Silence

July 12th, 2005
Loss

I just got an email from my college roommate.

Back in our dorm days she was the object of much attention, from both males and females, but she never paid much notice to her popularity. Beautiful, cheerful, unpretentious. Infectious smile. She was kind to everyone. And we all predicted that loveliness would be hers in all aspects of her life, forever.

It was halfway through our sophomore year when she hit the first pothole. We were roommates again, this time in a six-woman apartment. I was in our little, steamy bathroom getting ready for church when she called to me through the closed door. I opened it to her trembling face. “My mom found a lump in her leg.” She could barely get the words out. Her mother was a breast cancer survivor and seemed to be doing well, until that day–and she was never truly well again.

My friend left for a Mormon mission to Uruguay, but returned home a few months later severly ill with parasites. It was so strange to consider. A golden glow had always seemed to surround her; now she was mired down in a most unpleasant state, bloated and weak. She was out of commission for months. The very order of the universe seemed to be reversed.

Next came an ill-fated temple marriage to Joe Nice Guy, a returned missionary. Turns out that being faithful to his wife wasn’t on his Franklin Planner list. A few months after the divorce, my friend lived with me for a while. Outwardly she was her usual upbeat self–almost. Her cheer wasn’t as bright around the edges. She told me that she cried every day, overcome by betrayal and loss.

She moved back to her hometown and I didn’t hear from her until I got a wedding invitation in the mail. She was marrying her high school boyfriend. I couldn’t attend the ceremony. I hoped that she was finally finding happiness.

A few years later she contacted me after reading my Christmas letter, which shared the news of our sixth child’s neonatal crisis. “When I saw ‘NICU’ in your letter, I knew I could talk to you,” she wrote in an email. The story of her life since the wedding followed in a few paragraphs, punctuated by grief. A miscarriage. A daughter with Downs Syndrome, stillborn at seven months gestation. A beautiful son, Charlie, who stopped gaining weight at two months and died at eight months, a victim of liver disease.
Her father, a former leader in the local church, was gone; he had abandoned his wife and family some time before. Her mother succumbed to cancer three months after Charlie died.

I could barely imagine it. How could she have lived it?

A year later, I held my breath during the final weeks of her fourth pregnancy, barely daring to hope for happy news. But it came: Louisa, a gorgeous daughter, who soon developed a grin that would charm your socks off.

Louisa died just a few weeks ago. She was seven months old.

No parents left, no children left.

The day after the funeral, my friend and her husband left for a respite in another state. “I’m scared to go home,” she wrote in the email I just got. “What now?”

What, indeed? Even though I come up with words in response, they’re just a thin veneer, a coating for the silence.

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