Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [88]
Tom grabbed our luggage from the car and ushered us into the house. “We set Liz’s old room up for you and Maddy,” he said. Liz and I always stayed in there on our visits.
We walked in to set our stuff down, and my heart sank into my shoes. Everything was different. The walls were still light brown, but all of the furniture—save a foldout couch—had been removed to make space for a crib. The collage that Liz and I had hung up was gone. The closet door was open, displaying not Liz’s old clothes but new clothes for our baby. The bookshelves that once held the dried corsages and awkward photos from our prom were now filled with diapers, wipes, and toys.
Reeling, I handed Maddy to Tom and headed for Candee, who was in the kitchen.
“The room,” I said to her. I was crying by now, and I expected her to do what she always did: to be the rock, to tell me it was going to be okay, to hold me. Instead, her face crumpled, too, and she started to sob. I had seen Candee cry before, but in their house, I had thought of Tom as the softy. He could always be counted on to tear up when it came to his girls, especially when he was happy or proud of them. Until I had my own daughter, I never understood it. But Candee—she was the strong one. She was the one who held everybody else up, who kept her back straight even when she wanted to fall apart. The only time I had really seen her lose it was in the moment after Liz died and during her funerals.
In Banff, her silence and composure had confused me. I hadn’t realized that these nonactions were the lid on the pressure cooker, a thin piece of steel holding a deluge of emotion in place. Now, her anguish pierced the surface, and I caught just a glimpse of the mother whose child had died.
Candee and I stood there and held each other for a long time, grieving openly—finally. Grieving together. And this time, I was the one who said, “It’s going to be okay.”
That experience moved me like few others had. Instead of feeling like I was the only one who missed Liz, I was now certain that I was mourning with somebody, somebody who truly felt her absence as keenly as I did. I knew that everyone was hurting, but sometimes I needed to watch somebody else completely break down to really feel it. As fucked up as it may sound, seeing Candee like this gave me a lot of hope. I could now see a future that had us—all of us—sharing our stories and emotions with Madeline, keeping Liz’s memory alive. And it helped me believe that I’d be able to make it through this holiday without completely losing my shit.
Thursday afternoon, the entire extended family—close to one hundred people—gathered to share a twenty-pound, deep-fried turkey, Auntie Penny’s hash brown potatoes, Nana’s gravy, Auntie Pam’s sweet potatoes with marshmallows and brown sugar on top, and a million other dishes. My mom helped me situate Madeline in her high chair, and my dad brought over a small plate of food. She ate some of Auntie Mary’s vegetable medley and drank a cup of milk. Always thinking about the awesome photo op, I grabbed a turkey leg from the platter, handed it to her, and started snapping pictures. The rest of the family made their way into the kitchen, and we all laughed together as Madeline hit herself in the face a couple of times trying to get the thing into her mouth. I looked over at Candee and gave her a wink. Just yesterday we had stood in this same spot, crying about what was missing from our lives. And today, well, today we were thankful for what we had.
The weekend following the holiday, I had plans to meet up with Rachel so that