, when John came and found me and we went on to the cemetery. Another family, whose pretty daughter Emily had died on the same stretch of road as Wade the previous spring break, were fixing a tire that had split when it caught a brick on the narrow roads in Oakwood. They had been up to visit Wade’s grave. My parents were at the grave, which was good, except that I did not want them to see my despair. We stayed on after they left. A woman came to put flowers at the grave of her mother and her brother, but she could not find them; she had forgotten where they were buried. It broke my heart for them, and it reminded me of our blessings. I could go home.
More happens in a cemetery than you might imagine. A man, maybe my age, but worn—as I was becoming—came one day wearing his work clothes and carrying his small dog in his arms. He came to visit his father’s grave in a section of the cemetery near Wade. He came more often than anyone else around us. Since I had already been to the cemetery earlier that day, I had left John alone at Wade’s grave to pray, and I walked, picking up some of the sticks that remained from a storm. The only tree in the man’s section of the cemetery had fallen in that storm, and it had fallen across the grave of his father. His pain and helplessness were overwhelming. I made a small bouquet from the flowers at Wade’s grave and took them to him. He usually brought something for the grave, but that day he was empty in every way. Sometimes we pressed on as if we were not weakened, and then we saw ourselves in someone else.
CHAPTER 8
RALEIGH, BREATHING AGAIN
AFTER THE WELL opened, John spent more time at his office. He agreed to represent a young girl who had been critically injured as the result of a defective pool drain. It was good for him, I knew, and the girl and her family surely needed him. We had been used to giving him up to the families he represented for however long he was needed. It helped that Cate and I had the WELL to absorb us. Cate would come over after school—the WELL is across the street from Broughton—to tutor older students in math, which, I have to say, they took pretty well considering she was a tiny freshman. These students who came to the WELL were strong; they just wanted a chance, and they grabbed the opportunity there. We set up hundreds of e-mail accounts in those first weeks. They started in right away making their own web pages. Seventy-five to a hundred students would come each day to use twenty-two computers, and Matt and I learned their names and what classes they were taking. We would meet their parents, and sometimes we stood in as their parents. No, you can’t pull up websites with crude lyrics. Or Try this search engine for that assignment on rare diseases. Crystal wrote well but got no encouragement, so I agreed to read her work and help her improve. I bothered her all fall until she applied to college. No one else was going to do it. And it wasn’t just