LISTENING FOR FATHER'S VOICE

10 The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”

Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

I Samuel 3:10

"I don't think I can do this much longer," says Allen. He sits in a dining room chair, the image of discouragement; head down, elbows on knees, tall body leaning forward.

"Do what?" I ask. I am trying to remember if it is Chicago or Terbium that uses footnotes as I scan a new document. I turn in my own dining room chair to look at my son. My lack of energy to negotiate space in my office the past few weeks has moved my laptop and printer to a fold-out Ikea table in a corner of the room that was so recently Ron's. Allen now fights space aliens on the desktop HP upstairs.

 Maybe I'll take it back someday. Maybe I won't. Maybe I feel closer to my husband down here, where he spent his last nine months.

"You know," Allen shrugs. "Trying to get Dad back."

"Oh." I sigh. I remind myself many times a day that autism grief is not neuro-typical grief. In the last two months--almost three--Allen's magical thinking has kept the hope alive that his father will return from the dead. Even though he participated in the funeral and saw his father's body lowered into a grave, he continues to hold onto the possibility of a Bible type miracle.

"It's just not fair that I can't talk to him anymore," my son continues. "No matter WHAT"-- and he emphasizes the word by raising his hands up--"I could always talk to him." Tears form in the corners of his eyes.

He, like me, is remembering phone calls from hospital rooms when Ron would call to say "good-night," days he sat in his easy chair in the living room and called out a booming, "Hello!" to whoever entered the house. I hold back my own tears. I, too, miss my husband's voice.

My heart aches for my youngest child. Injured when Allen was young, Ron was never able to run and play with him the way he did with Bonnie and Dennis. The only father Allen has ever known has spent more time in hospital rooms than home.

But a Dad is still a Dad. 

"What do you think we should do?" I ask Allen, whose position on the upper end of the autism spectrum makes the finality of death a difficult concept to grasp. Almost every Saturday has found us engaged in another magical outing, gathering clues for his father's imminent return.

Allen sighs. "We'll try the train station one more time," he says without much hope. "Then maybe we can figure out a way to talk to him. Even if he can't come back, at least he'll be able to hear us."

"He hears us," I assure my son. "We can still talk to him.All the time. Anytime we want."

He nods. "I know. I do. But I would like to hear HIS voice." He pauses. "Do you have, like, an audio of Dad's voice anywhere?"

"Maybe," I say. Somewhere there are video tapes of family vacations. Do we still have a VCR? Does anyone? And there is a audio recording of our 25th anniversary service. Do I have a tape player?

Allen is now warming to a new project. "It would be so cool if we could just hear him! Just hear his voice sometimes. Then I would still feel like I had a Dad." A tear slides down his cheek. "I still need a Dad."

"We all do," I say. Then I recall a lesson at Wednesday Mission Possible, the story of young Samuel who heard the Lord calling. In 1 Samuel 3, the boy Samuel is serving at the Temple with the priest, Eli. When he hears a voice calling his name in the night, he assumes that it is Eli and runs to him. But Eli tells him it is God calling to him. Samuel learns to listen to the Lord.

Now, in this new season of my life, I, too, am waiting to hear from God. 

"You know," I say to Allen, "I'll bet that if you listen really closely, if you are really quiet, I'll bet you can hear Dad's voice."

My son is skeptical. "How would that work?"

I think quickly. "Well, let's remember what his voice was like."

"Loud!" says Allen. "But gentle, too. Like he was always happy to see us. Even when he was hurting."

"That's good," I say to Allen. "I remember the way he would hold up both his arms and say, "You're home!'"

"Yeah," says Allen. He smiles. "And then he'd say, 'There you are!' Like we'd been gone a really long time."

"Let's be really quiet for a moment," I tell him. "And we'll just listen for Dad's voice."

"Okay."

And for a few moments we sit in the dining room where Ron's hospital bed so recently stood, where a walker and a wheelchair were at the ready, where boxes of medical supplies usurped the room. And we listen. With all of the love we both still hold for Ron, with our memories of him close to the surface, we listen.

