Catherine Lanigan - Love Shadows

Then he looked back down at his hands, which were pressed deeply into his legs as if he were holding himself to the spot. She wondered if he was angry again.

Margot walked to the center of the circle and introduced herself formally to the group, explaining that she was a psychiatrist who had been practicing privately for over twenty years.

“I conduct these bereavement groups once each quarter, free of charge, because I had a death in my own life that was so traumatic for me, so depressing, that I withdrew from my family,” Margot told them. “Frankly, I withdrew from everything. I sat in a rocking chair and stared out a window for over half a year. I went through my days in a fog. I couldn’t hear what people said to me and most of the time I didn’t acknowledge their presence. If it hadn’t been for a friend who happened to be a counselor, who dragged me back to reality, I never would have pulled out of it.”

Margot instructed everyone to introduce themselves to the group and mention only their relationship to the person they had lost.

Alice Crane went first. Sarah was next, and explained that her mother had recently died of cancer. Sarah hadn’t finished her sentence when she heard a derisive snort from across the room.

Luke lifted his head. “Sorry.” He dropped his head once more and then shook it. He stood immediately. “Sorry. I can’t do this. My coming here was my friend’s idea. This kind of thing isn’t going to help me.”

Before Luke could leave, Margot rose and placed her hand on Luke’s forearm. “What was her name?”

Luke fixed his eyes on Margot’s face as he replied with a quaking voice, “Jenny.”

He’d said the woman’s name with so much awe and love, Sarah knew instantly that he wasn’t divorced, as she’d surmised earlier. He was a widower.

“What’s your name?” Margot asked.

“Luke Bosworth,” he answered carefully.

Sarah noticed that he held his hands in tightly clenched fists at his sides as if he was struggling to control himself from hitting something. Or someone. And when he returned answers to Margot, the words were pelted through clenched teeth. She glanced around the room and noticed that no one else was as angry as Luke. They look depressed and sad, possibly even in denial, but not raging like he was.

“How long has Jenny been gone?” Margot inquired directly, but softly.

“Two years, four months and five days.” He ground out the words.

“And to you it seems like yesterday?”

“Like it was this morning. She was just...here,” he replied, his voice trembling with emotion.

Sarah thought she saw a glint of tears in his eyes.

“Tell me about her, Luke,” Margot urged.

He smiled slightly and Sarah was struck at how much that tiny bit of a smile lit his face. As he talked about Jenny, his face became nearly rapturous. He’d gone from anger to joy so quickly, Sarah wondered if such an emotional bounce was healthy. But as Luke kept talking, Sarah realized she’d never seen anyone so completely and utterly in love as this man was with his dead wife.

Luke’s memories of Jenny filled the room as he expounded upon his wife’s talents, her kindness and unconditional love for him and their children. He held the rest of the group’s complete attention while he spoke. “Jenny did just about everything. She insisted the kids and I eat healthy food. She grew all kinds of vegetables and herbs in her garden, then all summer and fall she’d freeze and can things. She made applesauce.” He laughed to himself. “I was never sure it saved any money, all that work she did, but it tasted wonderful. We never had boxes of any kind of cookies or snacks. Jenny baked cookies and made granola. She sewed, too. She made clothes for the kids and all kinds of stuff for the house. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and find her sewing some kind of surprise for Annie. Doll clothes. A new dress. Secretly, I wondered if she was a magician. She seemed to make beautiful things out of junk and milk pods and pinecones.”

“She had vision,” Sarah blurted out before she realized she was going to speak.

Luke looked at her and gave her a soft smile of understanding. “Yes, she did. Thank you for saying that.”

Sarah could only nod, she was so struck by the sincerity in his voice. She found it odd that this same guy could be hostile one minute and tame the next. To her, he was like Jekyll and Hyde. Which one was the real Luke Bosworth?

Margot’s eyes tracked from Sarah to Luke. “Jenny sounds like an amazing person,” Margot said. “No wonder you miss her so much.”

Luke’s eyes turned stormy, as if Margot had just doused him with ice water. The blue turned to gray, and his face lost all the softness Sarah had seen while he spoke about Jenny. Luke didn’t say anything for a long moment, his eyes surveying the room and the other faces looking back at him—some commiserating, some staring blankly.

Then, as if he’d made a decision, Luke inhaled deeply, expanding his lungs with courage or conviction—Sarah couldn’t tell which. He clamped his lips shut, as if to stop the flow of words and memories. “Jenny should still be here. It was too soon for her to die. That’s what I can’t stomach.” He slammed his palm on his thigh.

Sarah pressed her body back in her chair when she felt his next tirade coming on. She couldn’t imagine having to live with someone so volatile. Sarah had always been uncomfortable with anger. To her recollection, her parents had never displayed anger at each other. They had always had “discussions” and they “worked out their differences.” She’d experienced anger at flat tires, impossible government websites and inept retail clerks, but she’d never given or received Luke’s kind of intense, blistering anger.

Margot’s gentle voice interrupted Sarah’s thoughts.

“Anger,” Margot said, “is one of the five steps of grief, Luke. It’s natural. Understandable. Expected. It just happens to be the step you’re stuck on—for the moment. In addition, you’re feeling rejected by God.”

“How do you know that?” He growled.

“You show it in your every gesture. My guess is that you think God took Jenny, but he didn’t take you. You were left here to fend for yourself with your two kids. So you feel rejected.”

Luke nodded once, abruptly and affirmatively, but he didn’t respond.

“This rejection you feel is a place for us to start, Luke,” Margot offered.

Sarah sat up straight when she heard Margot talking about rejection. As she repeated the word in her mind, it was as if a blaring alarm had gone off.

Rejection.

Was that what she was experiencing? Sarah had always had a problem with rejection—or so her mother had told her. Ann Marie often warned her that she was getting overly anxious about her schoolwork, to the point of being a perfectionist. Sarah had been terrified of getting a bad grade. She didn’t want to be rejected.

When she broke up with James, she did the breaking up part so she wouldn’t be rejected by him. Yet James had rejected her many times—all in subtle ways, tiny snippets of rejection and dismissal telling her she wasn’t good enough for him or his wealthy friends.

Sarah had been dealt a double blow of rejection. Her mother was dead and she’d been left to fend for herself. And she’d just been suspended from her job.

Rejection number two.

Sarah sank a bit lower in her chair, wondering if she should extend herself to these strangers. Would this emotional gamble be worth it? She wished she could hide.

Isn’t that what I’ve been doing? Hiding my fears and probably a good amount of my own anger?

No, Sarah thought. I can’t bail. I came here to get better. I came here to make my life the best it can be and not live in the past. I want my future to be a good one. I want so much for myself. I’ll stay.