Why Whisper?

A Memoir

BY

JOANNE MAZZOTTA

When grief is given a voice, it cannot defeat you.

Author’s Note

After my 32-year-old son Danny committed suicide, I found no book, person, or god that could rescue me from the black hole of this unfamiliar territory. So I began to journal my anguish as a way to survive my loss.  This journal became more than a collection of chronicles about my life; it became a clear reflection of the way love could deliver me from a kind of hell I had never imagined.

For those of you who have been faced with such grief, I hope these words will show you that you are not alone.

Time doesn’t heal. Healing begins as you learn to walk with a sorrow – when you merge with that sorrow until it becomes the art of you.  Exactly how long that takes, I don’t know.

“They are not dead who live in the hearts they leave behind.”   Tuscarora Indian

Dust to Dust

On a raw November afternoon in 2001, my doorbell rang. There at the door stood a man holding a small box. The box contained ashes–the last physical remnants of my son Danny. As my children watched, I placed the box on the dining room table and sat with my hands resting on top of it, struggling not to scream.  My once living, breathing, 160-pound son had been reduced to the size of a shoebox.

I calmly made plans with my remaining three children for the following day.  We would meet at the ocean, where my son had always loved to be.  “We will say what needs to be said, send his ashes into that ocean, and let him rest in peace. We owe Danny that.” I told them. “He was exhausted, and he wanted to go home. He is not dead and he will never be dead because love doesn’t die.”

Once my children had left, I collapsed in tears, dreading the very plans I had made.

The following day, we drove to the shore in Narragansett and parked our cars.  Behind the parking area we knew there was a dip in the property that led to the shore where no one could see what we were about to do. The rocky slant took us to the water, challenging our balance on the way down. My husband Joe, Danny’s father, my three children and their partners joined me. Hand in hand, the eight of us climbed down.Behind us loomed the Coast Guard House, a majestic, century-old granite building.  Its stone lookout tower glistened in the frigid afternoon sun. Now home to a locally famous restaurant, the building had once aided ships at sea.

My younger son Richie was holding the box close to his chest. No one breathed as he opened it. No one cried, for we would all have fallen apart. We stood numb to the elements as he took a handful of ashes from the box, submerged his fist in the frigid water, and released them into the iron-gray ocean. He did this carefully, tenderly. I was an honored witness to the courage Richie showed for us all. He was brave with love for his brother. A gust of wind blew some of Danny’s ashes into Richie’s face, but he remained still.  He continued with his purpose, staring ahead at the vast Atlantic Ocean each time he reached his hand into that little box.  The saline ocean water slapped against the rocks, uniting with the wind in a misty spray. I will remember the feeling I had as we stood in what seemed to be an alternate world. The woman I had been no longer existed. 

When the box of ashes was empty, a beautiful white bird flew close to where Richie was standing.  Its wings practically grazed his face as it flew off into the dark blue sky. We looked at the bird, then at each other. We knew something had just taken place—something no mortal could understand.  We drank a toast to Danny from a bottle of Sambuca Romano that I had taken with me from home. As I embraced my children, I whispered, “Stay strong,” to each of them. I was thankful for their collective show of courage.

My siblings, friends, nieces and nephews were not there. I didn’t want them to be. They would never understand the kind of funeral we gave my son. It was too natural and informal just like Danny was. There was no funeral in a church that they could forget about when it ended. No procession or priest.  No flowers were stuffed into a long black funeral wagon that rode to a cemetery and no long line of mourners came to pay respects to our loss. With only Danny’s ashes, the vast ocean, and the eight of us, we said goodbye. 

After our private and exclusive ceremony, we walked together to The Coast Guard House for lunch. It was a popular South County establishment where Danny had worked during college. The last time we ate there as a family, he showed me where he once tended bar.  We had stepped out on the deck facing the ocean, where he declared his love for the water. He said, “Ma, when I die, I want my ashes in this ocean.”  

He dreamed of a life near the shore after he graduated from college. We laughed and danced to imaginary music. We were mother and son then.  He was handsome and full of life. I was happy.

The Ties That Bind

Relieved that my brothers and sisters were not at the funeral we gave Danny that day, I stopped expecting them to help me, love me, or want me when I wasn’t strong.

