AGE OF EMPATHY
Sacred Duality of Tragedy
When the life before and the life after exist side by side
“Why do we have to pray the flipping Rosary every week? It is so boring!” Tammy huffed, as she threw her stack of books onto the 1970s desk, nearly toppling it over to expose decades worth of petrified gum.
Tammy was a feisty seventh grader whose borderline Coke bottle glasses slightly magnified her beautiful brown eyes. She was a scrappy gal, Catholic school skirt rolled up just enough not to get pink-slipped, sweater cuffs chewed on, with a tampon often tucked into her navy-blue wool knee sock.
Her ponytail even struggled against its own head trying to restrain her unruly black hair.
She led with her chin out, heart tucked back, daring you to engage and loaded for bear should you accept the challenge. She was the kind of student who could leave a seasoned teacher smelling like a farm animal after one forty-three-minute class.
But I seemed to have elasticity when it came to Tammy. For as far as she pushed my last nerve, she could always say or do something to immediately snap my love back in place.
Although I was not above writing her up, I usually just slipped a small piece of sandpaper on her desk and whispered, “Sand those rough edges down girl.”
That much sass so early on a Monday morning was a bit much even for Tammy. Eager to suppress the contagion, I girded my loins and addressed the class.
“Okay ladies and gents, if you don’t remember or haven’t been told before, we have a long-standing tradition of praying the Rosary together, for peace and continued healing of our world. Does anyone object to continuing that?”
Dead silence. “Excellent!”
“Still boring,” muttered Tammy.
“Grab a set of Rosary Beads and follow me, remember no swinging them!”
As we neared the gym, my principal came walking towards me, a little too briskly and with the air of an afternoon frazzle already about her.
“Mrs. C, could you come with me please? Students, head into the gym and take your seats.” I fired a last warning shot about behavior as she pulled me into the small office and closed the door.
“I just found out that Tammy’s sister passed away this morning,” she blurted out, hands shaking and moving from her mouth to her stomach to her heart. The air in the room got vacuumed up.
“What?”
“We just got the call.”
“What?”
“Tammy had already left for school.”
“What?”
“Stop saying that!” she hissed, apologizing with her eyes immediately.
But this is what I did. I had the bad habit of not processing horrible, terrible things that were said to me, my shocked system asking for the words again in a pathetic attempt to pull them into my ears.
She was not the first I had pissed off with this conditioned response.
“I need you to go to the gym. We are going to proceed with the Rosary and then I will get Tammy and bring her to my office. Her mom is going to be here in about an hour.”
I don’t remember saying anything else, just numbly walking towards the gym. The hallway, now getting blurry, seemed off-kilter and weirdly long. I looked around for my class and spotted them across from me in the upper section of the bleachers.
There along the top row sat Tammy in all her imperfect glory; jaw jacking up and down, a massive mound of bright blue gum popping in and out of the scene, elbowing her friend and swinging the beads around her forefinger until they twisted upon themselves.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
My hands began memory moving; forehead, stomach, left shoulder, right shoulder. The words came loud then soft, sharp then fuzzy.
I looked up at her again. She was still horsing around, exaggerating movements, pointing, whispering, giggling, as the Rosary continued. I could not take my eyes off her.
I would never see this Tammy again.
I was witnessing the final minutes of the life she had woken up with; a life just moments away from being shattered into a million pieces.
I was watching, seemingly lurking, around the edges of her now fragile, private boundaries and it felt so personally invasive. I, with this knowledge, watching her, blissfully and blessedly unaware.
I was an intruder in this sacred space, yet it felt so familiar. I had been here before and as wrong as it felt, I didn’t want this moment to end.
On a similar morning five years earlier, I sat with my four-year-old niece Catie, watching Arthur cartoons, and eating cups of Cheerios. I had become one of her primary caregivers after my sister Mimi was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
After dropping my own children off at school and racing across three towns, my mornings were spent with her so that my brother-in-law Mike could be at the hospital. She was their youngest, Mimi’s surprise baby girl; towheaded with bright blue eyes, born on a day with the pinkest sunrise any of us had ever seen.
The phone rang. I lifted her off my lap, told her I would be right back, and ran to the phone. Mimi had been declining and we were on high alert. It was my oldest sister, Monica.
“She’s gone.”
“What?”
“Mim just passed a couple of minutes ago.”
“What?”
“El, she is gone. I need you to call the others while I stay here with Mike.”
Another “what” went unanswered.
The others were my nine siblings and mother. I barely heard the words, “Of course, of course” come out of my mouth, because the screaming, “No!” was reverberating somewhere in my solar plexus.
I remember hanging up the phone in slow motion and turning towards the hall. It looked like it would take me three days to walk the distance from this kitchen, where I alone knew the unspeakable, to the living room where one little blondie still inhabited a world with her mother.
It was in that kitchen I first encountered those feelings of being an intruder, an invader on someone else’s last precious moments of a life they would lose forever.
It was there I learned that time can be suspended, the life before and the life after existing side by side. It was there I learned that what you choose to do in those mystical minutes carries a holiness of sorts.
I desperately wanted that moment to last longer.
If I did not make those phone calls, hope lived. If I did not make those phone calls, my beloved sister, Catie’s momma, was still alive out there.
I could hear her tiny laugh down the hall, and it seemed so far away.
“Auntie, can you bring me some milk?”
“Yup!” I swallowed hard. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
A couple of minutes to call the “others,” drain their hope, sever their reality, deliver that second life they did not want, and kill my sister, her momma, over and over, and over again. And then, pour some milk into a pink sippy cup, push the closing hallway walls back, settle in on the couch and try not to let my tears dampen the top of her blond braided head.
Although panic was electrifying every cell of my body, I forced myself to remain still. Trespassing in her world now, I did not want my words or actions to alter even an ion in this protected space. She needed to remain here, my heart was aching to be here, and for as long as we could manage it, we were going to stay in this world where Mimi lived.
I began to resurrect happy memories from this life she still inhabited. I started to file them away for her, for me, before they became too entangled with the memory of this horrible day.
All I could do was breathe and remember, breathe and remember, breathe and remember until her daddy came home, and this sacred duality merged.
That is why I did not want the Rosary to end.
I wished those last, light-filled moments could hover over Tammy for a lifetime. I wanted us to stay in that impermanent, time-defying place where her two worlds sat side by side in that smelly gym, each not knowing of the other’s existence.
If we did not finish the Rosary, Tammy would not find out about her sister. If we did not say that last prayer, she would not have to begin the life-long hopeless journey of wanting just one more moment with her.
She would remember these days as happy and light ones. She would remember how funny, smart, brilliant, and confident she was here in the seventh grade at this small school. She would remember her life before as it really was, not as it would come to be redefined and anchored by this day.
O clement, O loving, O sweet virgin Mary, pray for us O holy Mother of God…
I stood there, my hands once again memory moving as we ended our prayers. I promised myself that I would hold those moments for Tammy, like I continue to hold them for Catie.
When or if she ever needed, I would be there to recount her untroubled youthful days, to correct her misremembering of events, to soften and sand the rough edges of this day and the days to follow.
If I had to stand as witness to the holy space of her last moments of normalcy, I would offer testament that she had lived a life before this terrible day and it was a sass-filled, laughter-infused, imperfectly joyful one; she had been happy.
And next Monday, I would pray the boring, flipping Rosary, for peace and for continued healing, for Tammy and Blondie.
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