When I was pregnant with our first child, Sam wanted to know if the baby was going to be a boy or a girl. He would be happy anyway; he just wanted to be prepared. As new parents, we nurtured the fantasy that we could be prepared for things like babies and parenting.
Two years later, when I was expecting our second child, Sam again wanted to know the sex of the child, but by then I had warmed to the idea of not knowing. On the day of the ultrasound, the baby’s legs were so crossed that the doctor couldn’t determine the gender, and I waddled away with my hidden child safely in the womb. I have not scheduled a follow-up ultrasound. The baby would let us know in due course.
Mourning, too, requires its own not-knowing, without the benefit of a date when all will be revealed. I didn’t know why Sam ended his life, what had seemed impossible to him, how he had descended so deeply into despair. I didn’t know what I had missed, where I had failed, if I could have stopped him, what our children and I would be like without him. At some point I would have to learn to live with these many unknowns. And I did.
There was one thing I did know. In those dark days of intense grief, someone shone a light on us with a simple but powerful message: “You are seen. You are loved.”
Over the course of the next week, we received nightly offerings. Always simple – six apples, seven clementines, eight packs of gum – each decorated with the signature silver ribbon, white square note and childlike handwriting.
It could have been a coordinated effort, a family project, or a wonderfully clever friend. I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know anymore. Something in the not-knowing appealed to me. I began rounding up the boys in the kitchen at the back of the house at night and bribing them with dessert or an extra chapter from “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane” so the anonymous giver could stay that way. I made it my mission to protect their sacred, generous act.