Diary of a Widower

Baseball as grief therapy

TUESDAY, April 6 – The shot heard across the Atlantic.  That was the effect of Eamonn’s grand slam during baseball practice tonight.  Step by step, ball by ball, we’re preparing for his return to the baseball field, where he had left behind so much love for his mother. Tonight was unforgettable.

At first he froze, as usual. Unable to play.  Incapable of pitching, hitting, or enjoying himself. His heart was paralyzed by his head, but this time he didn’t give up. He was going to take one small step. We just tossed the ball back and forth.  The two of us, father and son, alongside the field where the other players are taking batting practice and listening attentively to the trainer.

Eamonn couldn’t do it. He stood there stock-still, crying, glove in one hand, ball in the other. Throw, I asked. Throw, I wished. Throw, I commanded. Throw, I pleaded. No response. ‘I can’t.’ I walked up to him, he hugged me and sobbed that ‘that man’ kept him from throwing. That man, who had taken his mother away from him, along with all the pleasure the sport had given him. And nothing could bring that back.

He threw the ball away, as hard as he could. ‘I hate that man! I hate that man!’ His teammates pretended that they couldn’t see or hear him.  I retrieved the ball, walked back, put it in his glove and said, ‘Eamonn, we’re not going to tolerate this. We’re not going to allow that man to deprive us of our pleasure. It’s unacceptable. Believe me when I say that we’re playing with Mom in our thoughts and that she’s watching us.’

Eamonn looked at me. ‘I know why you’re saying that.  I understand perfectly.  But you know that that only makes it worse because she’s NOT HERE.’  Then he threw the ball to me. And I threw it back. We went on throwing, back and forth.  High balls, ground balls, fast balls. Just playing catch. Not a word was spoken. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Joining his teammates wasn’t an option. As the game began, Eamonn wanted to go to a different part of the field  for a bit of batting practice.  Whack that ball, undisturbed, just the two of us. Throw, hit. Throw, hit.  Until the ball ended up in the ditch and we went back to the field where the guys were playing their practice game.

‘Hey, Papa, shall I bat, too?’  Whatever you want, son.

He swung. A double. And then, at the last minute, just before it got dark, there was an extra inning. Bases loaded. Grounder between first and second. Clumsily fielded and a lousy throw which enabled Eamonn to make it to home plate. A grand slam.  High fives. End of game, end of practice, new beginning.

Back home we called Grandma. Answering machine. Uncle Jim, answering machine. But, Uncle Pete, who did pick up the phone, was brought up to date with all the details. When all of us were already in bed, Jim called back. Proud as peacocks, both father and uncle. Then Grandma called back. I only told her half the story, since she was crying and so was I. Tears of love.

Baseball is a fantastic metaphor for life, at least that’s what they say. You fail more often than you succeed. The season is long, you have to make a lot of difficult decisions.  You make mistakes, but you always get a second chance and you’re the only one who can grab that second chance. That’s what Eamonn did tonight, and in style.

Again, the ‘taking a shit’-theory

WEDNESDAY, March 17 – After lunch, I finally get Eamonn to go along to the park with me, to give Elsa a run. However, the dog chooses this moment to have an attack of the shits on Beethoven Street, which results in numerous gagging passers-by, including Eamonn. He wants to go home, but I force him to keep walking.

I know how it works. Once we’re in the park, everything will be all right and we’ll end up having fun. That’s my goal today, having fun in the park – despite the fact that our route includes a tricky crosswalk. Not the one where Jenn was knocked down, but one further ahead, just around the corner where Stadion Road crosses Beethoven Street. We’re in luck: the light is green.

We can keep walking, instead of waiting, in which case thoughts might stray to that Thursday in October, some two hundred yards from here. As we cross, things go wrong. Well and truly wrong. In the distance, a siren sounds. The ambulance is heading in our direction at top speed. We’re already about a hundred yards from the crossing when the ambulance whizzes by behind us.

