Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [79]
Putting his things in folders, taking the steps to put them away, was much harder than I had anticipated. Well, in truth, I had not thought at all. Stupid me. It was no consolation that he would have had it all filed by now, in his desk or his closet. He would have thrown out most of the mail, although I could not. I finally stopped, unable to do anything. But John was due back the next day, and he would be tired, so I had to steel myself to finish it. There was no easy way around any of this. After I finished, I drove to the cemetery. The rains were headed toward us, but it was bright and breezy when I first got there. At Wade’s grave, the stone basket of flowers, a large metal angel, four smaller angels, and one of the potted plants were missing. Someone had tried to move the large angel that replaced the one my sister had brought (which had been stolen earlier), but it was too heavy. The mud from their hands had left marks on the angel’s face.
I cannot express the way this violation made me feel. I had failed to protect this boy when he lived. I loved him, yes, and he had known that, yes. But my first responsibility had been to keep him free from harm, and I did not do that. I do not feel guilty. I did all I knew to do. It simply was not enough. And now I could not even protect his place. I stood and cried and screamed. A couple walking came to console me, and Chuck, the cemetery director, came and sat with me. At first I was glad that at least they had left a mark—that large angel would have their fingerprints.
I called the police and then told Chuck to go home. The rain started to move in. It would wash away the fingerprints, I thought. So I took two umbrellas from the trunk and arranged them to cover the statue. To hold them down, I covered the umbrellas with a sheet and then a quilt. (Fortunately I clean my trunk about as often as I straighten my study.) Then I sat on the bench and finished my prayers. The police did not come. I called again. It was nearing five, and the gate would be locked soon. The rain was steady now; there had been accidents; no one was available. I persisted, and they sent someone.
It turns out you cannot get fingerprints from that surface. The wait had been fruitless. I put the umbrellas and linens back in my car. More had been taken from us, of course, than simply the trinkets that comfort us at the grave. I was so tired of being impotent, of being reminded I was impotent. And I was just plain tired.
For John’s next trip to Washington, I went with him. But this time it wasn’t for the Senate. This time it was to give out a college scholarship to the national winner of the contest in which Wade had been a winner the previous year. We sat in the Old Post Office while bright high school students ate their lunches, and we talked with the two women who had managed the children the year before. Carolyn Naifeh, who had been Geoff Cowan’s assistant at Voice of America, and Ann Orr, who worked with Sheldon Hackney at the National Endowment for the Humanities, did not know then what great friends of ours they would become. All they knew was these were the sad parents of that sweet boy from North Carolina they had met a year before. So their faces were something to remember when John told them that he was running for the United States Senate. John had told me about the faces at the state Democratic Party headquarters when he had made a similar statement, but now I saw what he meant. The little side glances to one another might as well have been accompanied by shrugs. We laugh about it now.
Soon there would be the graduation of Wade’s high