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Pushing Past the Pain

By Milla Holt

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Ella Belmont took one look at her mother-in-law’s puffy face and red-rimmed eyes and knew she’d have to postpone her trip to the grocery store. Jocelyn Belmont stood on the front doorstep, clutching a large cardboard box.

“Come in,” Ella said, stepping back. She ought to have guessed the older woman might need a shoulder to cry on, given what the date was today.

Jocelyn walked into the entryway. The box rattled as she raised it toward Ella. “I was going through some things in the garage and I found these. They were part of Neil’s old Lego collection. I thought Tiffany might want them.” She thrust the box into Ella’s hands. “I hope you’re doing okay, hun,” she said, her voice trembling.

“Yes, thanks,” Ella said. “How are you holding up?”

Jocelyn sighed and dabbed her eyes with a balled-up tissue. “It’s hard. His birthdays always get to me.”

“I know,” Ella said. She set the box on the floor and drew Jocelyn into a hug.
Ella’s husband, Neil, would have been turning thirty-five next week, if he had still been alive. Jocelyn had been devastated by the death of her only son and found birthdays particularly hard to cope with. Ella dealt with Neil’s birthdays the same way she handled every other milestone since his death: by stuffing her feelings deep inside and pretending it was just another day.

“Can I get you anything? A cup of tea?” Ella asked. Jocelyn was a talker, and Ella knew that the best way to get her through any rough patch was to let her talk through it. The two women had shared many tea and chatting sessions over the past couple of years.

“Yes, please,” Jocelyn said, walking into the open plan living room of Ella’s basement apartment. “Where’s Tiffany?”

Ella pointed to the French doors that led out into the back yard. “She’s playing out there.”

Jocelyn moved toward the doors while Ella put the kettle on. “She looks more like him every day.” Jocelyn wiped at a fresh trickle of tears.

Ella followed the older woman’s gaze to her five-year-old daughter who sat cross-legged on a picnic rug, a collection of toys strewn around her. Jocelyn had always been adamant that the child looked like Neil, but Ella had never thought so, and she didn’t see it now.

Tiffany had inherited her mother’s dark brown eyes, oval face, and firm round chin. Her tawny skin was a blend of her father’s fair tones and her mother’s mahogany complexion. Tiffany’s curly brown hair hung down her back in two pigtails. It, too, lay on the spectrum between her mother’s tight black Afro curls and her father’s wavy blond hair. But Jocelyn saw her son in the little girl, and Ella didn’t want to contradict her.

The kettle whistled, and Ella went to fetch two mugs from the cupboard. Milk and one sugar for Jocelyn, milk and two sugars for herself. Jocelyn turned around and came to the kitchen counter, perching herself onto a bar stool. She curled her fingers around the mug that Ella slid toward her.

“Thanks, love,” Jocelyn said, blowing on the top of the steaming drink. “It’s good to have you two so close by. Especially on days like today.”

Ella smiled and nodded. It was indeed a blessing to be able to stay in this apartment, a self-contained granny annex attached to Jocelyn’s house. After Neil died, Ella couldn’t keep up the mortgage on their four-bed family home in Reigate, an exclusive neighborhood of Surrey, England. It had been a stretch even while Neil was alive, but he had insisted on living in that area. With him gone, there was no way she could afford to stay on.

After the burial, Jocelyn had urged Ella and Tiffany to stay in her basement apartment and lease out the Reigate house. The rental income from Ella’s family home was supposed to cover the mortgage. It was a good idea in theory, but it hadn’t worked out that smoothly, particularly with her current set of tenants.
As much as Ella was grateful to Jocelyn for giving her and Tiffany a roof over their heads, living so close to Neil’s mother had its drawbacks as well as its advantages.

