Eleven years ago, I celebrated Mother’s Day as an expectant mother — just far enough along to have publicly shared the news.  I was an elated mother-to-be, a pregnant woman without morning sickness, for whom springtime took on hues more vibrant than usual.

For me, those first few months were a distilled, almost cliché kind of happiness — my pregnancy a postponed and then achieved-as-planned goal that I now see as blind beginner’s luck — and Gavin and I were in a good place to add parenthood to our life skills.  We were so focused on the intense hazing of parenthood in its early stages, that I don’t think the magnitude of its lifelong commitment, or the emotional holdfast that binds you to your children long after they leave had even occurred to us.

But a few days after that Mother’s Day, as I glowed with the secret feeling of being maternal in disguise, we got a call from one of our closest college friends.  Another friend — one of our core group back in the day — had died suddenly from complications of diabetes.  He’d been found in his apartment by a colleague, after his mother — worried that her son hadn’t called her on Mother’s Day — had asked someone to check in on him.  He had never forgotten to call on Mother’s Day.

The news sent me and my husband reeling, but for me it cut even deeper than the surreal emotions surrounding a funeral/college reunion, or the fact that the drive down there was like a scene from The Big Chill.  In the funeral home, I sat in my folded chair, rubbing the beginnings of a baby bump while I watched our friend’s mother greet callers with red eyes and wadded tissues in her hands.  Every few minutes she placed her hands of the backs of her other grown sons, who stood next to her, and who looked so much like my dead friend it was like being able to see an echo.

That was the first time I realized the magnitude of what I was taking on — that there were no guarantees that everything would turn out okay, even after you’d successfully raised your child and ushered him through school and college, graduation and beyond.  It was the first time I realized that the duties of a mother could include something like this.

Most women who choose to be mothers learn and faithfully uphold the pact of parenthood — which is to guide your child to all manner of milestones, and help them navigate the obstacles along the way.  It’s hard work — we know this — but whatever pain we encounter is usually justified by the reward.  Nobody tells you about the fine print.  Nobody tells you how quickly and how easily your reward can be whisked away.

I don’t know what I said to our friend’s mother in the vacancy of that moment.  I’m sure I said that we loved her son and that I was sorry for her loss — words that seem empty without the specificity of what I meant.  —Which is that I would never forget her son because he was part of the story of my future.  He was the one friend who let Gavin borrow his car to take me out on our first real date, even though he never lent his car to anyone.  He was that kind of person: a good, generous person, especially when it mattered.  He was the type of person who never forgot to call his mom on Mother’s Day.

I’m thinking about her today.  As I sit with my own family, enjoying the flowers and the homemade cards and the excitement of two little girls proudly expressing their thanks, I’m thinking about all the mothers along the way who had a role in this.  And hoping they realize that no matter what happens in the end, their love has made a difference and has a way of echoing back.

Photo credit: Kristi Eckberg Photography

The post Echo appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

And she’d be right if it wasn’t true.  It was the weekend before Thanksgiving.  He had just turned sixty-three the month before.  Had just retired from a job he disliked a few before that.  And it happened moments after he’d driven past the building where he had worked for 20 years.  He was happy, finally, after many years of discontent.  I think that’s what stays with me like a slow-fading bruise, like the lingering streams of vapor in the sky from an airplane long flown by.  He was happy.

This should comfort me, but instead it slices through like tire tracks in snow —straight green lines cut into white— like the tire tracks that remained for days after it happened.  Tire tracks that veered off the road, over the sidewalk, and directly into brick.  Lightish brown, 1960’s municipal-variety brick — the Town’s water pump station.  It had been his heart, completely unexpected.  And his son, my husband, is a cardiologist.

Gavin was on-call at the hospital here in Bend, Oregon when I got the phone call from the hospital clear across the country.  He’d had a horrible night, his pager repeatedly piercing the midnight air with its shrill, insistent beep.  He’d gone into the hospital at 3 am.  Was probably rounding on patients when his own father’s heart stopped working hundreds of miles away.  Impossible.  Just that morning I saw the comment that my father-in-law had written, right before he died, on the family photo I had posted online the previous night: I so love this picture.  It brings tears to my eyes.  A moment of weakness.  Gavin’s dad rarely posted anything on Facebook.  Tears were even less frequent.

My husband is just like his father.  Same red hair, same temper, same posture, same fingernails bitten down to their beds.  Same aura of invincibility.  Same tendency, when upset, to disappear into the garage and tinker, rather than allow emotion to bubble up.  He’s been spending a lot of time in the garage lately.  He made an amplifier from scratch last week —circuit board and everything— and is working on another. 

How does a cardiologist grieve when his father’s just died of an unexpected heart attack?  When he lives hundreds of miles away and was certain he had a few more decades to diminish that space?  A few more decades of talking about home-grown hops and home-brewed beer, a few more decades of sharing our girls with him, of learning about what else to expect as a dad. 

