Heart Beat

Shattered...

Like you've never been before
The life you knew
In a thousand pieces on the floor

"Your husband's heart is very damaged," said Dr. Hoffman. She stood next to our chairs in the trauma waiting room, still wearing a blue surgical gown. "His aorta was crushed by the steering wheel. And he's sustained a lot of other damage in his chest and pelvis. But, he's survived the surgery. There may be other complications later on, but for now he is stable."

My daughter and I were numb after eight hours spent in molded plastic chairs, eight hours of twisting our hands and praying. During the evening and early morning hours, friends and church members had stopped by to pray and wait with us. Now, at 2AM, it was just Bonnie and me and our minister.

"You can see him for a moment," said Dr. Hoffman. "Then you all need to go get some sleep. Don't set the alarm for work or school. Just sleep. We'll call you if anything happens."

Ron lay on the stretcher in the recovery room, still and gray, wires and tubes connected everywhere to his body. A screen above showed his heart beat in glowing green. I touched his right shoulder, one of the few places on his body without an electrode. "Stay with me," I whispered to him. "Tell your heart to keep beating."

And words fall short in times like these
When this world drives you to your knees
You think you're never gonna get back
To the you that used to be

Tell your heart to beat again

Close your eyes and breathe it in

"Is he still alive?" asked the voice on the other end of the phone. "I just got the  message you left. Mom, tell me, is Dad still alive?"

Bonnie, Allen, and I had huddled together in my bed for a few hours, trying to sleep away some of the fears we were feeling. One of us would drift off for a few moments, but inevitably we would wake up and grab for each other. Thoughts ran through my head: What now? How would we get through this? Could I be strong enough for Ron, for our children?

Tears streamed down my face as I responded to my son, away at college. "Yes," I said. "Dad's still alive. When we left him at a couple hours ago, his heart was still beating."

Let the shadows fall away

Step into the light of grace

Yesterday's a closing door
You don't live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you've been
And tell your heart to beat again.

"The surgery on his pancreas was successful," said Dr. Harbison. "He'll be on a feeding tube for a while, and gradually we'll reintroduce solid foods. But his heart has become enlarged. It's not working at full capacity. He'll spend some time in the telemetry unit, but I think he is going to need a pace-maker. We'll watch him for a few days until he's stronger." 

I made notes on the pad I kept in my purse as he talked. Terms once foreign to me--pancreas, spleen, telemetry- were now part of my everyday vocabulary. "I'm assuming you will give him a diet to follow when he's released, things that are easy to digest and that will keep his blood sugar level. When can I see him?"

"In about half an hour," he said. "We've had some trouble bringing him out of the anesthesia."

"It always happens," I said.

He paused for a moment and checked Ron's chart. "I see this is his--fourth surgery in the last year? This must be hard on you."

"It is," I agreed. "But we're a strong family. The kids and I figure it out as we go along." I smiled as I put the notebook back in my purse. "As long as his heart keeps beating, we'll keep fighting."

Beginning

Just let that word wash over you

It's alright now
Love's healing hands have pulled you through
So get back up, take step one
Leave the darkness, feel the sun
'Cause your story's far from over
And your journey's just begun

"Your pulse is very weak. Mr. Cobourn, I think you're going into A-fib. Are you with me? Stay with me!" shouted the nurse.

I grabbed Ron's hand. "Come on, honey. Keep breathing." I turned to the nurse who was busily raising the bars

on the stretcher Ron laid on. "Shall we call 911?" I asked her. "Do we need the paddles? Is his pace maker working?"

"It will be quicker to run him across the street to Temple," she said. "I'll push. Go hold the elevator!" 

I picked up Ron's things and ran down the hallway of the medical building on Broad Street, determined to stop traffic if I had to in order to get Ron into the Emergency Room across the street. "I'll call them that we're on our way!" I said as I furiously pushed the button for the elevator. The nurse arrived, breathless with her exertion, and the doors slid open. I leaned over my groggy husband and whispered in his ear, "Tell your heart to keep beating. Tell it not to stop."

Tell your heart to beat again

Close your eyes and breathe it in

Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace

"It's his heart" said the voice on my cell phone. "As you know, it's terribly scarred from so many surgeries and infections. And it's only working at 25% capacity. Dr. Araidne needs to do an ablation but since you have medical power of attorney..."

