Epilogue
The wolf got me, that’s what Mama had said, and I should’ve recalled from high school Latin that’s what lupus translated to. It did get me. It followed me home and took up residence with me, and as much as Henry would attempt to wrestle it into submission, it would become a pet constantly by my side, but one you could never tame, nor fully trust.
Coming home reminded me of the day we left the hospital with Wesley.
The staff let us walk right out and take the little person with us as if we knew what we were doing. He began to fuss in the car. His face turned red as he arched his back and clenched his tiny hands. He wailed so that his eyes scrunched shut and his mouth opened so that I could see all his naked, pink gums, devoid of any teeth. Henry had asked me if he was okay and I had shrugged. What did I know about babies? He was so small and seemed so delicate. I feared he was far more fragile than he was.
Henry thought the same of me the day we sat in Dr. Collins’s office and received the official diagnosis, the day he brought me home from Mama’s, the day he found me rocking an empty blanket. I had to learn that babies were more resilient than they appeared. Over time, Henry would come to learn the same of me.
Life resumed. Henry started his new job. Wesley’s tooth began to grow in.
Hatti and her baby survived colic. The Betsers sold their house. New neighbors moved in to a place that no longer had a hold on my imagination because I knew my home.
Cortisone shots replaced tranquilizer pills, and while I flinched as the needle pierced my skin, I accepted it better than the haze that those capsules had given me, the grogginess that persisted, the inescapable sleep that felt less like slumber and more like an absence from the world. Free from those drugs, I began to feel and hear and see again.
We hosted the annual New Year’s Eve party a few months after I came home. Henry said we didn’t need to have it that year, but I wanted to, so we did. But this time, I had help, as Nora, Hatti, and others all contributed dishes and drinks so the table—and guests—overflowed.
I spent the New Year’s Eve party as both hostess and photographer, using my new camera, a welcome-home gift. I treated myself to the one from the store instead of the one from the loyalty catalog. I found other uses for all those stamps.
During the party, I snapped pictures and advanced the film, searching for the next photo as the guests mingled and the perfection salad jiggled as the centerpiece. I couldn’t wait to have the film developed. I dropped it off to be processed just days after the party, but it took time and patience. Once the prints were ready, I barely made it back to my car before I opened the envelope and began to flip through the photos. The combination of colors mixed together to reveal images, to remind me of days past, a treasure trove of printed memories.
The developer had put the prints in opposite order. As I flipped through them, I saw the party in reverse. The New Year’s cheers and kisses, before the conversations that came as the alcohol took effect, before the guests entered and the women revealed their outfits. I would look more closely at all of them later.
I didn’t examine every detail in that moment because what I looked for in that package wasn’t any images of the party. Instead, I searched for the first photo I took. Wesley thought the first one was of him. He smiled proudly,
holding his truck (one book), showing off his treasure. His eyes squinted as the sun shone upon them.
But what he didn’t know was that before I woke him that day, I had loaded the film into the camera, wound it to the starting point, and snapped a different photo. After Henry had left for work, I took the blanket from the hatbox on the top shelf of our walk-in closet and draped it over the rocking chair that sat in our guest room. I wound the camera, looked through the viewfinder, clicked the button, and advanced the film.
My newspaper editor always said to be mindful of the film. It was limited, finite, not without end. For important images, taking multiple would better ensure capturing the moment. But don’t be excessive. Be discerning.
I took only one photo. It was all I needed.
It may have looked like a nursery awaiting an arrival, a rocking chair sitting in the corner, a baby blanket positioned and ready to swaddle. But it wasn’t a story of arrival. It was one of departure.
Henry asked me to remember. I did. And I always will, every day for the rest of my life. Every birthday of hers that comes and goes, I will remember.
Every Christmas we celebrate without her, every milestone Wesley reaches that she won’t, every child her age who grows taller, goes to school, graduates, goes on with life, will remind me of how she didn’t get that chance. I will always remember because I have always carried her deep inside me. Even when she wasn’t in my arms, she was in my heart, calling to my soul, granting my mind a mercy for the moment I needed to heal just a bit before the dawn broke, the haze cleared, and I had to face the truth in the daylight.
An illusion may have been lifted the day the empty blanket fell to the floor, but in the shadow moments of the night, she calls to me again. I am no longer haunted by it. Instead, I embrace those moments because they belong to only us. No one else needs to know about them. No one needs to know about those
times when she is with me, when we are together, when we step into those liminal moments of dormiveglia that pull us into each other’s presence across space and time, and what some may even consider sanity.
Life is a continual process of letting go, but this I choose to hold on to.
This I will never surrender, because I remember. Always and forever, I remember.
