Chicken Soup Unsinkable Soul

  Since my divorce the problems had come pouring down like the rain dimming my view through the windshield. Not only scarce money, but long hours at a stressful job, guilty feelings for once again not making it to the school basketball game, the always-present feeling of ''being in this all alone," the self-imposed pressure of expecting peak-leveL super-human performance from myself at all times and in all kinds of different situations.

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  The car ahead of me inched forward and I turned off on my exit ramp. I had planned to stop by the grocery store, but with my make-up streaked from crying and my checkbook balance what it was, I decided to drive past and make dinner with what we had at home.

  This afternoon Tim wasn't scheduled to work at his weekend and after-school job at the local Tastee-Freez. I knew he'd be home before me, and he might have started cooking dinner. He enjoyed the kitchen and managed to cook for us quite often. Right now his specialty was chili, so there was a good chance that we'd be having it tonight. I hope so, I thought. Chili would taste good on a cold, rainy night like this.

  I started to make plans for the evening. I deserve to pamper myself, I decidedso no bookwork tonight. Dinner, a hot bath, maybe a little television. I'd done a load of laundry before leaving that morning and had told Tim to put it in the dryer for me. I would fold that and then I'd be done.

  I pulled into our gravel drive, parked and hurried inside. Coming through the kitchen door, I was greeted by the tangy aroma of simmering chili. Oh good! I thought. Tim has set the table with the dill pickles we had canned last summer, crackers, tall glasses of milkand he has even baked chocolate chip cookies!

  "Hi, Tim," I called as I scurried downstairs to fold the laundry.

  I opened the door of our antique clothes dryer and sawa big black hole. An empty black hole. Tim had forgotten to put the laundry in the dryer. My just-beginning-to-rise spirits went clunk. "All I do is work and worry." Slowly, I walked back up the stairs. Tim was watching television.

  "I would like to talk to you, Tim." One look at my face and the warm smile left his.

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  "Things haven't been exactly easy around here," I began. "I am trying to maintain this house and a way of life for us both. I get no assistance from your father, so it's up to me. I don't ask you to do much, but when I do, I expect it donelike putting clothes in the dryer.

  "I need some help every now and then, Tim. I have to depend on you. We have to depend on each other. Do you know what would happen to us if I forgot to do what was expected of me today?"

  Tim looked as if I'd slapped him, but he sat quietly and waited for me to finish. Then he got up from the sofa, came over and took my hand. I will never forget that moment. His expression was that of a man, not a young boy. "Okay Mom, I'm sorry if I let you down. But I want to ask you something. Next time you get together with your friends and someone says their sister is dying or their oldest son is on drugs or their mother is in a nursing home, are you going to say, 'That's nothing. Tim forgot to put the clothes in the dryer'?"

  He was not being flippant. He was earnest. In that instant, with those words, we had changed roles. He was the parent and I was the child.

  That was many rainy afternoons ago. But Tim's clear perspective continues to help me see past the obstruction when problems seem to jam up my life.

  Everyone has problems: single parents like me, young folks, old folks, married people, unmarried people. It isn't the problems themselves that are harmful. It's letting them block you from feeling the powerful force that God had given you to compensate for them.

  Linda LaRocque

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  Wind Beneath My Wings

  "Mom, can I go see Luke now?" Arlyn asked, jangling her car keys in her hand.

  Hmmm, I thought. Since when had Arlyn asked for permission to go anywhere? She was eighteen; she had graduated from high school two months before.

  "Of course," I replied. Maybe Arlyn wasn't eager to leave home, after all. I worried about whether she would be strong enough to survive the rough, scary world outside our safe nest in rural Georgia. Sometimes she accused me of being over-protective. In two weeks, however, Arlyn would leave for college, whether she was ready or not.

  But I was wrong. Very wrong. She did not wait two weeks to leave; she left that very afternoon.

  Arlyn said good-bye and drove out into the country. She turned down a long, deserted dirt road and parked her car near a stream. She got out, took an old hunting rifle out of the trunk, placed its barrel into her mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Around 3:30, I answered a knock on my door. A man identified himself as a deputy and walked in. He strode

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  across the room to a large photograph hanging on the wall. "Is this your daughter?" he asked, as he glanced from the picture to me.

  "Yes," I replied proudly, too surprised to realize that this was not a social call. "That's Arlyn."

  He stared at the picture for a moment, then sat down in a chair near the door. He described Arlyn's car, and I confirmed it was hers. Then he said, "Your daughter is dead." Just like that.

