“I’d love that,” I said, feeling that rush of new-friend excitement that becomes rarer the older you get.
A few weeks later, I called Ellen, and the four of us went to Leon’s Full Service, a restaurant in Decatur. It was a very fun night—easy and relaxed—the double-date chemistry perfect. Nolan and Andy were both Lovett grads (though Andy was several years older); both now worked with their fathers; and, perhaps the biggest thing they had in common, both had married women so different than they—women they had met through their siblings. (Andy’s sister, Margot, had been Ellen’s best friend first.)
As Nolan told our story, he mentioned Daniel, and I watched Andy piece it all together, connecting the dots from my maiden name to the Lovett alum turned Yale med student who had died in the Christmastime car accident.
He turned to me, his face somber. “Was Daniel Garland your brother?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” I said, then briefed Ellen so that Andy didn’t have to. “My brother died. In a car accident.”
Andy mumbled that he was sorry, looking down, exactly the way most people do. But Ellen looked directly into my eyes, took my hand, and said the same words but in such a different way.
“Thank you,” I said, feeling a deep connection to her even before she told me that she had experienced a big loss at a young age, too, her mother dying of cancer. “Not that it’s the same thing,” she quickly added. “Brothers and sisters are supposed to be from the cradle to the grave….”
“Yes, but still…I’m really sorry, too,” I said. Although the death of a parent is a more comprehensible void than losing a sibling, because it follows the natural order we expect, I couldn’t imagine life without my mother. I especially couldn’t fathom losing her when I was still a teenager. No matter how you slice it, I remember thinking, life is tragic.
“Has your family…healed?” Ellen asked. “Did it bring you closer?”
It was such a compassionate question, and I found myself confiding in her, as the guys branched off in a separate conversation about golf and travel and their work. I talked a lot about Josie, how walled off she had become, how she refused to discuss Daniel and seemed to view my desire to do so as unhealthy. I asked Ellen if she had siblings. She said yes, an older sister named Suzanne. She told me how different they were, yet still so close. “She really is my best friend.”
It was something I never said about Josie, and I felt a pang of wistfulness and regret. I wanted to be close like that, but couldn’t imagine it ever happening. “Did losing your mom make you two closer?” I asked.
“It did,” she said, nodding. “But we were always close….My dad sounds more like your sister. He seldom talks about my mom. It’s funny how grief is different for everyone….”
I nodded, thinking how true that statement was, remembering a quote from a support group I had briefly attended with my mother. Grief is a mystery to be lived through, not a problem to be solved, our counselor—who had lost her nine-year-old daughter—had written on the chalkboard. Maybe she was right. Yet it seemed to me that talking about it, trying to solve it, was the only way to truly accept it. The only hope for healing. I said as much to Ellen that night, and she quickly agreed.
“Absolutely. But I guess my father and your sister just don’t see it that way. And it’s hard—really hard—when those we love most don’t handle things in the same way we do. I bet that’s why so many marriages break up after the death of a child. I bet couples are more likely to stay together if they handle grief the same way….”