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please try not to cry

(says the husband who can’t

stop).

instead

think of liz.

remember

that laugh.

that smile.

that love.

i know i will.

I tore the sheet of paper from the notebook, handed it to Sonja who accepted it with no reaction, and walked out of the room. I had never written anything like this before. Sure, I wrote term papers in college and graduate school, and I wrote a couple of record reviews for a music magazine, but I had never shared my feelings in such an explicitly personal way. Getting those words down left me with an incredible sense of peace. They would end up on the back of Liz’s funeral program.

That afternoon I found myself sitting back in the common room of the hospital’s hotel. Though not reserved for us, it had become our de facto property based on the sheer number of family and friends who camped out there in the days following Liz’s death. We had outgrown the waiting room in the maternity ward. Tables, countertops, and even portions of the floor were blanketed with fruit baskets, boxes of cold pizza, cookie platters, and all of the other offerings brought in by well-​wishers hoping to keep my family and friends fed.

It had been three days since Liz died, and I still hadn’t eaten anything, despite everyone’s insistence. I was so sick of the questions about my food intake that I started lying to everyone who asked. No one seemed to understand that an empty stomach meant only dry heaves, and at this point I preferred dry heaves to the feeling of vomit burning through my throat and nostrils.

I sat there on the floor, working with our friends and family to sort through the five hundred plus photos of Liz that I’d printed, arranging them thematically on the photo boards to be displayed at her funeral. There was one with photos of the Goodmans; one with photos of her extended family; two with photos of her friends; three with photos of the two of us; and one with random images of Liz all by herself. Most of us found comfort in revisiting the moments captured in the photos, but Candee and Deb couldn’t bear to see the images, so instead they sequestered themselves in their room. Just a few days removed from the worst day of our lives, we were all reeling, but Liz’s death was hitting us differently; witnessing Candee’s and Deb’s reactions in this situation indicated to me that we weren’t all going to deal with Liz’s death in the same way.

I was still in a haze, but I knew that I couldn’t lock myself in a room, nor could I be alone—I had to be around people. Though surrounded by those I loved, I found myself watching everyone somberly search the corners of our room for anything but the eye contact of another human being. The whole scene made me feel as though I was going insane, so I left the room in search of something that I knew would make me smile. I went to see my daughter several times that night, sometimes between feedings. Even asleep, she was the best distraction there was.

Chapter 11

i’m not standing here,

at the front of

this room,

looking out at

these people,

trying to think of

something to say.

no.

i’m standing on a mountain in the himalayas.

i’m taking in the beauty of the taj mahal.

i’m staring into the ocean near santorini.

i’m floating through space.

and you,

you are here with me.

I never really imagined my life without Liz, and we had both assumed that I’d die first. My triglycerides were dangerously high. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t sleep. I ate nothing but red meat and candy, and I’d been known to overindulge when it came to booze. If you’d been around us long enough, you would have heard Liz lecture me about my diet at least a thousand times: “You have to be healthy; you want to be around to see our kids grow up, don’t you?” I always promised I’d eat better tomorrow, figuring I had years to turn my act around. People don’t die until they’re at least eighty years old, right? After all, I was eighteen or twenty-five or thirty. Whatever. I felt young.

But Liz was the picture of