She envied Jocelyn’s pure grief for her son. Her mother-in-law was able to mourn over Neil’s best qualities: his spontaneity, his infectious grin, his ability to cram fun and laughter into every corner of his life. While Ella missed that part of her husband, she couldn’t forget the darker side of his live-for-the-moment outlook. Her grief was stained with ugly memories and the very real implications of the situation his hedonism had left her and her daughter in.

Jocelyn sipped her tea. “You know, I was thinking,” she said. “Neil was taken away from us far too soon. But I’m thankful for how much he packed into his short time with us. He really lived his life to the full, didn’t he? He went after everything he wanted. He grabbed life by the horns and gave it a good shake.” She smiled, despite the tears that welled up in her eyes, and reached out to grab Ella’s hand. “That’s what gives me the most comfort when I’m feeling at my lowest. He made the most of his time.”

Ella stretched her lips into the semblance of a smile but could not muster any words in response. Neil had certainly gone after everything he wanted, seldom thinking about the consequences. As his widow with a young child to raise, she saw things rather differently than his indulgent mother, to whom he had always been a golden boy, entitled to whatever wish crossed his fancy. Neil had gone off on that lads-only holiday in Hawaii to celebrate his friend’s upcoming wedding even though Ella tried to reason with him that they couldn’t afford it.
He’d waved a shiny new credit card at her and said, “Yes, we can.”

He and his friends had the time of their lives, enjoying Maui to the full, culminating in a skydiving trip that had gone terribly wrong.

“It always makes me feel better knowing that he died doing something he loved,” Jocelyn continued, squeezing Ella’s hand.

Ella clenched her jaw. Neil might have loved skydiving, but their insurance company didn’t. They’d used it as an excuse to deny both his travel insurance and his term life policies. “Void when the policy-holder dies in pursuit of dangerous activities.” Ella was grateful that she had joint ownership of the Reigate property, which meant that it had passed on to her. Otherwise, it would have been counted as Neil’s estate and sucked into the black hole of his massive personal debts.

She couldn’t join in on Jocelyn’s celebration of Neil’s short-sighted pleasure-seeking. Tears stung her eyes, and she stood up and walked to the window to watch her daughter. Tiffany was Neil’s best gift to her. For her child, she could almost forgive Neil for everything he’d put her through over the years. Almost.

Jocelyn came up to the window as well, and Tiffany looked up and saw them both. She grinned, displaying the new gap where she’d just lost her first baby tooth. Mother and grandmother smiled and waved back, and Jocelyn sighed. “It’s wonderful having you both so close.”

“We’re grateful to be here, too,” Ella said, glad she could return her mother-in-law’s sincerity on this point at least.

Jocelyn turned to face her. “I wanted to have a special dinner next week to mark Neil’s birthday. I thought about doing it last year, but I just couldn’t. It was all too fresh. I’ll cook all his favorite things, and we can light a candle and just remember him. It’ll be just us.”

Ella knew that it wasn’t a question. Jocelyn was laying out how she and, therefore, Ella and Tiffany, would be celebrating Neil’s birthday. Jocelyn expected everyone else who loved Neil to feel the same way she did. It had been like that since Neil had gone. Jocelyn was the chief mourner, and everyone else followed her impulses and ideas of how things would be done. In the early days, when numbness and shock paralyzed Ella’s thoughts and feelings, she had done everything according to Jocelyn’s wishes. The pattern was now fixed in stone and impossible to break. Jocelyn, in her sweet-natured yet single-minded way, dictated what was to be done and how Neil was to be grieved.

Ella said, “Yes, we’ll be there. Just let us know the time.”

“Thanks, darling,” Jocelyn said, squeezing Ella’s hand. “It’ll be hard, but it’s such a comfort to have each other. I’d better go now. Don’t forget to show Tiffany the Legos and tell her where they came from. I might drop by tomorrow and have a little play with her. See you soon.”

Ella watched as Jocelyn headed to the front door and let herself out. She opened the door to the back yard and called out to her daughter. “Tiffany, let’s go. We need to get some groceries.”

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