"I hear something," Allen whispers.

"So do I," I whisper back.

Allen smiles. "Maybe it's Dad," he says. "Or maybe it's God."

My heart swells. A Dad is still a Dad. 

 

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. 

WIDOWED: It ends with an "E"

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 13:34-35

The phone rings at 6PM Sunday evening, the display flashing the number of the medical examiner's office.  The two older kids have gone home with their partners, Allen has taken over the computer in my office, and I am sitting in the living room, sipping from a cup of tea and trying not to look at Ron's empty chair. I pick up the phone.

"Hello."

"This is Jenny," says the voice on the line. "From last night." I inhale sharply, the images and sounds replaying in my brain. EMT's. Flashing lights. Ambulance. Police. Hurried phone calls. Panicked offspring. 

"I wanted to tell you that we've ruled your husband's death as natural causes, due to cardiac arrest. He simply fell asleep and his heart stopped. He would have felt no pain, had no warning."

I let my breath out slowly. "Thank you," I say. "It helps us to know that."

There is a pause on the other end of the line. I take a sip of my tepid tea. My relationship with this young woman will be brief, based only upon this heart rending loss. I know nothing of her faith, but I say it anyway. "It helps us to know that Ron fell asleep and, when he woke up, he saw God."

Jenny does not respond. I wait, years of practice in hospital ER's and trauma

wards teaching me patience. "You know," she says quietly, "this job is pretty sad. I see a lot of the same thing, day after day. And the families I meet sort of blend together. But," and I think I hear her voice crack a bit, "I'm going to remember your family."

I manage a weak laugh. "Well, we're pretty memorable," I say, thinking of how my tall children--most over 6 feet--towered over the petite young lady who came to examine Ron.

"You are." I can imagine a smile. "Because your family showed me something I seldom see in this job. Love."

Love. It hasn't always been easy. There have been too many surgeries, too many hospitalizations, too many chunks of Ron torn away from us in the last 19 years. Things that should have been his responsibilities fell onto me. And the last two years, when Ron needed help with everything, were particularly grueling. To the outside world, it would appear that Ron's later life held little worth.

But the world would be wrong. Every time he was hospitalized, we were given a chance to demonstrate our faith. Not a surgery or an infection or a treatment happened without prayers for doctors and nurses, without hymns and Bible verses filling his room. Without cards from my students, holiday decorations, visits from our children, and as much love as we could pack into a ten by ten foot space. 

Matthew 28:19-20 tells us to " go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." As a new believer at the tender age of fourteen, I wondered if I would have the courage to enter the mission field and go to foreign and unknown places.

There are few places more foreign, unknown, terrifying, and unpredictable than hospitals. Yet those became our mission fields. 

"When I was examining your husband," Jenny continues, "I could see he had been well cared for. He was clean, no bruises, no sores. It was evident to me that he'd had excellent care. But even more than that was what I heard from you and your children in the kitchen." She sighs. "Too often I hear people arguing when someone dies, blaming each other, fighting over possessions. But you and your children were telling stories about your husband, crying some and laughing some, sharing good memories." Her voice gentles. "He was someone I wish I had known."

I am touched by her words and I choose my own carefully. "We know Ron is in

Heaven," I say. "We have faith that his struggle is over and he is with God."

"It was nice to see that faith," she says. "And I just wanted to tell you that, well, your husband and your family shared something special with me. Gave me some things to think about."

Jenny and I talk a few more minutes. She says I should feel free to call her if I have any questions about Ron's death. I know I will not. Jenny's entrance into our lives has been brief, but I cannot help but believe she is richer for it.

As I hang up the phone, I see in my mind flashes of the many hospital rooms Ron has inhabited. We planted seeds there. It had not been our choice, but we went into the world we had been thrust into and preached the gospel the best way we could (Mark 16:15).

I get up from my seat and head to the kitchen to warm my tea and as I do, I pause at the chair where Ron so recently sat, the chair where he died. I give it a pat and smile.

Even at the end of his life, Ron was an example to other people.

VOICES FROM THE EDGE: The Art of Magical Thinking

You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands.