"I know," I said as I opened up my desk drawer and picked up my purse. My elementary  students were  out on the playground and the Reading lesson was on the board. 

"How soon can you be here?"

I checked the clock on the wall. " Maybe 30 minutes," I said. "I'm just up on Academy Road. I can get to Hahnemann pretty quickly."

"Okay. We'll let the surgeon know."

I grabbed my purse and locked the door. I would run by the office and tell the secretary I was leaving for the hospital; my reading students would have to stay in their classroom. Quickly, I strode over to the parking lot and got into my car. "Tell your heart to keep beating," I whispered to my husband. "Just a little while longer."

Let every heartbreak
And every scar
Be a picture that reminds you
Who has carried you this far

"We did everything we could," said the EMT. "There is nothing else we can do. His heart just..stopped. Between one beat and the next." He laid a hand on my arm. "I wish we could have done more."

I took a deep breath. "He's been through a lot. Too many hospitalizations. Too many surgeries. Nineteen years of too much for one man to deal with." I let the tears fall from my face. "He stayed as long as he could. He kept his heart beating for us."

The EMT bent to put the instruments back into his bag. "The medical examiner will be along later. But I think cause of death is obvious." He straightened up. "You took good care of him, Mrs. Cobourn. Never doubt that." He sighed. "Frankly, he shouldn't have lived this long. He did because he loved you."

'Cause love sees farther than you ever could
In this moment heaven's working
Everything for your good

"Dad's okay now," I said to my three children, huddled together on the deck out back while the EMT's finished up. "He's not in pain anymore. I promised him...I promised him we would all be okay. I promised him we would  move on with our lives. I promised him we would always remember him."

Tell your heart to beat again

Close your eyes and breathe it in

Let the shadows fall away

"Good-bye," I whispered as I leaned over the casket. "It will take some time, I know. But I want you to know I will be okay. Your love will always be part of me. My heart will beat for you."

Say goodbye to where you've been

And tell your heart to beat again

LEAVING: THREE VIEWS

Ron

This part will be bad.

I don't know how I know it. I have fallen asleep in the lift chair Linda and Allen bought me six weeks ago. Linda said they needed to bungee cord it to the tail gate of her SUV and then Allen had to maneuver it up the hill and into the house. It is a comfortable chair and for the first time in a very long time I am feeling content. The constant pain in my chest and belly is gone and I am dozing. I could have gone to bed, getting myself into my wheelchair and transferring into the hospital bed that hugs the wall in the dining room. My room. But Linda and Bonnie will be home from the beach soon and I want to see them before I go to sleep.

I'm so tired though. So tired of the pain and the medication and the doctors. So tired that Linda needs to do so much for me. And my chair is just so comfortable. I push the remote and lean back as far as I can.

Then, even though my eyes are closed and there is a wall between us, I see Linda and Bonnie out front. They are just getting out of the SUV, dragging suitcases and a bag from Dolle's. Caramel popcorn. Linda has promised me some. She always remembers. Bonnie puts her bag in her red Civic parked out front and for a moment I think she will get in her car and leave. Come in, I think. Say good-bye. And maybe she hears me or maybe she loves me because she walks up the path with Linda and they open the door.

Now it gets really hard.

"Hello!" they say and they drop their bags on the porch. "We're home!" They are at my chair now and I am trying to open my eyes and find my voice but I cannot seem to move. I feel--well, I'm sure Linda could think of a better word for it--but I feel absent, like I'm not even there.

Bonnie shouts at me. "Dad? Daddy?" and Linda shakes my arm. I hear Allen coming down the stairs, Allen who went up to WaWa to buy me a soda and a pretzel a while ago then went upstairs to play a computer game. "What's wrong?" he says.

It gets really confusing now.

Linda grabs the phone and I know she is calling for help and she says she thinks I am not breathing and I want to tell her that I am, too, breathing but then I think that maybe I am not. Bonnie continues shaking me and Allen gets a glass of water and pours it on my feet to wake me up and I want to wake up or maybe I don't want to wake up because sleeping or whatever I am doing is so nice.

Then there are people coming into the house and they have black bags and there are blue lights flashing outside and I think how they will confuse Allen and I want to tell them to turn them off but everyone is talking and Bonnie is crying and Linda is controlled because she has had to be. There are cold things against my chest and people--paramedics, I guess--are pulling at me and one of them tells my wife and kids to leave the room.

