News of my son’s death traveled even faster than that of his disappearance. It was a loss felt by our entire community and made all the more painful by its violent cause, by Jonah’s suicide, by Seattle news teams that swooped in to sensationalize. Many in town speculated about girls and jealousies, drug deals and psychotic breaks, but not one fact surfaced that lent the slightest credibility to any of it.
The need for public outlets of grief was intense. Within the week, a student memorial was held in the school’s overflowing gym. This was followed a few days later by a Catholic Mass filled to capacity, mourners packed even in the vestibule.
Katherine had insisted upon the Mass. Though Daniel never considered himself Catholic, I didn’t object. Katherine, who had divorced me the year before, grieved as deeply as I did, likely more so for having chosen to live elsewhere, for failing to be present the last ten months of her son’s life. I understood this and wished her whatever comfort she could find. Still, for my part, these events left me cold. And I am not a cold man.
At least, at one time, I was not.
DANIEL’S THIRD SERVICE, his last, was the Quaker memorial I requested. I don’t recall how I made it to the meetinghouse that day. I must have walked as I usually did, but the first thing I remember is standing in the clerk’s office with Peter Thibodeau, my closest friend and principal of the high school where I taught. Though not a Quaker, Peter had led me away from the gathering as soon as he saw me at the meetinghouse door.
“We need to get you out of that,” he said, nodding toward the wool sweater I wore. I was drenched. Apparently it had rained my entire way there.
“No,” I said, jerking back.
He studied me. With his cropped dark hair, the shoulders of a bull, and a pronounced jaw, Peter was an imposing man. I must have swayed under his gaze, because he grabbed my arm as if to right me. And then he did something he had never done. He pulled me to him, held me in a painful crush. Only for a moment before pressing back. “You going to make it? Because you don’t have to. I can take you home.”
“I asked for this memorial.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
He was right. I could leave or I could stay. Nothing would return to me what I had lost.
“I’m staying.”
“All right,” he said. “As long as you know you stink. You know that, right?”
So like him to be blunt even here. He was the same with students and parents, presenting notice of suspensions, even expulsions, with nonjudgmental candor.
“What were you thinking, walking here without a coat?”
I stood silent, the sweater releasing the barnyard scents of wet wool and grass. And something more potent. Buried deep in its fibers was the musky adolescent-boy smell of Daniel. Three years back, when my son was fourteen, when he still wanted to emulate his father, he had often borrowed it.
“People are waiting,” Peter said.
Not being Quaker, he didn’t understand that communal silence was its own form of honoring a life. Friends were not waiting. They had started the memorial the second they took their seats.
When I offered no response, Peter slid off his dark suit jacket and held it up. It was too formal and somber for a Quaker meeting, especially a memorial. But I let him put it on me, let him cover the sweater I wore. I can only imagine how I must have looked: my scraggly gray hair dripping down my cheeks and neck, wearing a jacket with sleeves cropped inches above my wrists, its short, boxy body making me appear taller and gaunter than I already was.
Though ten years my junior, Peter patted my back with tender severity, as if he were my father, and in allowing him to dress me, I had made him proud or sad or both.
ON ENTERING THE MEETING ROOM, I saw Katherine seated on the far side, my usual spot opposite, waiting. Though all the benches faced the empty center, Friends had saved a place for me where the angles of light might feel familiar.
But this day, nothing felt familiar. The only comfort came from my damp sweater. Pressed to my skin by Peter’s jacket, it created the sensation of weighted warmth, like a newborn nuzzled against me, and I had flashes of my son as a baby, newly burst into this world, his life unbounded. As the silence was broken, as Friend after Friend rose and spoke of my son, I half expected Daniel to appear in my arms or scamper in at the end of meeting, a five-year-old fresh from First Day School. I almost laughed remembering how, as a small boy, he’d convert his urge to make noise into motion, would flop backward over my knees, open and close his mouth like a fish. More than once, I’d taken a kick to the jaw during my son’s acrobatic attempts at silence.
Perhaps forty minutes into the service, I saw Daniel on one of the front benches, fourteen and proud, wearing the very sweater that clung to me now. His eyes swept the room as if searching for something. He seemed so present, so thoroughly alive, that I glanced at Katherine across the emptiness. Surely, she felt him too. We could share this, couldn’t we? One final moment together. Whole.
If she was aware of my eyes on her, if she felt Daniel in the room, I saw no evidence. Her focus was half lidded and still. Her “friend” sat next to her. Thick necked and dark suited, he took one of her hands in his and stroked it with his thumb. She lifted her face to him, and then, as if remembering, she flicked a glance my way. On seeing me, she slipped her hand out of his grasp, set it alone in her lap. An act of kindness. Or maybe one of shame.
Strange how I remember nothing of what was said that day, can recall none of the tributes paid to my son. But that moment stays with me. The connection and withdrawal. Love and loss, kindness and betrayal, Daniel present yet unseen, as if all I needed to know were contained in those few small motions.
AFTERWARD, AS FRIENDS SET UP THE POTLUCK, I succumbed to an urge to flee, snuck out the back door and hid among the recycle bins, waiting for the parking lot to clear so I could cross it and walk home. I heard the back door open behind me. Jonah’s mother, Lorrie, was attempting a similar escape.
I’d seen Lorrie earlier, sitting at the back of the meeting room, but my mind had refused to acknowledge her. She’d attended the Mass and the student gathering as well, but we had not spoken at either. Despite being next-door neighbors, we hadn’t so much as waved since learning of our sons’ deaths. I had forgiven Jonah. I had forgiven Lorrie. What more did God want of me? Why did God keep putting her before me again and again?
Now, in the damp, gray drizzle, she appeared hardly more than a child, her fierce, small frame lost in a black dress. She turned and saw me.
“Isaac!” An indictment, as if I’d planned this as a trap.
“It was good of you to come,” I said, aware of the chill in my tone.
Her expression flickered with fear, but she forced her features into a semblance of calm and lowered her gaze, a submissive posture I’d seen her use when her husband, Roy, was still alive. It pained me to have her use it on me.
Peter burst through the door just then, nearly hitting Lorrie. “Sorry,” he said, “I—”
“No!” Lorrie said, suddenly in motion, scrambling down the stairs, flapping a pale hand. “No. It’s fine. I was just leaving.” And even as Peter opened his mouth in protest, she hurried on toward the lot, that black dress billowing behind.
Peter watched until she reached her car, then turned to me. “That must have been bad.”
“I suppose it was.”
He wanted to advise me. I could see that. To say something like, “She’s not the enemy, Isaac. She’s suffered huge losses too.” But he didn’t. He let me be.
I took a deep breath. “I think your jacket is ruined.”
“Probably,” he said. “But if I had to pick someone to ruin my best suit jacket, it would be you.”
I loved Peter then. Perhaps I love him still.