Isaiah 55:12

I am at my desk, editing a dissertation for a client, when Allen slides a piece of white paper to me. Before I turn to my son, I put on my "I-believe-anything you say" face. "Hi," I say.

"This will be Dad's new body," he says and taps the paper.


"Oh." I study the sketch he has made. The facial features are blurred, but the outline has broad shoulders, muscular arms, a slim waist, long and rugged legs, slender feet. It is clearly human, but I know certain attributes have been influenced by the places we have visited in the past two weeks: the tallest tree at Rosetree Park, the strongest horse at Linvilla Orchards, the oldest bridge at Smedly, the fastest speed skater we could find on Wikipedia.

This is magical thinking at its best and most concrete, Allen's firm belief that if he can just concoct the right ingredients, his recently deceased father will come back again in a new body, one not broken by illness.

It began with the trees of the field.

Allen, who lives on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum and grapples with a world that is too loud, too bright, and too overwhelming, came in from the Plaza down the street one day last week and said to me, "The trees are whispering Dad's name."

"That's nice," I said. "God made the trees and Dad is now with God."

He gave me a curious look. "Not yet," he told me.

"But you know Dad died. You know he went to Heaven and God gave him a new body."

Allen nods. "I know. But I also know that Dad fooled death before. Maybe he can do it again. Remember?"

I remember. The night of the car accident, the surgeon who put the pieces of Ron back together again said to me, "Your husband is a strong man. Only a strong man could survive that." Time and time again in the last nineteen years, surgery after surgery, Ron defied the odds. Until on July 13th, he didn't.

I try to reason with Allen. "But you saw Dad at the funeral. You were there when we buried his body."

My son nods. "That was his OLD body. He didn't need it anymore. This," and he taps on the paper, "is his NEW body."


I get it, or at least I try to. Even before Joan Didion wrote her landmark book on grieving, A Year of Magical Thinking, the strategy Allen is using was a known anthropological concept. In short, it is the belief that a series of actions--performed carefully and in order--will result in a desired event. It is an illusion of control sorely needed by my son, to whom the forever loss of his father is just too much to accept.

And that's where magical thinking comes in. According to St. James, Handelman, and Taylor (2011), magical thinking provides a connection to what has been broken and helps the thinker cope with cultural expectations of control. During the days between Ron's death and his funeral, Allen needed to hold himself together, shaking hands and accepting hugs, saying "thank you" to those who expressed their condolences. 

All the kids miss their father keenly, but Dennis and Bonnie have their adult lives, their jobs, their partners. Dad was an everyday fixture to Allen, a large presence in his life. It's left a gaping hole. It's not the same with just the two of us, he complains. Hard to play Monopoly with only two people. I murmur in agreement.


"So, just how does all this work?" I asked Allen on Wednesday as we trudged through Smedly Park in the rain. I breathed a sigh of relief when I remembered where the old stone railroad trestle was. Allen needed something "old and stone that was from ancient times." It was ancient enough for him, part of my ancient childhood. 

Allen whirled and faced me quickly, tears in his eyes.  "You can't ask about it," he said. "You just have to let it happen. You just have to believe."

And I do. I believe that any amount of magical thinking will not bring back Allen's father, but I also believe that at this moment it helps Allen to feel safety in an unsafe world (Philosophy Talk, 2018). Every time he proposes a new expedition we need to take that is part of his carefully constructed script towards designing Ron's new body, I remind myself that autism grief is not neurotypical grief (Fisher, 2012.)

In a way, we're all guilty of a little magical thinking. Is his insistence that he hears his father's name in the leaves of the trees any different from Joan Didion's inability to part with a pair of her late husband's shoes because he would need them when he came back? Of if he thinks his father will have a new body with the strength of a horse far off from the lady at the bank who told me that each morning she wakes up and smells the breakfast her husband, gone 17 years, made every morning?

You just have to believe. I believe Ron is no longer in pain. I believe he is happy in Heaven. I believe I will see him again. 

And sometimes, I hear the trees whisper his name.

Can you make it to the end?

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.