I am warm. I am floating. I hear a voice. It is a little like a warm summer breeze and I know that no one else can hear it.

"Son," says the voice and it sounds a little like my dad and a little like Harry Callas, "it's time to come home."

And I want to say, "I am home. I have lived here with Linda for 44 years." But I know that it is not true, that this little house has never been home, and as the people--what are they called again?--are trying to bring me back, I am already gone.

Linda

The obituary will say that Ron passed away quietly, but it is not quiet here now. There are paramedics who have asked us to leave the room as they assemble their equipment and try to bring Ron back; I want to tell them to leave him alone, his body has been through enough. But I am busy answering questions for a police officer and showing him Ron's ID and wondering where the cat is. Bonnie and my best friend Chris are in the kitchen and Allen is in the dining room, telling and officer that his dad has just fallen asleep.


Then the policeman sadly shakes his head at me and says, "Time of death, 9:43" which is ludicrous because Bonnie and I walked in the door at 9:10 and found him in his chair, already still. Allen shouts, "My dad's not dead!" and runs up the stairs. Chris hugs Bonnie and Bonnie takes out her phone to call her husband and her older brother and I know I need to make phone calls to Ron's family but I cannot find my own phone. I walk back into the living room; Ron has been covered with a pink sheet and it seems an odd choice for my big, burly husband. My purse is on the floor where I dropped it and I take out my phone but the battery is running low. A policeman is at the door and he tells me the medical examiner will need to come out because Ron's death was unattended. I want to protest, because Ron has always been tended. The Saturday aide was here until 5 and Allen was upstairs and Bonnie and I were on our way home. But I nod my head and agree not to move or touch Ron--as if I could move a man who weighs over 300 pounds--and I grab the landline. The front door is open and I spy the cat crouching at the open door. I scoop him up and hand him to someone--Jared, maybe?--and tell him to put the cat in my room. 

Bonnie's husband puts the cat upstairs and goes to join Bonnie on the porch and I heard other voices on the back deck. Dennis and Laura. All of my children are here. I think of how many times we have all gathered for a surgery or an emergency and how they have always come, pacing floors and offering hugs and holding hands.

I start to cry.


I sit at the kitchen table and call my father, who thinks we are calling to tell him we have arrived home safely. He is surprised, but not stunned. On some level, we have spent years expecting this. Dad murmurs sympathy and love. Then I call Ron's brother Tom and he thinks it is Ron calling at 10:02 to talk sports but when he hears my voice, he says, "What's wrong, Linda?" and I tell him. He shouts, "What?" then he is calm. Tom says he will call Ron's mother and I am relieved. How do you tell a 92-year old woman that she has outlived her son?

Chris has fixed tea and hands me a mug and I think I smile my thanks, then I call my brother in North Carolina. He does not answer his cell phone and I do not know if he is home or away on business but I call the house phone anyway and he answers on the first ring. I can feel his love through the wire: "I wish I was there with you, Linda. I wish I could help you." I tell him I will let him know when we make arrangements and he says he will round up all his kids--three boys, one girl--and they will all come.

I am heading out to the deck to be with my kids when the phone rings and it is Ron's mother and her voice is heavy with sadness but she says she is okay and she wants to know if we can use Bateman's for the funeral and she offers to pay for it and I am still too numbed to think of it all. We agree to talk about it on Sunday.

I am almost to the deck to be with my kids when I notice that Allen, an adult with Asperger's Syndrome, is sitting in what has been Ron's room for the last nine months. He is holding an ice cube in each hand. Stimming to calm himself. I ask Jared to keep an eye on him. Finally, I join my older kids on the deck.

Bonnie is crying and hugging Laura, Dennis' girlfriend, and Dennis is leaning against the deck railing, tall and thin and pale. I go to him and I reach up to put my arms around him. He folds himself over me, tears streaming down his face.

"You sacrificed your life for Dad," he says. "No one could have done more for him that you did. You are a good, good woman." I hope that it is true and we stand there for a long time, hugging and crying until the mosquitoes attack us and the medical examiner arrives and we head into the kitchen.

She is young, the assistant ME, and kind. She asks for Ron's ID and I produce his wallet. She asks about his medical conditions and I give her the litany of surgeries and illnesses of the last 19 years.