The first day back to work after returning from the funeral, Gavin told me he had a patient who smoked so much that he had to wash his hands three times afterwards just to wash the smell away.  I know that Gavin has many of those — people who care less about their health than he does.  People unmotivated to change their habits to keep a heart attack at bay.  These are the people who enrage me now, because it seems downright unfair for any of them to be living when Gavin’s healthy, 63-year-old father has just passed away.  Me? I would have a hard time keeping the F— you’s from slipping out. 

But my husband just goes out to the garage, clipping wires with the tools his father gave him.  He doesn’t even realize what he’s doing.

It’s relatively easy for me to process my own grief: I’m a writer, so it’s okay for me to be emotional, even when I’m at work.  And I can take cues from our girls, welcome the tears triggered by some harmless family tree crafting activity from an American Girl activity book.  It’s okay for me to climb into their beds and hold them as we cry.  It’s not as easy for Gavin.  He has to stand in an Oxford shirt and a white lab coat, smile meekly while the wife of a patient expresses her condolences about his father.  “Oh, Dr. Noble,” she says, “You’re so good at what you do.  I hope it wasn’t his heart.”

Gavin’s been playing in a band lately, taking his home-made amplifier that he built with his father’s old tools to someone else’s garage to play.  Evading his sorrow with the company of men and the sound of electric guitar.  Last week they had a gig on a night before I had to leave town. —Which, I’m embarrassed to say, annoyed me.  Then I found out that it was a benefit for someone from work who is facing terminal cancer. 

He stayed out late, later than usual, and didn’t answer any of my calls or texts.  I paced the halls at home because everyone knows that tragedies often happen in pairs.  When he finally came home, I was short with him, my temper flared by our missed opportunity to debrief on the kids before I left town, by the beer I smelled on his breath.  “My phone battery died,” he told me, “And I took her out for a beer.”  Meaning the woman who is dying of cancer.

Maybe it was being able to do one small thing for this woman before saying goodbye.  Maybe it was not being able to do either of those for his dad.   In bed, finally, he whispered, “Why didn’t I catch it?  This is what I do.” 

I climbed under the covers and molded my body around his.  Held him as he cried.

The post Heartache appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

I did not come from a very happy home, and so whenever I encountered this writing prompt, I found myself defaulting to a different home, to my husband’s home, and the family that adopted me.  So here’s what I often think of when I think about home:

Cars filling the driveway.  The scent of smoke from the wood stove on a crisp December night.  Chainsaws and gasoline lingering in the garage.  Sweat-stained baseball caps hanging on the wall.  The sound of the door, the creak of the stairs, the dance of pet hair on the floor.  The fruity, yeasty smell of homebrew on the stove.   Sports jerseys and newspaper clippings stuffed into a drawer.  A Mustang under the bedspread out in the barn at Grandma’s farm.  The sight of Les and his older brothers leaning over the hood of a rusty Ford.

I think of brothers—his brothers, and the brothers that he fathered: Gavin and Brian, how much they look like him.  I was standing with them by a campfire, eating catfish by the canal when I first really noticed this, when I noticed that the man I love stands exactly the same way his father did: weight on one leg, thumbs hooked into front pockets, spitting into the fire.  And his hands—exactly the same.  Same shape, same knuckles, same nails bitten down to their beds.

What else is the same?  His hair? His nose?  His temperament?  Dare I say: his heart?  Ah, see now I have your attention—because maybe we’re not supposed to talk about that.  But I must, you see, because Les’s heart is a big part of the reason I think of this as home.

It’s the way he always came out the front door to greet us with his arms open wide.  The way he brewed a batch of my favorite beer, called it “Honey Grad” and brought it to my college graduation back in Ohio.  It was the way he labored over the heavy wooden arch under which Gavin and I would stand to say our vows—painting and swearing at it when he loaded it onto the truck.  It was the way he was always there for you whenever your time of need.  It was his own vulnerability: the quiver in his voice when he called our house once to atone for his mistakes, the way he said, “Don’t give up on me, darlin.  I really need you now.”  It was the way he loved being a grandpa, the way he cradled the tender heads of our newborn baby girls.  The way he rolled around and played on the floor with them, the way their faces lit up whenever he walked into the room.  It’s the same way they light up now when Gavin comes home from work.

My girls have a father who would do anything for them, who will caress their faces and stay with them until they fall asleep.  Who, every night—long after bedtime is done, goes back in their rooms to kiss them and whisper goodnight before he goes to bed.  My girls have a father who is unafraid to show his love for them because that’s what he was shown.  Heart.

Les’s heart has taken him away from us, but not before it gave.  We grieve today because he left us too early, too suddenly.  Too unexpectedly.  But after the shock and the tears and many sunrises and sunsets have passed, I think we will see that Les has prepared us well in loving one another, in forgiveness, in being devoted to another’s needs.  We’ll see that he has prepared us in what it means to call a place home.

The post Some Things About Home: A Eulogy for Les appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.