They didn’t know about the song by Bob Marley called, “Three Little Birds.” Danny loved the song because it contained his refrain to all our lectures, warnings, and concerns: “Every little thing’s gonna be alright.”  They didn’t know that he loved John Lennon’s “Imagine,” because it spoke to his private dreams about love and humanity.  They didn’t know that when Danny was 13, he helped a mentally challenged boy learn his paper route because he believed in that boy. They didn’t know that as a young boy, he set his alarm clock for five in the morning on winter days, so he could shovel paths in the snow for the elderly people in our neighborhood. They didn’t know that his roommate in college was a young man who was born with Muscular Dystrophy and had been protected all of his life by his parents. This young man had become Danny’s ski partner, scuba diving buddy, and friend. The young man had never been allowed to do much of what Danny convinced him he could do. His tears at Danny’s wake burned my heart.

My family and friends didn’t know how hard Danny struggled with addiction or how badly he wanted that addiction to finally kill him because he couldn’t stop it. They didn’t know how much he hated himself for getting into trouble. They only knew Danny was trouble. They never knew that although Danny caused us constant worry, he was the only one who knew how to make me feel better when I was sad. He made me whole again with a hug and the magic of his casual remarks riddled with his unique brand of humor. They didn’t know his kind of love, because they didn’t know him. That is what I believed.  When he died, I shut them out.

“Day turned to night and night never turned to day again.”                             Joanne Mazzotta

On the morning of November 9, 2001, I turned on my computer, feeling restless. Danny moved out of my house two weeks earlier.  He had relapsed. He was drinking again after six months of sobriety.  I was terrified. Danny was a Type One Diabetic. Each drinking binge was a game of Russian roulette for him.

It was noon. Anxious and looking for a way to placate myself, I sent my daughter Carolynn an email. It was a photo of Danny and me.  She later told me that it appeared in her email inbox many times, though I had sent it only once. Moments after I had sent the e-mail, two well-dressed men approached the side door and rang the doorbell.  I watched them from the window near my desk.  Jehovah’s Witnesses or salesmen, I thought to myself.  I wondered why they hadn’t come to the front door. Still wearing my pajamas, I covered myself with a robe.  When I opened the door, the taller of the two men held up a silver badge.  “Danny,” I said.

I found myself backing into the bathroom to the left of me after he blurted out his message. “Daniel Bucki is deceased.” His voice sounded like a recording.

I didn’t scream or faint when I heard his message. It wasn’t a typical scene from a movie when a parent is informed that her child is dead and she falls to her knees and lets out a blood-curdling scream.  It didn’t hit me as I thought it would – when I had imagined it so many times. Instead, my mind was colliding with what the man was telling me, resisting belief.

The tall stranger standing in my living room didn’t tell me that Danny died in a drunken driving accident or that he was shot.  He didn’t’ tell me that he killed a few children with his car then it rolled over and burst into flames. He didn’t tell me that he fell asleep with a cigarette and burned to death or that he died from an overdose of alcohol. He didn’t tell me that he died in the hospital from diabetes complications. 

He told me my son had killed himself.

I found myself leading the two men down the hallway as they asked for his father’s phone number. I kept moving as I talked with the two strangers. I don’t remember everything I said.  I found myself in the family room.  They followed me. I showed them a framed picture on the wall. “That’s him! “That’s Danny.” I said confidently, as if to convince them he was alive.  They looked at me and each other then lowered their eyes. I said it again.  I pointed to his picture to be sure they saw it. “That’s him!  That’s Danny!  He is right here! See him?” I wanted them to say, “Oh we are so sorry, that is not the young man we found dead. It’s all been a big mistake.” 

The two officers proceeded to give me a detailed account of his death—the time, place, and statements of witnesses who were with him the night before. They told me he had been visiting Ray, an older man he had befriended in college. Ray was a teacher and a heavy drinker who often partied with the college students in his home.  Danny remained friends with Ray after he left college.

That night, he had arrived upset and drunk. He partied with Ray and his borders for a while. Ray headed off to bed, leaving the kitchen - before Danny wrote a suicide note and injected two full vials of insulin into his leg.  He only needed 80 units, which didn’t completely fill one vial. Within a short time he became combative, then lethargic and drowsy. One of the guys who lived with Ray helped Danny walk to a bedroom in the back part of the house. He helped him onto a blow up mattress that lay on the floor, and left him there to sleep it off.  They thought he was drunk and continued to party. They claimed they knew he was a diabetic but said they didn’t realize he was injecting more insulin than he needed—even though he had talked about dying just before injecting it. “They thought he was bullshitting”. The officer said. 

