Page 156 of Hell Bent
I hesitated, then thought,Teachable moment.I didn’t know much about that, but I was trying to learn. “No,” I said. “This is when it matters most to try to accept. When it’s hardest.”
“Huh?” he said. “You just, like, moveon?That’s bullshit, man. It’sbullshit.”Shouting a little now, and the funeral director, still standing back there like he was prepared to wait all day, was probably startled. Or maybe not. I’d bet a lot of crazy stuff happened at funerals.
“I can see why you think so.” I glanced at Alix. She smiled a little, which I figured meant,You’re doing fine,so I went on. Blundering into parenthood. “Radical acceptance means accepting the pain. Accepting the hurt. It means letting yourself cry like I didn’t do for thirteen years. See, I thought I was practicing it, and turns out I wasn’t. I might be practicing it a little better now, though, because I’m feeling the hurt. My hurt. Your hurt. Alix’s hurt. I’m feeling how hard it is to watch you hurt, too. You know what started it?”
“What?” Ben asked.
“Lexi,” I said. “The way she stood there when that asshole drove off without her. Trying so hard to be good. Like if she was good enough, he’d come back. That just …” I was tearing up more than I had through the whole service, through all of this, but maybe that was the point. “That kind of shoved a wedge into my armor, I guess. Dogs are pure, like babies. They’re innocent. You can’t have armor against a dog’s hurt. That felt bad, but it was good for me.”
“Like vegetables,” Ben said, and we both smiled.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.” I paused a moment, then said, “It was good that Kyle came today.”
Ben looked away. “Yeah.” His voice tight and pinched. “He’s my best friend.”
“And it felt like he was your only friend,” I said, and Ben’s shoulders jerked. “Kids aren’t up for it,” I tried to explain. “They don’t have a way to handle the big feelings yet, so they avoid them. Boys especially. Nobody said anything to me while my dad was dying. Well, teachers. My coach. But none of my friends. None of my teammates. They didn’t know what to say. They didn’t know how to be. So they didn’t say anything, and I pulled back. Walled myself off. It wasn’t the right response, but I can see why I did it.”
Ben said, “Kyle asked if I could come over after this. Maybe spend the night. He said I probably got better at Madden 24, because of you. I told him you didn’t let me have video games, and he couldn’t believe it.”
“Sounds like a good idea. If you want to go.”
“I really want to,” he said. “But it feels kind of … bad. Disrespectful to my mom.”
“No,” I said. “That’s why people have parties after funerals sometimes. Wakes. Whatever. You hurt, and you cry, and then you go on into your life.” I smiled. It was still painful. “Radical acceptance.”
Alix
We drove back to the hotel—neither Ben nor Sebastian had been able to face that sad house—Ben stuffed a few things into his backpack, and Sebastian and I took him to his friend’s place. When we’d dropped him off, I asked, “Can we go for a walk? We should probably change first, but you know?—”
“Yeah,” Sebastian said. “Let’s take a walk.”
We couldn’t do a beach walk or take off our shoes, but at least we were beside the water, because there was a path here that let you do that. The tide was high, lapping against the seawall. I said, “There’s something about the ocean that helps. The loneliness, or something.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian said. “Reminds you that you’re small, maybe. The tide will keep on coming in and going out, no matter what. Life goes on.”
“Life goes on.” I pressed his hand a little tighter. “What you said to Ben—it was just right. I was proud of you.”
“You could’ve jumped in there,” he said, “since I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“It came from the heart,” I said. “It was real. That’s what Ben needs. It hurts. That’s real.”
“OK,” Sebastian said, and that was all.
We walked some more. Seabirds wheeled overhead, and the water kept on lapping at that wall. I said, “You’re the best parent Ben could possibly have.”
“What?” He looked startled.
“I’m going to say this,” I said. “I’m going to tell you what I see when I look at you, and why I love you.”
I thought he might make a joke, but he didn’t say anything, so I went on. “Because when somebody else would say, ‘This is too hard,’ you do it anyway. When somebody elsewould say, ‘This isn’t fair,’ you do it anyway. When somebody else would say, ‘There’s no way I can make it,’ you stand up. You dig in. And you Do. It. Anyway. And that’s rare. That’s extraordinary. Ben’s a lucky boy. And I’m a lucky woman.”
He said, “Let’s sit down.”
We found a bench. The breeze lifted the edges of Sebastian’s hair, and the lines on his face made him look like a carved image as he stared out to sea. Still holding my hand. Finally, he turned to me and said, “Do you know what that Sonnet 116 says?”
I blinked. “Uh … Shakespeare? The one my grandmother liked?”
“Yeah. That one. Have you read it?”
