Matters of the Heart

“She was in college, at Dartmouth, where my father taught when I was a child, although he was gone by then. She called me one morning, with the flu, and she sounded really sick. Her roommate took her to the infirmary, and they called me an hour later. She had meningitis. I talked to her and she sounded awful. I got in the car to go up to her from Boston, Paul came with me. She died half an hour before we arrived. There was nothing they could do to save her. It just happened that way.” There were tears rolling slowly down her cheeks as she said it, and she had a peaceful look on her face, as Finn watched her. He looked devastated by what she’d said. “She danced in the summers with the New York City Ballet. She had thought about not going to college and dancing instead, but she managed to do both. They were going to take her in as soon as she graduated, or before if she wanted. She was a wonderful dancer.” And then as an afterthought, she added, “We called her Mimi.” Hope’s voice was barely more than a whisper as she said it. “I miss her terribly. And her death destroyed her father. It was the last straw for him. He had already been sick for years, and drinking heavily in secret. He stayed drunk for three months when she died. One of his old colleagues at Harvard did an intervention on him, and he put himself in a hospital and dried up after that. But when he did, he decided that he couldn’t be married to me anymore. Maybe I reminded him too much of Mimi, and the loss. He sold his business, bought a boat, and left me. He said he didn’t want me sitting around waiting for him to die, that I deserved better than that. But the truth was too that losing Mimi was so devastating for both of us, that our marriage fell apart. We’re still good friends, but every time we see each other we think of her. He filed for divorce, and I left for India. We still love each other, but I guess we loved her more. After that, there wasn’t much left of our marriage. When Mimi died, we all did in a way. He’s not the person he was, and maybe I’m not either. It’s hard to come through something like that in one piece. So there it is,” she said sadly. “I didn’t want to tell you in London. I don’t usually tell people about her. It’s just too sad. My life is very different without her, to say the least. It’s all about my work now. There’s nothing else. I love what I do, that helps.”

“Oh my God,” Finn said, with tears in his own eyes. Hope could sense that he had been thinking about his own son while she told him the story of her daughter. “I can’t even imagine what that must be like. It would kill me.”

“It almost did,” she said, as he came to sit next to her on the couch and put an arm around her shoulders. Hope didn’t object. Feeling him close to her helped. She hated talking about it, and rarely did, although she looked at the photographs on the wall every night and thought about her all the time, still. “The time I spent in India helped. And in Tibet. I found a wonderful monastery in Ganden, and I had an extraordinary teacher. I think he helped me to accept it. One really has no other choice.”

“And your ex-husband? How is he about it now? Did he go back to drinking?”

“No, he’s still sober. He’s aged a lot in the last three years, and he’s a lot sicker, so it’s hard to tell if it’s Mimi or the disease. He’s as happy as he can be on his boat. I bought this loft when I came back from India, but I travel a lot, so I’m away much of the time. I don’t need a lot in my life. Nothing makes sense without Mimi. She was the center of our life, and once she was gone, we were both pretty lost.” The pain she had experienced showed in her work. She had a deep connection with human suffering that came out in the photographs she took.

“You’re not too old to marry again and have another child,” Finn said gently, unsure of what to say to comfort her. How did you comfort a woman who had lost her only child? What she had told him was so enormous that he had no idea how to help her. He was shocked by the story she had told him. Hope wiped her eyes, and smiled.

“Technically, I’m not too old, but it’s not very likely, and it doesn’t make much sense. I can’t see myself marrying again, and I haven’t dated since Paul and I divorced. I just haven’t met anyone that I wanted to go out with, and I wasn’t ready. We’ve only been divorced for two years, and she’s been gone for three. It was a lot to lose at the same time. And by the time I do find someone again, if I ever do, I will be too old. I’m forty-four now, I think my baby-making days are pretty much over, or will be soon. And it wouldn’t be the same.”

“No, of course not, but you have a lot of years ahead of you. You can’t spend them alone, or you shouldn’t. You’re a beautiful woman, Hope, you have a lot of life in you. You can’t close the door on all that now.”