Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [60]
I also, and without intention, became the voice for a small community of young widows and widowers. They heard about my blog and began writing to me almost daily, and I became great friends with most of them as we shared our experiences via e-mail and phone. It was a bit like the parenting community that I’d found myself a part of, but this group was much smaller and more intimate. It was one thing to bond over the birth and raising of a child, but it was another to find an incredible group of widowed people under eighty years old, all of us united by the worst moments of our lives.
Liz’s death had turned me into an uncertified expert in death and dealing with it, which was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that I could offer a truly informed opinion based on personal experience, rather than the kind of bullshit advice that spews forth from the countless grief books that line the shelves of every store. The curse? Well, to be confronted with so much death and sadness on such a regular basis really took a toll on me emotionally. Every time I heard another heartrending story about a husband dying, I was transported back to those seconds just after I realized Liz had died, and the hideous feeling that came over me every time was as real as it had been on that day.
Hearing these stories was awful, but I had to think that I was helping these women in some small way. And the truth was, they were helping me, too. Realizing that I wasn’t alone in my sadness was a valuable tool for fighting through it, because in talking to this group I understood that there was no such thing as moving on after what we experienced. With each other’s help, though, we could continue to move through. Without their companionship, wicked jokes, and sarcasm, I wouldn’t have laughed nearly as much.
Just a little while after I brought Madeline home, three of my best guy friends from Minnesota offered to come out to Los Angeles to stay with Madeline and me. They coordinated their trips so as not to overlap, ensuring that I would have maximum time for help and company. A.J. came first. When I picked him up from the airport, I kind of got the feeling something was different, and it became obvious what it was within the first few hours of his arrival. He hadn’t told me, but I was positive. My suspicions wouldn’t be confirmed for another few months, but the questions he asked and the way he interacted with Madeline had me convinced that Sonja was definitely pregnant. A.J. immediately took a very active role in feeding, burping, and changing Maddy—things I didn’t think a childless man would want to do, let alone could do.
This was not the type of help I had expected. I thought these guys were coming out to Los Angeles to make me laugh, to shoot the shit—mostly to keep my mind off Liz. They’d probably cook and do some other stuff around the house, and only help me with Madeline if I asked them to. I was sure they’d never even touch a diaper, but it became apparent very quickly that I had assumed incorrectly.
When Steve arrived a week later, he immediately told me that his wife, Emily, was due to give birth within the next few months. My theory was spot-on. Here were guys with whom I used to speak only about booze, sports, and music, and now they wanted to discuss the best methods for preventing diaper rash.
While he and I were out one day, we sat on a bench watching the world go by. Two women walked by, each of them pushing a baby stroller. We looked at one another and Steve blurted out, “See that stroller on the left?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the stroller Emily and I registered for.”
“Yeah. I know Liz looked at that stroller as well—” I interrupted myself midsentence. “Jesus. Do you realize how fucking old we are?”
“What do you mean?” Steve asked me.
“Well, did you see the two women pushing those strollers?”
“Yeah. They were totally hot.”
“I know. And all we could talk about was the strollers they were pushing.”
I rolled