But he was dying.  My son was dying on a blow-up mattress in some back room.

As the men spoke the noise in my head was getting louder by the second and the voices washed out and came back louder each time I listened. The noise was deafening and all I heard was, “This is not happening.”

The note Danny left told us all that he loved us and said goodbye. He had scribbled the words, “New York” in the margin of his suicide note, along with the telephone number of a local treatment center.  I tried to find significance. 9/11 had happened just two months before. He had spoken to me several times about going there to help. “We can go set up a stand and feed the firemen.” He said.  I thought about the coincidence—it was now 11/9/2001.

“One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal though… betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope.” Steven Deitz

Nearly two years earlier, Danny’s best friend of twenty years had run off with his wife and two-year-old daughter Kayla.  This had broken him. Bitter and confused, he relapsed after having just completed a stay at rehab. He was never the same after that incident. He moved to Florida in an attempt to deal with the storm of anger and depression inside of him.  When he returned to Rhode Island eighteen months later, he said he had accepted it. His mood seemed to indicate that he did. He had promised to stay sober.  I wanted to believe him–believe in him. So I offered him a place to stay until he got back on his feet again. I laid down the conditions; stay sober or leave. We spent the summer with him, enjoying his efforts and his plans to change the course of his life.

When Danny was sober, he was wonderful to be with. He was handsome and charismatic, with a Robert Redford look about him. There was always laughter. 

My husband put him to work building a barn on our property. He landscaped the property that surrounded our home and got involved with the planning of my youngest daughter Mary’s wedding. Mary, or “Momoochie” as he affectionately named her, was his baby sister and favorite person. He made her wedding the most important thing in his life that summer.

The night before her wedding, all of us were busy preparing the house. Mary was upset as we were decorating the tent and arranging rented tables along the perimeter of the pond. She began to cry. He approached her, put his hands on her shoulders and said, “Why is my Momoochie crying?” She sobbed into his shoulder and told him, “The tables are all crooked because the land under them is crooked and they look terrible.”  She was trying to make everything perfect. She sobbed and said, “Nothing is going right.”

Danny laughed and said, “Not a problem Momoochie! I can fix the tables. Everything is going to be beautiful because you’re beautiful.”

Though he was exhausted from working all day, Danny went to the workshop in my basement and cut little blocks of wood.  He adjusted the tables until they were perfectly even, as they stood on the green lawn. We covered the tables with linen tablecloths and made sure the legs of the tables were concealed.  When he was done, he placed a level on top of every table to show Mary they were not crooked anymore.  As they walked together from table to table, she thanked him, and hugged him.

That summer was a gift. Some days I replay it like an old home movie in my mind, so that I might see his golden hair reflecting the sun or hear his resonant voice calling to me.  I see his lean body and his dirty hands moving purchased loam from one side of the property to the other, to insure the landscape would be perfect for the wedding.

When Danny fell off the wagon again, he hit bottom fast.  The day he left my house for good, he hugged me and said, “I know what I have to do Ma.”   That was the day that fear settled into my heart, and never left.

“Words are the voice of the heart”                                             Confucius

A Brother’s Eulogy

We gave my son a traditional wake before he was cremated. I was reluctant to attend. I couldn’t face the reality and I didn’t want to proceed with this tradition.  Instead, I became preoccupied with what to wear. I wondered around in my bedroom, fighting tears as I leaned against the wall and tried not to imagine my dead son dead. I imagined him alive; only alive. I combed my hair and got dressed for Danny, as if I were attending his birthday party. I decided to wear a long, black skirt and a deep gray silk jacket.  He would have approved. He liked it when I wore what he called, “Mother Clothes.” They included nice dresses or suits, skirts below the knee and fine jewelry.

It felt like weeks had passed before I made it downstairs.  When I finally did, my husband gave me two pills that he promised would help me do what I had to do. I knew I’d have to stand in a receiving line next to Joe and my other three children. And I knew that night I would see my beautiful son lying in a coffin.

As people came and paid their respects, I found myself feeling sorry for them. Repeatedly, I left the line and wondered around the funeral parlor nodding polite responses to those who stood waiting to kneel at Danny’s coffin. When I found no place to hide, I went outside in the parking lot and took deep breaths, walked back in and resumed my position in the line; the only line left that my son could not cross. It was not his boundary, it was mine. I couldn’t reach him anymore from where I stood.

