I'll See You Again Part 49

"Oh, Jackie, I promised myself I wouldn't cry," she said. "I'm trying not to. But she's so beautiful."

I looked down at my little bundle and smiled. My brother's holiday tree twinkled in the corner, and suddenly, Christmas took on a new and unexpected meaning. In both religion and life, a new baby can be a savior, giving hope where there has been none.

Kasey, my personal savior. My beautiful baby.

A few days before New Year's, I left Kasey with a babysitter so I could spend some time at the cemetery. I felt bad that we had missed Christmas, but maybe it was best that I hadn't come and spoiled the day for Kasey and Warren.

Before Kasey, I had gone to visit the girls four or five times a week, but it was emotionally exhausting. The previous Mother's Day while I was pregnant, I brought a chair to the cemetery and sat for six hours, reading to the girls, decorating their headstones, and telling them stories. When I left, I got back in the car and wailed and screamed so loudly that the car rocked.

When I arrived now on this late December day, I picked up some of the gifts and flowers and trinkets people had left since my last visit. No snow had fallen and the season had been warmer than usual, but the ground still felt hard and brittle. The Christmas decorations could stay up a little longer, until it was time to redecorate for Valentine's Day.

Jeannine kept one bin in her garage with all the decorations that I used and reused, and another bin where I brought all the Barbies, charm bracelets, clothes, and magazines that people laid at their headstones. I no longer let the girls' things pile up at the cemetery for the groundskeepers to handle, but I didn't want to be the one to throw anything away, either. What Jeanne did with the gift bin, I never asked.

This was the first year that I hadn't bought huge pa.s.sels of Christmas gifts for the girls. Instead, I added up what I might have spent and made a contribution to the foundation.

In all my visits to the cemetery, I never went to Diane's side of the plot. I just glanced over in anger.

But now, for some reason, on this December afternoon, I walked slowly over to Diane's grave. Diane, my sister-in-law. Diane, the woman who killed my girls. I stared at the headstone for a while and rubbed the toe of my boot against the brittle earth. I thought about an inspirational guru I'd seen on Oprah that morning who said that hate is so powerful and destructive, it overwhelms any chance for love. Then I thought about Kasey, my baby at home, who deserved a mother who loved her with a full heart.

To do that, I suddenly understood that I needed to reconcile some of my emotions.

You can't love and hate at the same time, I thought. You can't be happy and angry at the same time.

If I continued to hate Diane, I risked depriving Kasey of the intense and pure love that I wanted to give her. And if I didn't let go of the unrelenting fury I felt, I couldn't move forward in my own life with happiness and joy.

I knew better than anyone how little influence we have over the direction our lives take. Whether you call it destiny or fate or the randomness of the universe, some things happen for reasons that we can't begin to understand. Trying to exert control over the events of our lives is ultimately a fool's game. All we can truly master is our own responses.

Hating Diane no longer felt right. Diane was more than the depraved person that everyone made her out to be. She loved me and Warren and the girls. She had loved her own children. Until she drove the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway, everyone who knew her would have said she was a caring mother, aunt, sister, sister-in-law, and friend. Someone to be trusted. Did she have hidden demons that none of us saw? I don't know, but who doesn't have demons? Despite the intense scrutiny of her life and character after the accident, nothing diabolic had emerged to explain the horrors she had caused.

You can't love and hate at the same time.

I stepped a little closer to the headstone and, for the first time ever, reached out to touch it.

"I don't know why you did this, Diane," I said in a small voice.

I let my hand rest on the stone. I traced a pattern with my finger across the top. I thought about Kasey and wanting to love again. I thought about how sad it made Warren that I didn't hug him anymore. I thought of my own heart, which, instead of being a bright red valentine, had become encased in steel and ice.

This is so weird, I thought. But I suddenly knew what I needed to say.

"I'll never know what happened that day," I said, my voice louder. "But I always loved you, Diane. I still love you. And I forgive you."

No bolt of lightning came down from the sky and no crack opened up in the earth. If Diane, or G.o.d, or my angels in heaven heard me, they gave no sign.

Or maybe they did, because I felt an almost physical change once the words were out. The cold, clammy hand of hate that had been squeezing my chest suddenly seemed to loosen its grip.

"I forgive you," I said again.

I lingered at the headstone for another moment, then I walked slowly away, feeling an unexpected lightness. The weight of anger that I had been dragging around like so much concrete didn't seem to be pulling me down with quite the same force. Trying to build a future with love was more important than holding on to the past with hate.

When I got home, I didn't tell Warren about my experience at the cemetery, and though I usually shared every pa.s.sing thought with my friends, I avoided the topic with them, too. Forgiveness is a very private event. I hadn't done it for public consumption. And I wanted to see how I felt in the next few days.

Apparently, forgiveness works in mystical ways. A lot of people commented on how good I looked and how happy I seemed. Suddenly I was laughing and grinning much more, and my love for Kasey gushed forth. I told myself it could just be a coincidence of timing since Kasey had begun smiling all the time now, and at every toothless grin she gave, my heart melted more and more.

More likely, the two events played off each other. I think that by forgiving Diane, I opened myself up to accepting Kasey's smiley affection. I hadn't planned it or even expected it. And if I felt new compa.s.sion toward Diane, I had to extend the same benefit to Warren. Her actions weren't his responsibility. Warren always said that he and I both did everything we possibly could the day of the accident, and objectively, we knew that was true. We could say it aloud to convince anyone listening that we meant it. And we did. But late at night, when exhaustion and darkness blurred all rationality, the what-ifs attacked like well-armed invaders from another dimension.

I should have.

I could have.

If only.

Oddly enough, it may be easier to show mercy to others than to yourself. Personal forgiveness may be the hardest to give.

Twenty-nine

I was feeling stronger in every way, and my health seemed good now, too. When I went to the usual follow-up visits with the obstetrician, she seemed pleased with how far I'd come. One day as I sat on her exam table after the checkup, my legs dangling, she reminded me that I was cleared to have s.e.x again.

"Don't say that!" I told her, half laughing. "I'm terrified!"

"Why are you terrified?" she asked.

"It's been so long. I don't remember how. I feel like I'm sixteen again."

"Just close your eyes and do it," she said, half joking. "I think it will all come back to you."

Warren and I had a black-tie dinner coming up that we wanted to attend, and Melissa and Brad said they'd take the baby for an overnight. Warren and I could go to the dinner and relax, without having to rush back to a babysitter. Our first night alone since Kasey had been born, and I started to think about what was likely to happen.

"Can we talk?" I asked Warren one morning.

"You don't have to ask. Just talk to me," he said, hardly looking up.

"Okay." I took a deep breath. "The night of the dinner, I think we should have s.e.x before we go out. Otherwise, I'll spend the whole evening worrying about it."

"We're having s.e.x?" Warren asked, definitely looking up now.

"Isn't that what you thought?"

"I didn't think we'd have s.e.x," he said.

"Why not? The baby won't be here."