Impressive, she says. 26 surgeries in 19 years. Twice as many hospitalizations. Then she says she needs to take picture and I should leave the room again because the paramedics will need to move the body--not Ron now, just the body.

We are back in the kitchen again and someone--Laura? Jared?--goes for coffee. We talk and share stories about their dad. We laugh. We cry. The ice cubes have melted in Allen's hands and he is sitting very still, clutching the blanket that was on Ron's bed.

We are going to be okay, I think. We are numb, still processing, but the kids are saying, "Remember the time Dad..." and sharing their childhoods.

In my mind, I say to Ron, Your kids loved you, and I know that he hears me.

Then the ME, Jenny, asks me to come back into the living room and says she would like to take the body--Ron's poor, broken body--back to the office but she is sure he died of natural causes. She wants to do an external autopsy to rule out any mechanical defect in his pacemaker. I can have the funeral home pick him up in the morning.

But it is morning now, and still we are talking about Ron. The police have left and the cat has been freed from my room, but is is cowering under the couch. Chris promises to call on Sunday and talk to the minister after church and she leaves. We sit in the kitchen, and it is suddenly 2:30 and someone says, "We should get some sleep," and the older two children and their partners leave but will be back in the morning. Jared and Dennis move Ron's heavy chair into the dining room because I cannot look at it.

There are more hugs and tears at the door and Allen shakes hands and gives hugs. I turn off the porch light and lock the door and ask Allen if he is doing okay.

He shrugs. "I'm going to go finish my game," he says. Then he turns to me, adamant. "Dad's not dead. People should stop saying he is."

"Okay," I say and nod.

"He'll wake up," says Allen. "You'll see." He heads up the stairs and into the office and I hear the sounds of a computer war.

I try to sleep. I can do this, I think. For the last 19 years I have done the impossible. I can do this.

Allen

The policeman tells me that Dad is dead but I do not trust him. Last year when I was trying to change my flat tire the same policeman said I was acting in a "threatening manner" and took me to the hospital because he said I was "talking crazy." I was only telling him what the directions on the Fix-a-flat can said and he thought I meant the can was talking. Now, that WOULD be crazy.

But this is different. People think I don't understand because my mind gets scrambled sometimes but I know what I know. And I know they all think Dad is dead, even Mom who should know better. But Dad gets really tired and he sleeps for a long time and we just need to let him sleep and then he'll be okay.

Mom said the lady who came to examine Dad--Jenny?--took him someplace to sleep for as long as he needed. But I do not know why he could not just sleep here. His bed is here. He'll wake up, everyone will see. I just need to believe it, that he can wake up. 

Mom says we will have to plan his funeral tomorrow with Dennis and Bonnie and Mom Mom and Uncle Tom. I don't care about it, but I will do what Mom wants me to do. It's going to be really funny when we plan it all and then Dad wakes up.

He's just got to wake up.

VOICES FROM THE EDGE: Waiting for Dad

"As it was in the beginning, now and ever shall been
world without end. Do we get more comfort than that?"
                                          
                                          Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Allen jumps out of the car, excitement in his step. "The train's coming!" he says. "It worked!" And for a slice of one instant I am nonplussed: it can't be real. My son runs along the sidewalk next to the train track, rushing towards the station where a gray-haired woman waits with a suitcase.

I lower the window on the passenger side of my Nissan, letting the early autumn breeze carry in the sounds and scents of the incoming train. The lady smiles at my son.

"Waiting for someone?" I hear her ask.

"My dad," Allen says. He bounces from one foot to another.

"You must be excited to see him," she says. "Has he been away long?"

But Allen is suddenly bereft of words to explain, so he merely nods. As the train brakes with a screech, he moves away.

I watch him from the driver's seat of my car. Despite Allen's dedication the last eight weeks to the art of magical thinking, I know his father will not be on the train. I take three deep breaths, a calming strategy I have used often. I can't let myself get upset now; Allen will need me.

The train comes to a halt and a conductor jumps down, taking the suitcase from the gray-haired lady and helping her up the metal steps. Allen stands to the side, watching closely.

No one gets off the train.

"Help you, sir?" asks the conductor.

"I thought my dad would be on this train," Allen says in a rush. "We did everything right, Mom and me. This was the train."

The conductor looks up and down the length of the train. "Maybe he took another train," he says.

"He was supposed to be on the 906," says my son.