My daughters Carolynn and Mary stood at the podium in the funeral parlor and spoke beautiful words of love they felt for Danny. Carolynn described Danny’s loyalty and habit of being there for her throughout her life. Mary talked lovingly about her big brother, recounting many of the happier times they had shared. Mary finished her graceful eulogy, left the podium and went back to her position in line. By then Joe had brought me a chair. Thankfully, I was sitting in it when my son Richie stood at the coffin and faced the crowded room. He spoke without notes.

“I want to tell you all the truth about my brother,” he began. Everyone in this room, who knows Danny, knows that what I am going to say is true. If you don’t know him, then let me tell you who he was. He was a drunk and a druggy. He preyed on the weak. He stole our time, our compassion, our money, and our trust. He was brilliant but he became a contractor because that made it easier for him to screw people.”

Richie then reached in the casket and removed a yellow speed-square used by finish carpenters. My daughter had placed it in Danny’s folded hands earlier. He held it up so everyone in the room could see it. “See this? I cannot tell you how many times he borrowed ten dollars from me to buy another one of these because my brother lost so many of them. Tonight I found out that these yellow plastic triangles only cost three dollars. Danny was a liar. He was irresponsible. He took advantage of our love and he used my mother.  He lost phone numbers, jobs, apartments, cars, money and people!”

Richie then hoisted himself on the closed half of the casket and sat there, as a child would.  He seemed to want to be a part of it. I looked at my two fine-looking sons–one dead and the other in agony–and mentally escaped to a place where they were brothers again.  Only a few weeks before, Richie was snapping a small towel at Danny’s feet when he was asleep on the couch. They loved to joke around. Their personalities were very different, and they made different choices in life, but Richie was loyal and very close to his brother. 

Richie went on to say, “He was smart but he couldn’t hold a job for a week. He pissed me off so bad the last time he called me, I hung up on him.”

The room was silent, as if there wasn’t a single person in it but Richie. I felt as though I had been carved out like a disfigured ruin, in shock and without the emotional resources to respond. I sat motionless. Feeling as if I was hearing him speak with someone else’s ears, I became utterly lost in Richie’s truth. I had never seen him speak before an audience and didn’t know he was capable of it. Richie was introverted, polite. He never spoke out of turn; but when he did speak, it was the truth.

“He couldn’t stop screwing up his life or everybody’s life,” he said, a pained honesty clear in his voice. “He hurt us, and now he goes and kills himself and puts the cherry on the cake.” Richie paused.  He had a watchful look as if he expected someone to interrupt him.  “But he is my brother and I love him. I just want you all to know that.”

That night, his words were laced with an unspoken warning to the people who might not have forgiven Danny for the wreckage of his past.  He did not cry. He looked at his listeners for a moment, slid off the casket, walked to where his brother rested then lowered his head to Danny’s face, took it in his hands, and kissed him.  He walked out of the room, and out of the building.  From the parking lot, we all heard his car tires screech.

I don’t remember looking at the crowd’s reaction to this extraordinary account of a brother’s rage, and of a brother’s love. For the first time in his life, Richie had refused to “play nice.” That moment he told the truth about Danny became a transforming moment in his life. A mother’s only son now defined, Richie knew that there is nothing in this world that would take the place of his only brother.

***

As family members filed out of the room that night, I knelt before the casket for one last look at my son. The thought of leaving him there alone was unbearable.

Staring at his peaceful face, I touched his tie and remembered how he had never learned to knot one himself. I gently pushed his shirt cuffs under the sleeves of his jacket, running my fingers along the same hands that only a few days before had touched mine.

"Rest in peace Danny boy, I love you, my son, and will always love you," I whispered. With a crushing sadness, I was aware that these were the last words I'd have the chance to say while looking at my son's face.

Leaning on his bronze coffin, I kissed his forehead and cheek, and placed my head gently on his chest for the last time. Silence responded.

The sedatives I had taken earlier that evening were no competition for the deep, visceral cries that overtook my body at that moment. I called to my son over and over again, tears flooding my face as sadness flooded my heart.

Gently, Joe brought me to my feet and took me into his arms. "Alright, come with me now, and let him rest for a while," he said quietly.

"He's dead Joe! His skin is freezing cold. He's not resting, he's dead," was all I could reply.

I kneeled down at the corner of the coffin, and screamed his name.