  I wrote and gave the eulogy for my daughter's funeral. For a week, I had no time to think, no time to feel, just time to exist. I functioned as a wooden puppet whose jerky movements are the result of strings pulled by an invisible hand. Others quietly kept order in my surroundings.

  Then my family and friends left, and I could feel the silence. I called my child's name aloud, over and over. The telephone rang; I picked it up and waited to hear her voice on the other end, but it was never her. I checked her bedroom a thousand times, hoping to see her, but all I saw was her worn stuffed bunny lying on her pillow. Her clothes hung in her closet and her acceptance letter to the university lay on the floor. When I heard the back door open, I would smile. I expected Arlyn, with her guitar slung over her shoulder, to dance in and give me a hug. When someone else appeared, my smile faded and my heart went numb.

  I held on to the fantasy that Arlyn would return. I sat in her car, breathing in her lingering scent. I listened to her music, and I wore some of her clothes.

  One night, I drank tea at her favorite coffee shop. A tall, slender brunette with long hair walked in; I leaned forward to get a better look. I stood up, ready to dash across the room and throw my arms around her; but when she moved, I saw that she was not Arlyn. At night, I lay in bed stiffly, corpse-like. I stared blankly at the ceiling hour

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  upon hour, until the morning light slipped through the blinds. Then I would get up; or I wouldn't.

  Every minute of the day, I struggled desperately to understand what had happened. Arlyn would never have killed herself. My daughter found joy in living; she laughed, learned and loved. Arlyn was in tune with nature and peace. How could she have taken her own life?

  I ransacked her bedroom, searching for clues. In her closet, in dresser drawers, under her bed and on shelves, I found several journals and dozens of pages of her writing. I collected them all into one mountainous pile. Then I sat down to read.

  "I keep asking myself why. For my entire life, all I have ever wanted was to be dead, to not be. Why?" she had written.

  "I don't know why I didn't kill myself in fifth grade when I had the chance," she had also written. I shook my head, confused. The handwriting was Arlyn's, but these words could not be hers.

  I thought back to when Arlyn was in sixth grade, ten years old. One day, the school held a talent contest. Arlyn signed up to sing. She picked out a long, green Victorian-style dress to wear, and I tied a matching bow in her hair.

  When Arlyn stepped up in front of the crowd and took the microphone in her hand, she scanned the audience until she spotted me. Then she smiled. The students talked and laughed with each other, ignoring the shy little girl standing in front of them. I wanted to shout at them to pay attention, but I couldn't.

  The music started, and Arlyn began to sing. Her song was "Wind Beneath My Wings," one popularized by Bette Mi
dler.

  After a moment, the students stopped chatting and noticed Arlyn. Her strong voice caressed them gently, and they focused completely on her.

  That afternoon as we drove home, I glanced at the

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  small trophy in her lap. "When you sing," I asked, "do you think about the words?" Arlyn replied, ''When I sing 'Wind Beneath My Wings,' I always think of you."

  But now, Arlyn was dead, and I was in her bedroom, reading that she had wanted to kill herself in fifth grade. I could not comprehend. My husband and I turned her writings over to a psychiatrist. He said he would do a "psychological autopsy" (an evaluation of someone based on information from writings or other sources). A few weeks later, he called us in.

  He told us that Arlyn was manic-depressive. He said she knew "something" was not right, so she had been tormented by confusion and shame and fear. He explained that the chemicals in her mind were imbalanced and that they had altered her perception of reality. This chemical imbalance had also produced her thoughts of suicide.

  The psychiatrist also told us that her brilliant mind made it possible for Arlyn to hide this part of herself from others. He insisted she did not want to die.

  I went home and devoured materials on manic depression (also called bipolar disorder) and on suicide. I began to understand that Arlyn may have viewed death as an escape from emotional pain. It was as though her heart was carrying a heavy weight, and it became unbearable.

  So Arlyn, my sensitive, fragile child, carried this burden inside her for years; but one day, she simply could not carry it any more. She knew that if she just stopped walking, that if she closed her eyes and let go, the weight would go away forever. So, she killed herself.

  A common theme in science fiction is projecting ourselves into the future. Some of us visit psychics, in hopes of learning what tomorrow will bring. Of course, we only want to hear about the "good" things. We know bad things happen, but we generally don't expect them to happen to us.

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  If we really knew the future, we would alter our behavior profoundly. Since we don't, however, we simply plod along, oblivious to the fact that disaster may happen at any moment.