"Ah, that's the problem," says the conductor. "This is the 730."

Allen, dejected, hangs his head and saunters slowly back to the car. I take another deep breath. We have been back to Smedly Park to check the shirt Allen left hanging on a branch; we have found the biggest tree at Rosetree; we've found the strongest horse at Linvilla. In the eight weeks since Ron died--passing away peacefully in his easy chair--my youngest son, who has high functioning autism (Asperger's Syndrome) has handled a variety of "scrambled emotions" (Indiana University, 2019). He's had trouble sleeping, is vigilant about locks and dead bolts, and insists on wearing the same shirt he wore the night his father died. Each of my three children--Dennis, Bonnie, Allen--has had to find their own ways to grieve the loss of their father, but the issue for Allen is compounded by his brain's atypical function, making the finality of death hard to accept.

According to Dr. Tony Attwood, a noted expert on Asperger's Syndrome, an increase in spectrum behaviors helps the neuro-atypical keep calm and block negative thoughts. Allen's belief that his father will come back if he follows a certain procedure of carefully designed steps is called "magical thinking," a psychological concept that protects the thinker from the unthinkable. Writing in The Seven Laws of

Magical Thinking (2012), author Matthew Hutson contends that such thoughts provide an evolutionary advantage, encouraging us to be more participatory in life if we have some control over the outcomes.

At its most simplistic, "magical thinking" is a form of bargaining such as Audry Huff displayed during the 2010 World Series when he wore the same red underwear for every game, convinced it helped the San Francisco Giants win. Writer Joan Didion (2005) used magical thinking to recover from the sudden death of her husband, John Dunne. It took Didion two years to realize that any amount of bargaining would not bring her husband back. Life continues it's cycle. She learned to find comfort in that. 

For Allen, it's only been two months. He slides back into the car. "Wrong train," he says and sighs. "I'm doing everything I can to bring him back. I don't know why it's not working.

I speak carefully, aware that while I grieve for the man Ron was before the car accident stole so much from him 19 years ago, Allen grieves for the only father he's ever known. "Maybe he's not ready to come back," I say. "Maybe he has somewhere else to be."

"Why wouldn't he want to come back to us?" my son asks.

I shake my  head. "I don't know, Allen. But I know he was tired of being sick."

Allen nods and I know he is fighting back tears. I reach across the car console and touch his shoulder, expecting him to flinch. He does not. Then he starts to laugh.

"It would be just like Dad," he says, "to get on the wrong train." He says it without judgment. "He always needed you to tell him what to do."

I smile, conceding his point. "So, what now? Do we wait for another train?"

"No. We need to check again next week."

"Okay," I say and put the car in gear. Each Saturday brings another magical outing. We pull out onto Rose Valley Road. I venture another thought. "Maybe he's not coming back."

Allen's shoulders sag as he considers the possibility. "Maybe," he whispers. 

There is silence in the car. I take a few more deep breaths, telling myself that in time Allen will accept his father's death.

"I just can't stop trying yet," says Allen. "Not yet. It's too soon." And it is too soon,

only eight weeks into the rest of our lives without Ron. 

"Okay," I say.

We drive down Rose Valley Road, past the college where Allen-despite having special needs--earned an associates degree in technology and Ron proudly clapped as his son received his degree.  I spy Hedgerow Theater where Ron and I saw "A Christmas Carol" and "Noises Off" and "Our Town." I make a right onto Brookhaven Road and we drive by the house where Ron grew up. We are all the way to Bridgewater when Allen speaks again.

"I just want him to know much much we miss him," he says with a sigh.

"He knows," I tell Allen. "I tell him every morning and every night."

"Me, too," whispers my son. And this time he is the one who reaches across the console and pats my shoulder. 

VOICES FROM THE EDGE: RULES FOR GRIEVING

Therefore, you too have sorrow now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.

John 16:22

"Can I have Dad's blanket?" my son asks.


 It is a hot day in July and I cannot imagine why Allen wants a blanket brought from a hospital visit but it has been a draining week and I haven't the energy to form a question and listen to a response.

"Okay," I say. "I washed it this morning. It's in the dryer now." Allen heads to the basement and I think of the soiled laundry I dragged downstairs a few hours ago; shorts and T-shirts, bed pads and sheets. Things to fold and place into neat piles and think of giving away.

