MONDAY, May 17 – Back to work. Can I really swing it? Will I be capable of devoting myself one hundred percent to my work as a journalist and my role as a father? I’m not getting stressed out about this. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work and I’ll have to think up something else. It’s just that simple, I tell myself. And for the moment I actually believe it.
SUNDAY, May 16 – We all have a right to our shitty moments. Today it was Eamonn ‘s turn. After a fun morning together at IKEA where we had bought a desk for him, he’d had a great afternoon with his best friend. But, then, someone suddenly snuffed out the candle.
I found him lying on my bed, in voluntary solitude, for which he apologizes later that evening.
‘I didn’t even want to be with you, Papa.’
But there’s nothing wrong with that.
‘I was afraid you’d be hurt.’
Absolutely not. I have moments like that, too, when all I want is to be alone.
‘Really?’
Yes, really. Problem solved.
SATURDAY, May 15 – I’d forgotten how boisterously the conjugal bed can creak when used with great frivolity. That’s the art of the one-night stand. You’re spun off into another direction like you’ve stepped onto the wrong tram and find yourself headed in the other direction. Fun. Man lives by hope. Ha!
FRIDAY, May 14 – If you hear something often enough, you start to believe it. That must be the motto of all the friends and acquaintances who keep assuring us that a new house means a fresh start, a clean slate. They assume that we are now free to move forward full of confidence; leaving behind the memories of the old house and starting with a clean slate. Problem solved. In my book that’s wishful thinking, and this papa says: Fucking bullshit. Total nonsense. There are a great many well-intentioned individuals who absolutely do not know what they’re talking about.
THURSDAY, May 13, 2010 – A plane crash in Tripoli, Libya. Seventy Dutch passengers killed. It’s all over the news. Shocking news, which I try to shield the children from. Eamonn sees the news anyway and asks: ‘Tripoli … is that far away?’
Yes, it’s far away. The geographical distance gives him a sense of security. Until he hears that a nine-year-old boy named Ruben is the only survivor of the crash. I do my best to keep the photos from him since the intensive care unit in that far-away hospital is identical to the one Mom was hooked up to in the hospital here in Amsterdam.
We end up talking about Ruben that evening when we go out to dinner. Sander’s friend comes along, and he describes the incident down to the last detail. I can see Eamonn thinking. That means that Ruben is the same age as I am and he’s just crashed in an airplane and is lying in a hospital. Not only his mother is dead, but also his father and his brother.
For a moment he’s silent. ‘That means that what’s happened to him is even worse than what we are going through,’ he concludes. ‘I guess you could say that,’ I concur with relief. Every cloud has a silver lining.
WEDNESDAY, May 12 – I never knew we had such beautiful plates and cups and stuff. All of it was stored on the bottom shelf of the cabinet in the dining room and I’m seeing it for the first time, as I unwrap the various pieces. Dinner plates, bowls, serving dishes. Magnificent.
Never seen them before – or maybe never noticed them, due to lack of interest. Everything was unused. No doubt wedding gifts from aunts and uncles, carefully tucked away, afraid something might get broken which would have been a shame.
There were more surprises. Things the boys had made over the years, which I had long since forgotten. An imprint of five-year-old Sander’s hand in a plaster heart, for Mother’s Day. A snowman made out of an old sock, with ‘Eamonn’ scrawled across the front. The most touching memento was hidden in the wooden shoes someone gave us when Sander was born: a handwritten card accompanying the flowers that Eamonn had bought for Jenn last year:
Happy 41st* B-Day Mom!
The asterisk was clarified on the reverse in red letters: ‘Even though you look 25’.
This afternoon Eamonn came up with the idea of organizing a party on the 28th of this month, her birthday and to ask the same people who were invited to the Halloween Party that was cancelled last October. Eamonn declared that ‘it was time to celebrate something again’.
I told him he was a wise child.
TUESDAY, May 11 – Moving on after a moving move, I scribble on my Facebook wall. Especially after the moving van arrived at our new address and the four moving guys distributed the furniture and boxes throughout various rooms. When the foreman asked me where I wanted everything, I was initially at a loss.