  If I had known Arlyn's last day alive would have been August 7, 1996, I would have focused on her exclusively. I would have quit my job to spend more time with her. I would have unplugged the telephone and television, so I could listen to her more carefully. I would not have let her out of my sight for even a nanosecond, so I could have savored her presence. Nothing else would have mattered. But I did not know.

  One of the most profound lessons Arlyn's death has taught me is that the only guaranteed moment is this one; therefore, if we live our lives expecting a future that may not exist, we may regret our choices forever.

  This knowledge should inspire us to change the way we interact with others. We may choose to treat those we care about with extra attention and sensitivity every moment of every day, or we may plod on about our lives, oblivious to the reality that each moment could be our lastor theirs.

  It only takes a little more effort to listen carefully, to give an extra hug, to say kind words. A moment given now may prevent a lifetime of regret.

  In closing, I'd like to offer you words from the author Harriet Beecher Stowe. She wrote, "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

  Karyl Chastain Beal

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  Sorrow

  In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all,

  and it often comes with bitter agony.

  Perfect relief is not possible,

  except with time.

  You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true.

  You are sure to be happy again.

  Knowing this,

  truly believing it,

  will make you less miserable now.

  I have had enough experience to make this statement.

  Abraham Lincoln

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  How I Came to Terms

  The richness of the human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome.

  Helen Keller

  I didn't want to believe my own eyes. There must be some other explanation for what I saw, I kept telling myself, struggling to hide my concerns. I was sitting with my wife, Diane, after the birth of our second child, Sandra. Diane was radiant as she lay in her hospital bed talking to her folks on the phone. But Diane hadn't seen our new baby yet. She'd been spared the look of alarm in the nurse's eyes just seconds before she whisked our baby out of sight. There had been no tests. No advance warning.

  I lost all hope when the doctor came in and took a chair. He waited patiently for Diane to finish her conversation and hung up the phone, and then he delivered the devastating news: "I'm sorry. Your baby has Down's syndrome."

  Diane took the news in stride. She'd had nine months to bond with her baby. Even before they brought Sandra in

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  for her to hold, my wife already loved our new daughter with all her heart. But not me. I had to excuse myself and flee from the room.

  I walked the hospital corridors for hours, slamming my fists into walls and crying hot, stinging tears. "Why did you have to do this to my child?" I railed at a God I suddenly despised. "Why her? Why me?"

  Why couldn't Sandra be perfectlike my three-year-old son, Aaron? Aaron was the apple of my eye. I loved taking long walks with him in the rain and pointing out the nightcrawlers and snails wriggling across the sidewalk. We always had fun together Friday nights when Diane worked late and stayed with her parents so she wouldn't have to make the hour-and-a-half drive home and then back again Saturday morning. We played with plastic trucks and dinosaurs. I read him stories at bedtime.

  When Aaron asked me not to leave, I gathered pillows and blankets and sacked out on the floor beside his bed. By morning, he was always curled up on the floor beside me. He'd open his sleepy eyes and ask, "Daddy, can we watch cartoons?"

  "You bet, Son," I'd reply.

  With Sandra things couldn't have been more different. After we brought her home, I hurried to the library and read everything I could find about Down's syndrome. I desperately searched for some tiny shred of hope. But the more I read, the more discouraged I became. There was no magic cure for what I called "Sandra's condition." Back then I couldn't even bring myself to utter the words, "Down's syndrome."

  Diane and I enrolled in a support group, but after a few weeks I couldn't go back. Listening to the parents of older Down's syndrome children describing the many health problems they faced made me utterly heartsick. Is this our future? I couldn't help but wonder.

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  Indeed, when Sandra was six months old she needed heart surgery. "Dear God, please don't take Sandra from me," Diane prayed, but it was a prayer I couldn't share.

  Maybe it would be for the best, I secretly thought, and didn't allow myself to contemplatebest, for whom?

  As weeks flowed into months, I dutifully carried Sandra back and forth to doctors and therapists. I massaged her legs and tried to build up her muscle tone. I tried to teach her how to walk and talk, and I grew more frustrated and depressed with each developmental milestone she missed.

  I devoted myself to making Sandra better. I was determined to "fix" her, but that was all I was doingtrying to make repairs. I wasn't loving my daughter. I only took her from her crib to change her diaper or to do one of her therapies. I never picked her up just to hold her in my arms and luxuriate in that powdery baby smell. I never smiled at her or played peek-a-boo.

  "You don't love Sandra the same way you love Aaron," Diane observed mildly one afternoon, and I had to admit that she was right.