Allen is back in a few minutes, the white blanket in one hand, a purple sheet in the other. "Can I have the sheet, too?" he asks and I nod. "They're just what I need," he says happily and carries them up to his room, the place that holds an assortment of eclectic items important to Allen.

I heave a sigh and settle into a chair, a pile of mail in my hand. An ad for tires. A credit card offer for Ron. Irony at its best. Four cards, all addressed to "Linda and Family." I open each one and cry a little, then place them in the basket Bonnie has designated "the card holder."

I hear Allen in his room, moving things around, murmuring to himself. While I am proud of all three of my children and the love they displayed this week, I am particularly proud of my youngest son, whose Asperger's Syndrome makes sensory input and social interactions painful. Yet from Saturday night when EMT's flooded the house and the blue-lights of emergency vehicles revolved outside to the burial at the cemetery five days later,  he has--with the utmost of strength--kept himself together and with us. His siblings and I have allowed him to process things in his own way.

Like all of us, he's had to find his own way to say good-bye to his father.

Bonnie and Dennis stood on the back deck, arms around each other, openly sobbing as paramedics tried and failed to save Ron. Allen sat in a kitchen chair, an ice cube in each hand, letting the sensation of cold block out the cacophony of sensory overload. He seemed calm and detached, but inside his neuro-atypical brain was trying to make sense of the insensible. Order and preparation are necessary tools on the autism spectrum, but death always catches us off-guard.

We'd had conversations about it. All three children had seen their father struggle through many surgeries and hospitalizations, seen his  body grew weaker, seen the pain he suffered on a daily basis. We talked about the "some day", never giving a name to it, hoping that by not naming it we could prolong its coming.

It didn't work.

On Saturday, July 13, at 9:45 according to the policeman who stood vigil, Ron passed peacefully away, the soda and pretzel Allen had gone up to WaWa to get him two hours before on the tray table next to him.

 Lynne Soraya, writing for Psychology Today (2014), says for those on the ASD spectrum, there are just no blueprints for some situations that have the potential for sensory overload. The death of a beloved parent--particularly when it occurs at home, where safety and security are assumed, can easily throw an aspie into a meltdown. Karla Fisher (2012) explains the "meltdown model" in her own reaction to her father's sudden death. A meltdown may not be an outburst--screaming, kicking, acting out--but an inward processing failure. The four emotions readily recognized by most autistics--happy, sad, anger, fear--collide and entangle in ways foreign and strange to neuro-typicals.

Those on the spectrum, like the rest of us, need to process grief in our own way. Dennis, our oldest, holds himself together carefully, afraid to let any cracks show lest he fall apart completely. He keeps his feelings in check, but sketches things out on scraps of paper. He hangs onto the things he shared with his dad, like trips to the Spectrum to see the WWF, and the complicated games Ron invented. I am grateful he has Laura to help absorb his grief.

Bonnie --Daddy's Little Girl--throws herself into projects, sorting through photos for favorite pictures of Dad, creating a memory box to stow precious moments. She spent most of the first, awful week with me, the same way she dealt with each of her father's surgeries and hospitalizations, project bag in hand. I am grateful to Jared who keeps her grounded.

I read and write in my journal, call my best friend every day, knit and watch movies I do not pay attention to. I think about what life will look like now for Allen and I. I think, irrationally, of painting the kitchen cabinets and getting a rug for the living room, now that Ron's walker and wheelchair can no longer catch on it.

And Allen, whose life is still here at home, asks me a hundred times a day if I am okay. I am his touchstone. If I am okay, he can be okay. When someone asks how he is doing, he says, "Mom knows." Right now, it is all that matters to him.

Well, that and a few of his father's possessions he carefully guards: a blanket, a sheet, a card game, a golf club, the chess board he and his dad used to make up a zany game with GI Joes.

Allen knows his father is gone. He knows we buried Ron's broken body at Lawncroft Cemetery last Thursday. But in some part of his being, beyond the senses and the need for ice cubes in his hands, he knows that death is not really the end. He told his therapist just yesterday, when she asked him how he felt, "I know what everyone says. I know they all say my dad is dead. I just want Dad to know that if he wants to, he can come back. 'Cause we love him."

It's not quite John 16:22. But it's close.

It is evening now and we have picked at a supper. Allen has joined me in the living room where I am knitting and pretending to watch a movie. He has his dad's blanket and the chess board. He sits at Ron's tray table, playing by himself the complicated game he and Ron made up. He turns to me and asks,"Do you think Dad is playing with your dog that died?"

