“Diagnosing your shit doesn’t require a degree, asshole,” Beck says as I push through the front doors. “Everyone knows what’s going on with you, except for you. Everyone knows that you freaked out after Hannah died and acted like it didn’t matter in the first place. You’re forgetting we were all there. You kept her ultrasound pic in a frame on your desk. You had her car seat professionally installed twice because you were worried it wasn’t secure enough. You fucking cared, and you’re the only person in the world who doesn’t know it. Go to Hannah’s grave for once in your life and then come tell me I’m wrong.”
He hangs up and I keep walking to my truck, my jaw grinding.
Why the fuck would I go to the grave? I can’t bring her back. What good would it do to remember how it all was? To remember everything I hoped for and how it ended?
But when I reach the turnoff for the lake…I keep driving. The cemetery isn’t far from here, though I’ve only been once. Beck thinks I can’t go to her grave? Of course I can. I’ll go and it will be every bit as meaningless, as performative, as I knew it would be.
I park in the cemetery, and there’s an odd, leaden weight in my stomach as I climb out. The last time I was here was at the burial. We didn’t have a ceremony. It was just me and Kate. She wrapped her arms around the tiny casket, choking on her sobs, and the longer it went on, the more dead I felt inside. I was removed and robotic as I pulled Kate away.
She couldn’t eat and she couldn’t sleep, and all I wanted in the entire fucking world was to go to the office, which I did as soon as humanly possible. Beck was right. I abandoned her. I fucking abandoned her.
I walk toward the grave, which sits at the top of the hill because Kate demanded Hannah have a view. Kate had been the most rational person I’d ever known until Hannah died, and after that…she was barely sane. I’d catch her in the middle of the night, trying to go to the cemetery. I’d find her online researching meconium aspiration, as if she could find a way to change what went wrong.
And I…did nothing. I spent a few days assuring her things would feel better and ran off to work. And soon there were nights, then weeks, when she didn’t come home, and I was worried, but I was also fucking relieved. Relieved that someone else was helping her because I didn’t feel like I could. Relieved she was crying to someone else because I couldn’t stand to hear her reference Hannah one more time, couldn’t stand to have her ask me if I thought Hannah knew we loved her, if she was cold now, and alone.
I reach the grave at last, crouching low and brushing a long-dead bouquet away to stare at the plaque.
Hannah Jane Lowell. October 24, 2020.
And I don’t want to remember, but suddenly I do. I remember how tiny she was in my arms, tiny but solid, and how some bizarre part of me thought that maybe the hospital had made a mistake.
That was the first and last time I ever held her. And the nurse reached out and I knew what she wanted—that she wanted me to hand Hannah over because Kate wouldn’t—and I wasn’t ready.
I wasn’t fucking ready, and I didn’t know what to do, so I chose to believe it didn’t matter. That I couldn’t have cared all that much because if I had, I’d have been there sooner, and that one of us had to be rational and it would have to be me. So I handed Hannah over, and when Kate screamed and tried to lunge from the bed, I was the one who kept her from following.
I was wrong. I’m not sure what I should have done. But I should have done more than I did.
“I’m so sorry, Hannah,” I whisper. I’m surprised by how rough my voice is. I’m surprised by the way my hand shakes as I reach down to press it flat to her grave. “I’m so, so sorry I wasn’t there. I really wanted to be your dad.”
There. It’s out. I did want the things we lost, and it was harder than I ever let on, but admitting it doesn’t leave me feeling like a weight has been lifted as I return to my truck. It’s more as if one’s been added…as if a piece of me I shut off a long time ago is back again, and it fucking hurts. I’d have given anything, done anything, just to have my daughter back. I still would.
I turn toward the lake, cursing Beck for suggesting it in the first place. I don’t need this shit right before I head to Hawaii, and I somehow have to get my head back in the game.
Take another shower, I command as I crest the hill to my house. Change clothes, get a stiff drink the second you’re on the plane, and get your head in the—