I was bent over.

I was angry.

I was shattered.

That night, Joe and I drove home in silence. The next day came and went without notice, as did the months that followed.

“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.”                                                                                Socrates

During the past four years, I have been trying to describe what it feels like to lose a child. What I discovered is that this level of grief often transcends description. It has had no boundaries, no lexis, or design.

During the initial stages of my grief, it was as if God pressed me against the truth. There was no comfort.  No relief, just constant anguish. I didn’t want to breathe and each time I involuntarily took a breath, I was surprised. No longer connected to what was happening to me, I was watching it happen to me. The torment did not let me go long enough to die. It took my emotions, chewed them up like a devil enjoying a burger while I stood tied tightly with chains to a pole, watching with eyes that I could not close.

After a short time, there was deadness in me and yet I could still feel tears that ran acrid and hot down my face seeming to cut through my flesh. The tears refused to stop until I’d pass out exhausted. Everything in the life around me was fractured including my beliefs and my self-awareness. Lies were holding the pieces together – lies of safety, prayer, trust, truth and hope, of love, and the lie of me.  Believing I was unable to come back, I stayed in that darkness. I did not want reality without my first born son.

Unable to hear my children cry or my husband plead, I was somewhere in my home and I was suddenly the mother of a beautiful but dead son.  I should have been anesthetized. I should have been drunk and drugged, but I was not. On the outside I had been quiet for weeks. I acted like it never happened. I made Christmas like I did every year. All the shopping and the decorating went on as usual. I functioned until the night hysteria came without warning - and panic followed.

I didn’t know why I was sitting on the cold tile floor in the bathroom, leaning against the door, clutching a crumpled towel close to my chest as if I were holding a baby but the baby was not there. I was holding that towel soaked with tears, and I began to sob when I saw the empty towel in my hands.  I wept, angry, repeating, pleading, as I rocked the empty towel asking, “Danny why…Why, Danny?”  Then I stood and I paced searching for something. I searched for anything that would disprove what I knew.

My husband had gone upstairs to bed; I had locked him out of the bathroom and out of my pain. Not knowing what time it was because it seemed neither day nor night, I found myself in the back of my house.  I screamed at the sky, the pond, the trees, and the beautiful acres where my son loved to be. I slumped down to the cold stone patio that hugged my house, and cried myself to sleep. Everything hurt.

During the first month after Danny’s death my husband was not able to convince me to trust him. I couldn’t make him understand that I trusted nothing. He had a difficult time with my state of mind. He was a self-made man and controlled everything in his life. I was in my second marriage and Danny wasn’t his son. I know he loved Danny but I thought he couldn’t possibly love him the way I did. I was exposed in a mental vastness where terror replaced self-control.  I couldn’t remember how to pretend that everything was fine. He was afraid for me and I couldn’t help him. He loved me and I didn’t care.

My Dear Husband

He became the enemy.

He was part of my son, and I wanted him to disappear.

I wanted my house to disappear.
I wanted the barn my son built to disappear.

I wanted the counter where he made tuna salad to disappear.

I wanted his shirts in the laundry room to disappear.

His insulin sat on the counter. I wanted that to disappear along with his cell phone that lay on the end table where he left it.

I wanted the pictures of his beautiful smile and the world to disappear.

Mostly, I wanted to disappear.

A Husband Pleads

I take a small step and stop.

I take the blanket he slept with and I drop it on the chair

I take another small step

Do you need help?

I stand still

I stare at the air

Let me help you

No

Please let me help you.

You can’t

I can, please let me try

Please kill me that would help

"Words of inspiration are wasted on me. I am neither inspired to stop hurting or want to be”.

                                                                                                     Joanne Mazzotta

Wanting to run out of that house at every fleeting yet, enormous moment, I was mentally turning, imagining myself slowly walking away and not looking back. I carved a mental note in my brain that read, “I will never look back.” I would transform into someone whom no one had ever met. The rhythm of my heart was not as strong as it once was. I didn’t care. It was beating slowly then speeding up and I wanted it to stop beating more than I want anything. I hoped it wouldn’t hold on much longer. Desperately avoiding thoughts of any reasons to live, I endured.

Somehow, I endured.

