Came Grief and Compassion
part two
Click here to read part one
A couple of days later, Foy was passing by Suzanne’s cubicle on the way to the break room. She stopped him.
"Hi, you’re Foy, right?"
"Yeah. And you’re…Suzanne?"
"Yep. We haven’t actually met, but I knew you were working with Doug. You used to write, didn’t you? Isn’t that how Doug found you? You wrote a book or something?"
"Yeah, I sorta wrote a little, but that was awhile back, so…"
"This place is getting too big. You can work with people for months now and never actually meet them. It didn’t used to be that way. I guess that’s how it goes, huh? Bigger, better, more money, less time."
"Company’s a lot bigger now, huh?"
"Oh my gosh, yes. When we first started everyone was on this floor, even Doug and Richard. They had the corner office over there. We all used to eat lunch together back then. Course they went upstairs a few years back, so we don’t see them much anymore."
Foy glanced toward the break room and Suzanne noticed.
“Oh, I’m sorry, you’re taking a break. Could you stop by on your way back? I’m supposed to give you this thing we wrote for the stockholders and have you smooth it out. You know, go over it."
"You wanna just email it to me? You know…"
"Oh sure. I just saw you and thought I’d give it to you. Listen, before you go I wanna ask you something. Did you write that poem in the last office newsletter?"
"Poem? No."
"So you didn’t write it?"
"No."
"Hmm. Charlene was convinced it was you."
"Charlene?"
"Yeah, Charlene from graphics. Kinda light brown hair. She’s the one with that giant Macintosh."
"Oh yeah, I know who you’re talking about."
"I mean, we didn’t know. It’s just no one ever wrote a poem before, and they said you used to write or whatever."
"Yeah, well, you know…"
"Did you read it? It was so sad, but also happy in a – I don’t know – sad kind of way, I guess. We were just trying to figure out who wrote it. Oh yeah, your break. Sorry. Just come by later, or I’ll email that thing to you if I don’t see you."
Foy stopped by Suzanne’s cubicle later, but she wasn’t there. His eyes wandered around the walls. There were a lot of pictures of her son. Him in his little league uniform, the two of them at some amusement park, a couple of school pictures. No husband and no other children. Just the two of them.
One wall of the cubicle served as a bulletin board. It was covered with sympathy cards and there were a couple of dried flowers hanging from thumbtacks. A growing cluster of recent memos was starting to cover the cards. A vase with some mummified flowers in it stood between her monitor and a stack of software manuals.
“Jesus,” Foy thought. “I wonder how old those flowers are.”
His eyes were drawn back to the amusement park picture. Suzanne and her son were hugging and smiling for the camera. “That boy is dead,” Foy said softly. “He no longer exists in this world.”
For some reason, Jenny popped into his mind. When Jenny left him, there were a lot of shocks and changes, but he got used to most of them. The one thing that still hurt was not having anyone to talk to about his children. When you lose your spouse, you lose the one person in the world who wants to talk about them as much as you do.
At that moment he thought he understood the story behind Suzanne and her cubicle. Her grief had become tiring to the people around her. The people in the office brought flowers and cards, and they listened to her for a time. Now they were ready to move on, but she was not. She was stuck and still laboring with undelivered grief. She was still clinging to the leftover scraps of their comfort, but the mementos were drying up and fading away.
Her colleagues had done all they could do. The heavy lifting and the hard grief work should have been done with family or with an intimate community of friends. But maybe she didn’t have those. Maybe all she had was this strange world on the third floor. How could she pour all of her grief into such a small container? The cubicle village was moving on, and she was left alone, like a crazy woman, to grieve with her head down on her desk.
Foy walked back to his own cubicle and sat in front of his computer. His cubicle looked exactly as it had the day Marcie escorted him there and left him in it. No pictures, no plants, no mementos. It was very impersonal and he liked it that way.
He thought about Suzanne for a few minutes. He didn’t know what she needed – he didn’t have to know that kind of thing anymore – but he thought he knew what she wanted. And it would be so easy to give it to her.
Foy found Suzanne eating lunch alone in the break room two days later. He walked in and sat down across from her.
"Hey, I sent you that document. I, uh, just moved a couple of things around and smoothed it out a bit. It should be fine."
"Oh, thanks."
"Also, I owe you an apology."
"What for?"
"Um, I lied to you the other day. I did write that poem."
"I KNEW it. What, were you embarrassed or something?"
"No, yeah, maybe, I don’t know. I just liked it being a secret. Also I’m not a poet, but it felt okay to submit it as long as no one knew it was mine. Anyway, forget it. It doesn’t matter."
"Well, I liked it. It was so sad, but it made me happy in some weird way, you know what I mean?"
Foy nodded gravely. "Yeah, I definitely do know about that."
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"Anyway, listen, I want to ask you something and I hope it’s okay."
"What?"
"What was your son’s name? I saw the pictures around your computer, and I heard that he died. He just looked like such a sweet kid, so I wanted to know his name."
Suzanne paused for a moment, then spoke softly. "Jeremy."
"Hmm. What was he like?"
She put her hand over her mouth, as if hiding her mouth might let her hide her feelings for a minute. She sat there looking at him.
Foy knew this waiting game, so he said nothing.
Then she put her hand down. She had a sad smile, a nice smile but with sad eyes.
