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I pull him closer. “I’m fine.” It hurts so bad, but no way am I ruining this for Oliver.
Taking out his phone—yes, he has a cell phone at eleven. Don’t shoot me—he snaps a picture of my thumb, and then a dolphin he notices in the distance. I smile. Hazel is obsessed with dolphins since we moved to California and I’d like to think he’s thinking of his little sister in that moment.
I’m happy to report they’ve been getting along a lot better these days. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect because this isn’tLeave it to Beaver. Oliver is a boy. A pre-teen boy and having younger siblings drives him crazy most days, but sometimes, in the rarest moments you’ll catch him playing with them. And God forbid anyone pick on them because he will throw down in a heartbeat. Just ask Jagger who pushed Hazel about two weeks ago. Do you notice the small cut on his lip? That’s the product of my boy sticking up for his sister.
On our way back to Newport Beach, Oliver and I both get sick again, and it’s somewhere between mile thirty that he leans over and says, “Dad? Do you remember when I hated that Mara always wanted to go fishing with us?”
I nod, barely able to lift my head from the side of the boat and wishing I was dead.
“I wish she was still here to take her. I think she would like it.”
“Me too, bud.”
You don’t just grieve the loss of your child. You grieve the life they didn’t get to have. Everything they’re missing out on and the things you’re missing out with them. Oliver, Hazel, Sevi, even Fin, they’re going to grieve those same things at different times in their lives. This is one of them for Oliver.
I didn’t know it at the time, I felt it, sure, but to understand it, it took me some time. In the last year and a half, I’ve questioned my faith, my last words to her, and every moment I didn’t spend with her when she was sick. I questioned the day she died. Did we do everything we could? For so long I refused to accept the reality that she was gone, but one day the debilitating reality hit. And it was just as bad as the day we lost her. It came Christmas Day when we celebrated without her. I think I was too drunk the first one without her to realize where I was heading, but this time, I hit hard. Our daughter was dead and nothing would bring her back. Instead, I had to find a new reality. One where I knew she loved hard, so purely, and beyond measure.
I feel her with us. Every day. Unseen. Unheard, but still here and loved even if it’s just a memory. For the longest time, I had it in my head that I would forever grieve those moments, and I probably will, but I had to accept that Mara’s life wasn’t cut short. She lived as long as she was supposed to and she left peacefully, in my arms. She was given to us for seven years. Two thousand five hundred and fifty-five days, and in those days, she knew we loved her. She had one hell of a journey, but she made the best of them, and we had to live our best lives for her.
I can tell you all kinds of things like soak up this moment, live for today, but until my head was straight, I couldn’t accept it. I’m not sure I have, even now, but I like to think I’m better than I was before.
* * *
We arrive backat home the next afternoon and surely, my thumb is infected, throbbing, and I can barely touch it. The idea that some fish planted their eggs in my thumb is a recurring nightmare I’ve had.
Oliver didn’t want his fish flayed at the docks, so he chose to have it frozen solid. Now the fish is something similar to a forty-pound ice weapon he insists on carrying into the house.
The kids think it’s the coolest thing ever, aside from Fin. She basically looks at it and walks the other way. I know I said one kid was dumb, but I’ll be honest, the little one is kind of an asshole. She even has the resting bitch face perfected, and she’s not even two yet.
Kelly looks at the freezer and then to Oliver. “I don’t think it’s gonna fit.”
Oliver smiles so wide and pops off with, “That’s what she said.”
Take a look at my wife’s face. Okay, she’s pissed. Now pan out to mine. I’m fucking proud.
Oliver takes off with the fish like he’s going to spear Hazel with it only to have us take it from him because clearly, that’s a possibility. For the next few hours, he tells Kelly everything that happened on the trip as I tend to Fin, who Kelly’s been trying to get dressed. She recently decided clothes were just not in her daily routine any longer.
“Just put them on, child!”
“Kiki lou rummy no herd grum!” I’m not sure what any of that was, but if you speak pissed-off toddler, that translates to fuck you, I’m not wearing any goddamn clothes.
So I let her run around naked. Who fucking cares. It’s not like we’re in public, right?
Kelly finds me a little later when I’m trying to remember where we had the antibacterial cleaner we had for my hand last year. “I need your help,” I say to her. I don’t need her help. It’s a ploy to get her to come upstairs so I can lock her in the bedroom and make up for the two nights I was away.
She does and stands in the doorway to the bathroom, her shoulder pressed to the doorframe. Fuck, she’s so beautiful. Look at her. Thirty looks good on her. And I’ll tell you what else. I don’t care what Instagram and all the other social media sites try to make women believe, a woman’s body after five kids is fucking beautiful. I’ll tell you why, too.
Because she gave life to our children. She’s held them while they cried, let them sleep on her chest and fed them. She’s been vomited on, peed on, and spent more nights than me sleepless. Every stretch mark, every extra pound, it’s earned if you ask me and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Kelly catches onto my wandering stare. “You didn’t call me up here to help you, did you?”
“Sure I did.” I step toward her, winking. “To help me get off.”
She rolls her eyes but lets me wrap my arms around her and bury my scruffy face between her shoulder and neck. “You’re such a boy.”
“Why don’t you show your boy how much you missed him?”
“I just spent the last two nights with three kids alone. Of course I missed you.” Somehow she catches sight of my thumb and gasps. “Noah, your thumb. What the hell happened?”