“Despair should loath company.”              Joanne Mazzotta

With no map, and no experience with the kind of travel that had imposed itself on our lives, my family was terrified. I was unable to predict the next two years ahead and how grief would take our lives apart in ways none of us could have thought possible. We had to put ourselves back together again, knowing full well we would never again be in our original conditions. We felt handicapped for a long time. Somewhere in the core of those years we prayed to find great wisdom; we found only more hurt, shock, and fear. We were all afraid that another one of us would die. Each of us was denying that we were devastated by Danny’s death. We were trying to appear strong and able to go on, but we never successfully pulled that falsehood off. We melted down on holidays and birthdays.

I wanted courage.

“I want to know God’s thoughts...the rest are details”     Albert Einstein

God Damned God

I no longer followed the Catholic faith, the doctrine I had been raised to honor and obey. All traditional exercises, like midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, Saturday afternoon confession, and repetitive praying were gone.  I was sure the rituals in the Catholic Church were not for me, not even the last rights. I once loved God. Now I failed to understand God.  As far as I was concerned, he had found Danny’s life insignificant.

Placing blame, I was so furious that God had let me pray with such devotion and trust. I didn’t know that my prayers fell to the ground. I didn’t believe that the all-loving non- discriminate God would expel me from his consideration because I didn’t go to church. I was not a Sunday Catholic. I earnestly tried to become a better person, repented when I sinned, and gave thanks for the gifts He gave me. I had faith. All those terrifying nights when I thought my son would die, I held on to that faith hard, believing there would be some divine intervention. I believed it body and soul.

Now I was sure I wanted to meet Him, hit Him, and pulverize His books. I wanted God to be the victim He had made of me, and the victims He had made of people who witness the horrors of His world. And yet, and yet, I felt somehow responsible for Danny’s death. I believed I destroyed everything I breathed on, but it was easier for me to fault God.

"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives inside of us."    Oliver Wendell Holmes

The first year after Danny died; Joe dealt with my grief every day. He said the right things as I asked endlessly why Danny was taken, not yet ready to ask how to cope with it.

My husband is intellectual and spiritual. I loved to hear him tell me about the history of the world, politics, old tales, and myths written centuries ago.  He often shared tales of Shakespeare. He would give animated dissertations of old kings, and explain the answers to my fierce interrogations.  Joe educated me about some basic truths and eternal lies.

One day I asked him to tell me why I couldn’t save Danny no matter how much I tried to.  He looked at me with sorrow in his eyes, and told me about Kismet.

“The story is an old Arabian tale that starts off in a castle where the King of the Realm lived with his 14 year old son, the Prince, whom he loved very, very much,”he began.

“The Prince, a child of 14, lived and played in and around the castle with which he was familiar from the time of his birth. The King was always happy whenever he observed the young Prince playing about.

“One day, the King saw the boy Prince running amid the halls of the castle and stop at the locked and chained door of the tower on the north side of the castle. The King shouted to the boy Prince, “Do not go past that door!”   The boy Prince, not understanding why his father would forbid him from venturing anywhere, found him self wondering more and more what was up in the tower on the north side of the castle. Then one day, the curiosity of the young Prince got the better of him, and he began an ardent search for the key to that chain and lock, which held its own secret. He searched and searched. In the dungeon in the lower part of the castle, he found, in an old dusty drawer, a large key wrapped in a white linen cloth. He rushed to the locked, chained door. He thought to himself, ‘What secret lies about in that tower in the north side of the castle? Is this the very key that will end for all time, my curiosity?’

“As he reached the door with the rusty chain, his heart pounded faster and louder. At last he was there. The door stood before him and with a quick turn of the lock, and a great jerk, the door was open and the secret of that tower would soon be his. As he clamored up the winding staircase of the tower in the north side of the castle, he saw nothing more along the way but dust and cobwebs. When the boy Prince reached the top, he looked about and saw what he perceived to be a shadow. Then the shadow-like figure moved and turned around. The young Prince found himself staring into the very face of DEATH. With a loud shout, he ran down the winding steps of the staircase of the tower to his father, and exclaimed, ‘Father, I am sorry I disobeyed you. I climbed the stairway of the tower in the north side of the castle and there, I stared into the face of DEATH.’ The King, most disturbed by this tale, summoned his royal guards. As they assembled before him, he shouted to them a command to make a caravan and mount the boy Prince on a horse in the center of it.

“The caravan would include 50 camels, 20 asses, goats and all the food they would need. The King commanded that they make their way to the oasis, that was ten sunrises away and to stay there with the boy Prince until they were all sent for by the King. 