"He was the greatest kid in the world, Foy. I’m serious. I know I was his mother and all, but he was such a sweetheart. God, I miss him so much."
Foy nodded. "How old was he?"
"Eleven."
"Oh, I have an eleven-year-old daughter. Well 12 now, but isn’t that just the greatest age? They’re old enough to be able to talk to you about things, but young enough…"
"...to still want to be with you." Suzanne finished his sentence. "Yeah, it was great." She paused for a moment. "HE was great. You know, sometimes I want to hold him so bad that it hurts. I’ll go to his closet and get a bunch of his clothes and wad them up and hug them, but it never helps."
Foy gave himself the pep talk that he used in the old days to get himself ready.
Okay, this is her time. This is what you can give her. You ARE interested in her boy. He WAS the greatest boy in all the world. And you want to hear everything about him. It doesn’t matter how you feel or how tired you get. This is for her. Now listen. Put everything you have into listening.
Once she started talking there was no stopping her. She gushed, she laughed, she went on and on and on. And no matter how much she told him, he was always ready with another question, always asking for more. He didn’t ask anything about her. He only wanted to hear about Jeremy. It was almost like Jeremy was alive again and they were just two people talking about a little boy. It was like Indian Summer, one last warm day before the inevitable coming of winter.
At one point Foy let a little of his focus split off so that he could see what was going on inside of himself. The answer was nothing. He felt nothing for this boy. He didn’t care about Jeremy. That was the truth. Who was Jeremy? Just another kid in a long line of kids stretching back into his past. And who was Suzanne? Just another woman with a story to tell.
In the old days he used to feel with people. Not feel sorry for them, but feel with them. It helped make it seem real. But every time he felt someone else’s pain, he ended up carrying around a burden for them. Those burdens kept piling up until finally his back broke. And now something inside of him would not let him do that again.
He felt nothing. He was numb inside. He knew how to listen, but he didn’t know how to feel. He was all eyes and ears, but no guts. Nothing on the inside.
I guess I’m giving her what I can. Isn’t that okay, just to give what you can?
Suzanne was still talking. "You know what’s hard? It’s almost like Jeremy isn’t real to anyone else. For a lot of people he’s just a name and a picture, just the reason that I’m sad and broken now. Sometimes I want people to understand that he was a real boy, you know? He was real and he had a whole future ahead of him, but now he’s gone and that’s a terrible loss.”
“He was a real boy.” That phrase flew across the table and hit Foy in the chest like a blow from a fist. Something was loosed in him, and his chest filled with long-lost feelings.
Jeremy was a real boy, but now he’s dead. Suzanne is his mother. She lost him. He’s gone.
He felt it, and it was so good to feel. Compassion came to him after all this time. Foy’s eyes filled with tears, and he looked down at the table so she wouldn’t see.
Suzanne lowered her chin down to the table, trying to look under Foy’s forehead at his eyes. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, it’s nothing. It’s just something about what you said, about him being a real boy. It kinda got to me."
They sat quietly for a moment. Then Suzanne spoke. "Hey, thanks for listening. You can’t know how nice it was just to talk about him again."
"Sure." Foy waited a moment, then continued. "I want to tell you something about grief, because I know about grief. Is that okay?"
She nodded.
"Remember that grief is your last way of honoring Jeremy. The pain of it reminds you that he was real. You will carry this pain for the rest of your life, in his memory. It’s right and good that you should do that for him. He was worth it, wasn’t he?"
Tears filled her eyes again, and she nodded, dabbing at her nose with a tissue.
"I know he was. So carry this grief with pride and honor. Do not deny it. Embrace it and own up to it."
"At the same time, you don’t have to be owned by the grief. You also honor Jeremy by moving on. Sometimes people feel that moving on means forgetting and not feeling sad anymore. They cling to their grief out of fear of losing it, because it is the last thing they have connecting them to the one they loved. You don’t have to be afraid of that. You’re his mother, so there will always be a tender spot in your heart for Jeremy. This grief will not leave you. But it might be time to carry the grief instead of letting it carry you, if that makes any sense."
"But how do I do that?"
"I wish there was a easy answer, but there isn’t. I think you could get started by cleaning up your cubicle. Take home all the pictures and the dead flowers and all the cards. You don’t have to throw them away. Just put them in a box. You could even buy a fancy box if it makes you feel better. Give them a place of honor, but put them away. Sometimes, when you are at home, you might want to open the box and have a time of remembering. But that will a time of your own choosing, see?"
"Maybe that’s your first move. And I think you’re ready."
Suzanne blew her nose while she was nodding.
Foy got up to leave.
"Wait!" Suzanne said, blubbering a bit into her tissue. Foy stood patiently while she gained her composure.
"I want to tell you something, but don’t take it the wrong way or anything. I mean, it’s not a come-on or something stupid like that. But I just want to tell you that I like your eyes. I like the wrinkles in the corners and they’re very blue and sad and looking at them makes me think that you’ve seen some things in your life. They’re kind of sad and happy, like that poem you wrote. Sad and happy, you know?"
Something caused Foy’s throat to tighten, and he felt a surge of emotion. His lower lip trembled a bit. He looked down at his shoes so she wouldn’t see it so much.
"Sad and happy, huh? Yeah, I definitely do know something about that."
rlp
Other Foy Davis Stories
7:40:31 AM 
|
