When Secrets Die by Lynn S. Hightower Page B

her up at night and made her throw up.
    Once you’ve had the fear , it changes you. Makes you aware. Appreciative. And sometimes, late at night, or when the bank account is overdrawn, it makes you afraid. Emma had learned years ago that fear was useful. Look it in the eye, and don’t waste time trying to convince yourself nothing is going to happen. Your subconscious will not let you sleep until you make a plan. That’s all it wants, the subconscious. A little notice and a plan to stick in the back pocket of the brain to handle the contingencies. People could save a lot of time and money spent on that last glass of wine, that Vicodin, that joint, the shopping trip that was unaffordable, the late nights on the Internet betting on football, if they’d make a deal with the subconscious. That’s all it would take for the people who were just trying to sleep—the ones who were into vice for the enjoyment were still free to dance in the dark.
    Emma was eighteen pounds over the weight on the charts given out by insurance companies. She didn’t worry about it. There were a lot of things she didn’t worry about. Her hips were rounded, her breasts were large, and she was tall. Besides, the weight charts did not have a category for voluptuous women who liked all sensuous things, including eating, and she never gave it a third thought. A second thought, well, yes. She was after all a woman raised in a culture that served guilt with every meal.
    One thing losing a child did, though, it swept all the crap right out of your life. It gave you perspective. The people who talk out loud about the good that comes out of tragedy are the ones who never had any—tragedy, that is. Of course, if you actually agreed, and brought up one possible good part, they enveloped you with an undertow of accusation for not grieving properly—a fog of judgmental disapproval that lurked darkly beneath the surface like a stage-four cancer. Next up came the conversation that began with “It’s a good thing it didn’t happen to me because I would have just not been able to handle it …”
    Ending with either “You are so strong,” or “brave,” which really meant You are an insensitive woman who just doesn’t have the depth of feeling and sensitivity that someone like me has, and likely God knows that, which is why it hasn’t happened to me and won’t happen to me … and I wonder what you did to deserve this .…
    Or I’m sorry it happened to you, but would you mind pretending it didn’t so that I don’t have to feel bad, I have enough stress in my life already. I’ll acknowledge your grief by staring at you when I think you’re not looking so I can SEE your grief, and make sure it is there, and suddenly stopping mid-sentence in case the remark I made was insensitive and not allowing you the face-saving option of pretending you didn’t notice and that what I said didn’t hurt, or worse, actually not noticing and not being hurt .
    Emma’s new perspective didn’t please people. She was supposed to rave over sunsets—and hell, yes, they were nice, and yes, she’d take a moment and look at one if the opportunity came up at a convenient time and not during Jeopardy! —but life wasn’t about sunsets. It was about breathing in and breathing out without a great deal of pain. It was about having a place to live—better still, one you actually liked. It was about having a job. It was about being able to feed your kids, and maybe even not sweat when you stood in line waiting for the grocery store total, balancing what was still on that slow-moving black rubber belt with the continuously rising total on the screen that was ever so conveniently turned your way. It was about curling up at the end of the day with a good book or a television show you actually liked, about affording cream to go with the coffee, about not worrying about