Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [33]
Twenty-four hours? “Ma’am. My wife hasn’t even been dead twelve hours. Is there any way we can talk about this in the morning?”
“Sure. We’ll call you back at nine a.m.”
I was pissed off and hung up the phone. “Twenty-four hours?” I asked out loud, waking my mom.
“What, honey?”
“Nothing, Mom. Go back to sleep.”
I understood the time sensitivity, but all I could think about was the lack of sensitivity shown to me. A more spiteful person would have told them to fuck off, but as I tried to get back to sleep, I thought about what Liz would want in this situation. We had never talked about organ donation, but she had a donor sticker on her driver’s license and had encouraged me to place one on mine as well. I knew what I had to do, and before I passed out again, I took a little comfort in knowing that Liz’s death might actually help others live.
My phone rang again the next morning at nine o’clock on the dot, and I knew who it was. To spare Liz’s parents the pain of having to listen to one side of the negotiation for their daughter’s organs and tissue, I excused myself from the breakfast table and took the call in the lobby of the hospital.
I slumped down in a chair near the information desk and started answering the woman’s questions. No, Liz didn’t have any tattoos. Yes, we had traveled extensively, including to countries with plenty of blood-borne illnesses and mad cow disease. No, she was not an intravenous drug user. Yes, we’d had unprotected sex in the last year, pointing out the fact that she died the day after giving birth. No, she didn’t have hepatitis, AIDS, or any other diseases. Yes, I’d be willing to donate any organs or tissue deemed usable. With each question and subsequent answer came another wave of nausea. This was exactly why I wasn’t eating.
I watched as nurses and doctors walked through the lobby on their way to whatever part of the hospital they worked in; I was paying special attention to the female employees. I kept thinking, I need to marry her. This wasn’t about needing a second income, love, or sex. And it certainly wasn’t about replacing Liz. It was a reaction to my fear of raising a premature baby on my own, and my inability to be a good dad—and now mom, too—to my daughter. It wasn’t really even about me; I was convinced that Madeline needed a woman in her life as soon as possible so she didn’t grow up with only the parental influence of her derelict father. In my estimation, my mind was worth roughly half of what Liz’s was. Shit. Madeline has one quarter of a parent.
The bad thing about the Internet is that word travels fast. So fast, in fact, that the day after Liz died, my phone didn’t stop ringing, and the red light on my BlackBerry blinked almost constantly. Of course, the great thing about the Internet is that word travels fast, which meant my support system was suddenly enormous and stretched across the globe. I heard from high school friends I hadn’t spoken to in twelve years telling me they remembered meeting Liz once and how they never forgot her smile. My friends from college contacted me, all shocked, in disbelief that someone as lively and vivacious as Liz could be dead. Biraj called from South Korea in tears, unable to say anything. My graduate school roommate listened to me cry into the phone for at least thirty minutes. Family members I hadn’t heard from since the previous Christmas called to share memories of Liz. I heard from colleagues and friends in India and the Philippines, most of whom had never met Liz, calling and writing to tell me that they remembered the way my face lit up when I talked about her.
Standing outside the hospital, the sunshine of a beautiful Southern California morning unable to divert my attention from the darkest moment of my life, I talked on the phone to one of my oldest friends, Alex. I’d known Alex since he was the new kid in our third-grade classroom. We had the low-maintenance kind of friendship that was sustained by a call or an e-mail once or twice a year. I hadn