I reach for Eamonn’s hand without looking at him. He holds my hand tight, and we keep going. I try to broach a neutral subject, but Eamonn turns away.

‘It’s not about Elsa’s poop,’ he says.

‘I know, Eamonn. It’s the ambulance, isn’t?’

‘Yes.The ambulance.’

‘I was thinking the same thing, Eamonn .’

We walk on another hundred yards or so, and we’re almost at the entrance of the park when he jumps into my arms and begins to cry, and cry, and cry. We stand there for several minutes, motionless. If Elsa hadn’t had an attack of diarrhea on Beethoven Street, if she hadn’t taken a shit first, then we would have long since been in the park and none of this would have happened.

But it did happen.  Slowly, we walk back home, carefully avoiding ‘the crosswalk’. I try to make it clear to him that it might help if, at some point in the future, he went by the place where the accident took place. To see with his own eyes that it’s nothing but an ordinary crosswalk.

He looks at me angrily and says, ‘It isn’t an ordinary crosswalk. It’s a shit place where my mother was killed.’

Again we hold each other tight. Now we’re both crying. What’s left to say? Quite a bit, it appears, during our walk home. Eamonn tells me that ‘after the accident, while Mom was lying on the ground surrounded by medics, there were a couple of teenagers hanging around who started making jokes about it all, and calling it cool.

At that moment Eamonn had been sitting on the curb. ‘Later I wished I’d smacked them in the face, so that they fell on the ground and died.’

We walk on in silence. When we get home, Eamonn immediately starts on his homework.

Stuck at the fatal scene

WEDNESDAY, February 24 – Sander called during the Evening News. He should have been home already from conservatory.  He always calls when he’s finished with his lesson. The usual chat. How did the lesson go? Are you hungry? And be careful on the way home.

That’s what he and Jennifer used to do: their phone calls were an exchange of idle chatter, like ours are now. But he’s still a child, and I’m still a concerned parent. So an alarm bell sounds when much later than expected the phone rings and his number appears on my mobile. I answer as calmly as I can.

‘Papa, I’m at the spot where the accident happened. Can you come?’

‘Of course, I’ll be right there.’

It’s just around the corner.

He’s standing there, holding onto his bicycle, near the infamous crosswalk. I slowly walk over to him and give him a hug and a kiss. I don’t say anything.

‘I felt as if I ought to come here and once I was here, I couldn’t leave. As if I was paralyzed. That’s when I called you.’

‘I’m glad I can help, Sander.’

Then he points to the tree across the road. ‘See, high up in the branches. The plastic bag for Elsa’s poop is still there.’

‘That’s what we call a silent witness, Sander.’

Neither of us speaks.

‘Shall we go home together?’

So that’s what we did. I was glad I was there. For him.

A breakthrough in grieving

FRIDAY, February 5 – Tears of love ran down my face. Although it would seem I’m not ashamed to cry anywhere these days, I’m glad that Eamonn didn’t see me cry this afternoon. Burying his head in my lap, he had been more open than ever before with the psychologist.

I felt a surge of pride, relief and sadness alongside the love for my son who had talked about the accident for the first time. The dam had burst the evening before when he confessed that he was still tormented by the images of the accident and his memories of the fatal moment.

I couldn’t help him, no matter how much I wanted to. So it was a good thing that a visit to our psychologist was scheduled for today. Eamonn wanted me to bring up the subject and after that he would start to talk.

He described how the mother of his friend, who had both come to the park with them, suddenly called out to him telling him to turn around and go back to the road.  He described how he   immediately realized that there had been an accident and knew that his Mom had been in the crosswalk and he had run back. And then his voice faltered.

He put his head in my lap and through my tears I told him how brave he was and that I was proud of him. I reassured him that the exact words of his story would never go beyond the walls of this room and that gradually all this pain would begin to lessen. Then it was quiet for a while and that was okay.

Tears of pain, but above all, tears of love.