"Yes," I say.

He nods and smiles. "All I'm asking," he says seriously, "is for you to believe in the possibility that we'll see Dad again. Maybe not for a really long time, but that we WILL see him again."

I nod. Tears spring to my eyes. "I can believe that," I tell my son.

In fact, I'm counting on it.

VOICES FROM THE EDGE: THE HERO SAYS GOOD BYE

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:3

I'd seen her on Sunday, asleep on a pile of laundry in the basement, but she failed to show up for morning milk on Monday. Butterscotch, Bonnie's orange cat who still lives with us even though his owner has married and moved, jumped up onto the table and lapped up the milk.

"Did Sugar sleep late this morning and leave all the milk to you?" I asked the cat. He gave me a mournful meow. I patted him on the top of his head and chucked him under his furry chin, in a hurry to get Ron's breakfast and medications doled out before I headed off to work. I wasn't worried; Sugar was an adventurous little cat, often exploring boxes in the basement and too busy playing to come to meals.

But she did not show up the next morning, either. Gently, I suggested to Allen that we look around for her. Perhaps she had gotten trapped in a box of Christmas garland and couldn't get out. He gave it a half-hearted attempt, going down the basement steps and calling her name for a few minutes. He came back up and shrugged. "She's not answering me," he said.

I began to worry, not only about our missing cat but about her owner, my son who lives on the upper edges of the ASD spectrum and has a difficult time processing emotions. Often, the reality of the world is incomprehensible to him. How could I tell him I feared his cat had died?

Butterscotch kept up his mournful morning meow while devouring the bowl of milk, and I tried to suggest to Allen that Sugar might not be coming back. By Wednesday, my son convinced himself that Sugar had somehow gotten out of the house. With the influx of medical personnel who cared for my husband while I was at work, it was a possibility. We began to search in the bushes and under the deck, shaking a bag of her favorite treats to tempt her out. We left food and water outside, just in case.

There was still no Sugar on Thursday, and I did a little Google searching on the habits of cats. I was comforted to know that cats have no knowledge, and therefore no fear, of death. If, as I suspected, Sugar was now over the Rainbow Bridge with my little Cocker spaniel, Taffy, she was happy and content. There was nothing I could do for her. My job would be moving Allen past the loss of his beloved pet.

Like others on the ASD spectrum, Allen finds social situations stressful. He has only a few friends, and comes home from work each day exhausted from functioning in an environment he only partly understands. His cat, Sugar, has been his companion into adulthood, serving as his confidante. If he had a tough day, Sugar could be counted on to simply curl up on his lap. Patiently, she tried to learn the tricks he thought she should know. She, unlike humans in his life, simply accepted him for who he was.

Friday there was still no sign of Sugar, but I had managed to help Allen accept three possibilities: she was hiding in the basement and only came out for food and water at night, she had fallen asleep in the basement and passed quietly away, or she had gotten out of the house and gone to join the alley cats at the fire house. The last possibility was Allen's suggestion.

On Saturday, armed with flashlights, he agreed we should conduct a full-out search. And it did not take long to find her, huddled around the heater in a dark corner of the basement. Sadly, we wrapped her in a quilt and put her in a plastic box. I carried the box to the back deck and weighted the top down with bricks.

I took a deep breath and asked Allen what he wanted to do. Bury her? Cremate her?

But Allen was still holding out slim hope. "I don't think that's Sugar," he said. "I think it's another cat who took her place."

"Okay," I said. "But we still need to take care of her."

He shrugged. "I don't care," he said. "Do what you want."

What I wanted was to have someone else handle this, but since that never works out, I called the Royal Pet Crematorium, the place that had helped me deal with Taffy's loss. I arranged to bring her down on Sunday and carried the box to my car.

Around 9 PM Saturday night, I was attempting to read--but continually thinking about the little cat that had been our friend for so long--when Allen crept quietly into the room and sat down beside me. 

"I want her ashes," he said. 

"Okay."

"And a little cylinder with some ashes, like you have for Taffy."

"Okay."

He buried his head into my shoulder. "She was a good cat," he said.

"Yes," I said. "She was."

His voice dropped to a whisper. "She was MY cat."

And our arms around each other, we cried.