In October of 1995, almost one year to the day after I joined Cooley Godward, Daddy dies. He’d had prostate cancer for years, had felt it coming, and had chosen to die from it. He was seventy-seven and had already exceeded the life expectation for a Black man in America. He knew something would get him, and prostate cancer was it. He died in the house my parents had chosen to be their final home together: a few acres in the woods on Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. There’d been enough time for us all to get there to say good-bye.
After Daddy died I take three weeks off work to help my Mom with the logistics of insurance and banking and bills. I don’t ask the firm for permission to stay so long, really. I just stay with my Mom until I feel she can start to walk through her days alone. When I return to work in November, I muddle through the interminably long days and stumble through cloudy thinking. I can’t make a to-do list. Can’t follow it when I do manage to make one. The holidays come and go. My billable hours dip significantly.
Three months after Daddy died, I confide in my sister-in-law, Stephen’s widow, about my inability to get anything done. She encourages me to go to grief counseling. I haven’t had so much as an hour of therapy in my life and tend to dismiss it as a crutch for the weak, but I go, if only to make my sister-in-law feel she is helping me.
After just one session with a group of fellow grievers, counseling becomes a biweekly lifeline. There, I begin to talk about my brother’s unexpected death as well as Daddy’s. For seven months, until the funk dissipates and I begin to feel like my old self again, those twice-monthly group sessions are my religion.
Sometime during those months of therapy, the partner with whom I worked most closely takes me out to lunch, a rare treat. We walk to the restaurant, have a nice meal, and then as we are walking back to the firm she stops on the sidewalk. Turns to me.
“You need to get your hours up.”
“I know. It’s been hard for me since my dad died.”
“I understand. I know what it’s like. I lost both my parents when I was young. You work through it, you move on.”
“I know. I’m actually in counseling.”
“Good. But you need to get your hours up.”