My first impulse was to say, ‘I haven’t a clue. Ask my wife.’ Every time we moved, she’d taken charge: she was the conductor, the traffic cop, the linchpin. I felt a shiver go down my spine and asked him to wait a minute. I walked out on the balcony, took a deep breath, shook my head, and then turned around and got on with the job.
There was no stopping the movers: a couple of hours later, the second floor was full of our stuff and we lived somewhere else.
MONDAY, May 10 – The house is empty. I walk through the rooms, remembering what it was like, two years ago, when we walked through this place together. It was the spot we chose to return to after fourteen years abroad.
The indentations of the furniture on the floor. Nicks on the wall and spots on the carpet. Above all, I’m aware of Jenn’s presence, walking down the hall, in the bedroom, sitting in the living room, working in the study, busy in the kitchen. Gone.
Empty. Nothing left. Then I catch sight of a tiny object on the dusty baseboard in our bedroom. It’s an earplug. Jenn’s answer to my snoring. I freeze, torn between pain and nostalgia.
I leave it where it is.
SUNDAY, May 9 – Dear Jennifer, Happy Mother’s Day!
Today your children received a collection entitled Memories, short stories from your many friends, varying from your first days in Kindergarten to the Maryland suburbs, from high school to London, from college to your final days in Amsterdam. Memories of you that will be part of them, until they have children of their own and will be able to tell them about their grandmother.
This morning I’m crying because I miss you so much and because you were – and still are – a good mother. I see you in everything the children do right – and sometimes wrong. Your wisdom, your love, your principles, your annoying habits, and your warmth. But above all, your unconditional maternal love. That is what we celebrate today.
Quietly, in our thoughts, but also exuberantly.
I think of you and recall our discussions on parenthood and raising children, about the way our parents brought up their children, and how we were inspired by them or just the opposite. I remember how you resolved to be there for Sander and Eamonn one hundred percent in those early years. ‘Because this is the period when a child is formed and you can never do it over again.’
I often told you how fabulous you were as a mother. You just laughed and graciously accepted the compliment, but added that you ‘could have done better’. You spoke of the difficult years in Washington DC when, after the birth of Eamonn, you suffered from depressions and got through the days and nights mainly on ‘auto-pilot’.
Dear Jenn, that was the steadfast devotion you never went back on. Even in periods of weakness, you were still unbelievably strong.
I’m smiling this morning, because Eamonn woke me up with the suggestion that ‘today we should pretend that Mom is here’. So that’s what we do. Sander is on his way back from Switzerland and he’s thinking of you, too – like we do every day. But this Mother’s Day and there’s no makeshift breakfast, with flowers, cards and various other self-made gifts presented to you in bed.
The ability to cope on your own was part of your parenting principles. A mother does her work well – that goes for the father, too – if she shows her children the way and gives them a shove in the right direction. You abhorred the thought of children not being able to manage on their own. Often you hated that in me, too: the lazybones who didn’t have a clue about housekeeping, nor even, sometimes, parental chores and responsibilities. You’ve done good, girl.
And not just ‘good’. The advantage of this period is that we’re gradually more fully realizing what a fantastic mother you were, and are, and always will be. It is excruciating to think that you won’t be able to see your boys grow up, that they will grow up without the benefit of your light and your shadow, without your precious care, without that security blanket of motherly love.
In all humility, I promise you that they will grow up, thanks to your splendour. I kiss you with all the love I have for you now and will always have. I cling to your words, words that a former neighbor quoted when she wrote an anecdote for the boys in the collection Memories.
“I would not have traded my time spent raising little boys for anything. And I don’t regret it either. It has certainly informed my work now (you better believe those kids at school do not get away with much!). I truly believe my, your, anyone’s children benefit enormously from the experience as well. It is most worthwhile though often thankless.”
Your words. Your wisdom. Your love. I’m eternally grateful to you, dear Jennifer.
SATURDAY, May 8 – The whole process of moving is now seriously getting on my nerves. Wanna get it over with. I long for it all to be in the past. Then, we can sit down and await events to come. I throw away more than I should. On the other hand, it’s liberating to move forward with as little ballast as possible.
What would I do without Eamonn? I asked him to go along to IKEA to pick out some lamps. The kid has impeccable taste – I’m jealous. In less than five minutes he chose lamps for every room in the house. I didn’t even take a second look and cheerfully paid the bill.
Diary of a Widower 