“When the rising sun came, the caravan, which had already been prepared, left the gates of the castle and journeyed toward the oasis. Ten sunrises later, the caravan, having stopped only to rest the beasts of burden, reached the oasis. There they lit fires and pitched their tents for the long stay in the desert. That night, the boy Prince went to his tent and there he saw a sight familiar to him, that being the dark shadowy figure he had seen in the castle. As the figure turned about to face the boy Prince, suddenly there was recognition of the face of DEATH. The boy Prince exclaimed, ‘What are you doing here? I left you in the tower in the north side of the castle?’ The dark figure smiled and said, ‘When you climbed the winding stairway of the tower of the north side of the castle, you surprised me! For, it was here at the oasis, in the desert that we were to meet.’” 

Once he had finished the story, I realized what my husband was trying to tell me.

I was powerless to save my son.

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.”  Mary Anne Radmacher

It was spring 2002; six months after Danny had died. Joe was painting the barn that Danny had never completed.  I was in the yard sitting on a tree swing watching him.  There was a radio Danny would listen to when he worked on the barn. I called the kind of music he liked, "Danny music."  Joe placed it on the ground nearby and turned it on. My thoughts returned to the previous summer when he was working on the barn, singing along with the music. I could see him smiling while he hammered nails in the clapboards that Joe was now painting.  He was blond, tanned, healthy and so handsome.

I started to cry when I heard the music.  I got off the swing and walked toward the back door of the house. Joe stopped me, took my hand and walked me over to a chair on the porch. He asked me to sit down.  I sat leaning forward with my hands covering my face, my head resting on my knees and sobbed my attack on Joe for playing the Danny music. I wept, "How could you? Why are you so insensitive? I hate that you didn't know that would hurt me so deeply! Why did you? How could you? How?"  He sat in the chair next to me. He put his hands on my shoulders, and said, “I'm sorry about the radio Joanna. Please tell me, can you think of anything that I can do, that will help?”

I asked him to send me away, “Someplace, anyplace.”

“I will do that if it will help."

One of the members of a newsgroup I followed lived in England. He was going to be part of astrology convention scheduled for that month in London. Several members of the newsgroup were making plans to meet there.

I asked Joe to send me there.

I found myself in London, wanting to be in a place I’d never been.  I went there to hide from my house of mourning and thought I’d find some guts there to bring back home so I could face the empty chair where Danny was no longer. During the flight to London I had a window seat. I leaned my head against the small window and imagined the plane crashing into the ocean. The thought soothed me.

When the plane landed at Heathrow Airport, I expected to feel something different. But Kismet met me at the airport and told me in no uncertain terms “for whom the bell tolled” and I was still in pain.

London was an odd place and it distracted me from the day-to-day ritual of darkness in my home.  I visited Trafalgar Square, sat on the fountain and fed pigeons. I saw red telephone booths, double decked buses, and crowded pubs. I saw palaces and silent statuesque guards standing next to horses and heard thick English accents of men who drove taxies that took me from place to place.  There were political protesters shouting in anger about the hierocracies they disagreed with, and clowns juggling fire on the sidewalks. None of it mattered to me.

Restaurants and pubs lined the streets. I sat at tables on the sidewalks and gave money to the passing gypsies who begged.  I walked to Kensington Park where I sat under a tree and ate a cone of chocolate ice cream with a stranger. We then walked into an old church where I began to cry uncontrollably when I saw the old markings on the walls. I saw paintings of the Virgin Mary and cried for her, for all mothers who had to grieve their sons.

Later that day I noticed a girl, no more than seventeen, sitting on the floor in a subway tunnel with her dog. She was playing her guitar for money. There was a donation plate next to her. She was thin and looked hungry, as did her dog. I took some money out of my purse without counting it and put it in the plate. She smiled at me and I couldn’t get her face out of my mind. When I went home, I painted a portrait of her and her dog. When I finished the painting I threw it away.

What my brief stint in London taught me was that there was no place to hide. I didn’t care where I was. I wasn’t excited and wasn’t interested in the history of one of the most incredible places in the world. I read letters to Lady Diana that hung on the fence in front of her palace. I cried for her, for those who loved her and yet, I was numbed to the bone with grief.  No matter what I did or said and no matter how many times I smiled in London, I was battling the sorrow that was breaking my heart. 

No better off than the day I had arrived, I returned home.