Death Turns To Birth

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I had every­thing I had ever wanted … right up until our Easter Sun­day din­ner when my then sev­en­teen month-old daugh­ter and I watched as my amaz­ing hus­band, Erik, slid down the kitchen counter and died. He was 29 and I was seven months preg­nant with our sec­ond child. One minute he was laugh­ing, and thirty five min­utes later, he was pro­claimed dead. Just like that.

Need­less to say, it was unimaginable.

Six years have now passed since Erik’s death and, again, I have every­thing I have ever wanted. After push­ing through the ups and downs of spousal loss and unex­pected single-parenting, I’d like to think I have earned this right to hap­pi­ness. I put in the time. End­less hours of Post Trau­matic Stress ther­apy. Jour­nal­ing. Eye Move­ment Desen­si­ta­tion Repro­cess­ing. Hyp­nother­apy. Chakra work. I fig­ured the only way to get over Erik’s death was to go straight through it, as painful as every step would be, and that the more time I spent heal­ing, the sooner I would feel capa­ble of being a good mother again, and even­tu­ally, a good part­ner to some­one else.

Of course, what I didn’t know when Erik died was that grief is not some­thing you ever truly ‘get over’. Grief is like a newly given birth­mark on your face, eter­nally star­ing back at you in the mirror.

Erik’s funeral was fol­lowed by a catered ‘cel­e­bra­tion of life’ on one of George Lucas’s sound­stages. Erik was a ris­ing star in tech­nol­ogy man­age­ment at Lucas’s spe­cial effects’ divi­sion, Indus­trial Light and Magic, and his unex­pected death was high on the richter scale for thou­sands of peo­ple. I will always be grate­ful for the out­pour of love and sup­port from the Lucas employ­ees and my incred­i­ble pho­tog­ra­phy clients.

I remem­ber when one of my ex-boyfriends arrived at the funeral chapel, how I won­dered if he would end up being the next daddy to my chil­dren. Even in my black mater­nity out­fit, it was as if Erik was send­ing me a mes­sage, telling me to find love again. Sure, I admit that I started dat­ing way too soon accord­ing to most people’s ideas of grief eti­quette, but I have no regrets. Feel­ing desir­able was all a part of my heal­ing process, and there was this bio­log­i­cal yearn­ing, a scream­ing inside of me, “NEED FATHER FOR CHIL­DREN.” The idea of being a sin­gle mom to two baby girls was incon­ceiv­able, but I was not will­ing to set­tle for any­thing less than the hap­pi­ness that I once had.

Six weeks after my sec­ond daugh­ter, Keira, was born, I did an online search for other young wid­ows, and found myself on Match​.com. for the first time. Men and women of every shape and size. I scrolled through to see if there was any­one, at the age of 30, who could relate to my sit­u­a­tion, some­one I could talk to, but I ended up search­ing through all the men—widowed or not. I needed to con­nect. I needed male atten­tion. But, who would want me? Who would want a young widow with two babies?

Next thing I knew, I was Match​.com mem­ber, typ­ing up a head­line for myself.

“Add water, will grow.” My catch phrase.

Then I wrote and rewrote my Match​.com pro­file, which finally read:

There is a place where hap­pi­ness over­whelms you, where you feel you might burst because it feels so good. I have been to that place. I have been there and tasted its rich­ness and I know that I will return there once again. I have to believe that those capa­ble of lov­ing with such inten­sity, of liv­ing each moment com­pletely, must deserve to love again. Suc­cess­ful, charis­matic, intel­li­gent, attrac­tive, ener­getic, con­fi­dent, ath­letic, tal­ented, great sense of humor (sound­ing pretty good, yes?) look­ing for a friend with poten­tial. Some­one who is unafraid of their feel­ings, of delv­ing deep, or get­ting dizzy in the rain. Some­one who knows how to see the joy in the most dif­fi­cult of times. Some­one who wants to live life to its fullest, who puts love above all else. Most impor­tantly, some­one who adores chil­dren. I love movies, danc­ing, run­ning, singing, play­ing pool, writ­ing, get­ting dressed up for a night on the town and dressed down for a long hike, scrab­ble, backgam­mon, late night talks, after­noon naps, the ocean, the moun­tains, trav­el­ling, moments where you don’t have to say any­thing. I am a self-employed Baby/children’s pho­tog­ra­pher with world-wide pub­li­ca­tions. My job is awe­some! I get to blow bub­bles and roll around on the floor with lit­tle ones all day. Right now, I am tak­ing time off from my busi­ness to write a mem­oir and cher­ish the pre­cious moments with my two baby girls.

In the morn­ing, I checked my emails. Ten dif­fer­ent men, a cou­ple of them even good-looking. My first night on Match​.com and I had received ten emails! I was a hit—already on my way to feel­ing less like a young widow, less like dam­aged goods.

Time passed, and after a cou­ple of six month rela­tion­ships, two years of work­shop­ping bits of my mem­oir, and the even­tual res­ur­rec­tion of my pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness in Cal­i­for­nia, along came the serendip­i­tous email through Match​.com. Along came Evan.

My girls, Tatiana and Keira, were 2 and 3.5 years old when I brought them to the soc­cer field and intro­duced them to Evan and his 8 year-old son, Jason. The con­nec­tion was instant between all of us. Within a year, we moved into a house together in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, with the most incred­i­ble view of San Fran­cisco, and Evan asked Tatiana and Keira to start call­ing him daddy. The girls were elated.

Before Erik died, he promised to always take care of us, and I must admit that, for a while, I was upset with him for dying, for not being there any­more to take care of us. I know that there is no ratio­nal think­ing in being mad at some­one for dying, but grief is not always meant to be rational.

The day after we told the kids that Evan and I were get­ting mar­ried, and that he would be legally adopt­ing them, Tatiana nuz­zled into my lap and asked, “Mommy, do you think Daddy Erik sent Daddy and Jason to us?”

I stroked her long, curly hair and said, “Yes, sweet­heart, I think he did.”

I believe that. I believe that Erik sent Evan to us, that this was his way of tak­ing care of us, the way he promised.

And I even won­der about our new baby, the one Evan and I con­ceived, Julian Erik. He is 16 months-old now and the hap­pi­est lit­tle boy. Is it pos­si­ble that Erik has recy­cled his soul into Julian’s body as another way of for­ever being a part of our lives.

Evan wants me to fin­ish this mem­oir, even though I am strug­gling to find the time with four kids and a pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness. He has given me the week­end off to write while he takes care of the wee-ones because he knows how impor­tant it is to me to make some­thing beau­ti­ful out of my expe­ri­ence, to remind oth­ers to cher­ish love and not com­pro­mise until you get every­thing you want out of life … even if you have to do it twice.