ice breaker
by Bridget Verhaaren
Ashley, the conference organizer, stands on a metal picnic bench, a cheerleader, her hands raised above her head. She shouts, “Everyone whose spouse died of cancer, stand over here. Everyone whose spouse died of heart disease, clump over there. And everyone whose spouse died in an accident, circle up in the middle.”
Widows and widowers shuffle, in a line, toward their designated clump under the pavilion. Their tunnel vision precludes them from scanning the crowd for familiar faces. Many are still in the deep fog of grief.
Moving toward my group, I note the hordes headed toward cancer and heart disease.
Two men stand in the middle. My club: The Accidents.
The older man’s gray hair sticks out from under his crème-colored cowboy hat. He has a smudge of mud on his boots where the stitching meets the sole. The younger guy zips his windbreaker and shifts his weight as the breeze flutters the legs of his running pants.
Ashley cries out, arms windmilling, “Now find out how, and how long it’s been.”
I turn to the cowboy and ask, “How’d she die?”
“Well, I jus’ said goodbye; she was off to get her hair done. My wife was headed down the lane when the chickens flew onto the hood, and she lost control; the car rolled. I saw the whole thing. She was gone by the time I got to her.”
He pauses for a moment, then adds, “Damn chickens.”
He laughs, and so I laugh.
The guy in the windbreaker half-smiles.
“How long’s it been?” I ask.
“Bout a year,” the cowboy says.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Cowboy nods. Then says, “You?”
“My husband was in a 200-mile bike race, a few miles from the finish, when he hit some asphalt overfill while crossing a bridge and was catapulted over a low guardrail sixty feet to his death.”
Their mouths gape as if my story is much more shocking — more than the damn chickens.
“I remember hearing about that,” the runner guy says.
“Yeah, it was all over the news.”
It’s as if it didn’t happen to me, and here I am, retelling the horrific details to strangers.
“One more minute, then circle up in the middle,” Ashley interrupts.
“How about you?” I ask the young guy.
“My wife and kids were killed when a guy ran a light.”
He looks away and steels his jaw. I know he’s forcing tears to stay in their ducts.
Raw.
Fresh loss.
Who prompted him to attend the widow/widower conference?
“I’m sorry,” I say, and don’t ask how long it’s been.
As the flanking crowd drifts toward us, we three stand together, The Accidents. The recipients of the ripple effects from a torrent of events that shattered our lives. I catch the cowboy’s eye, and the runner nods and understands that “I’m sorry” is shorthand for we’re stranded here, in a club we never wanted to join.
Photo of Bridget Verhaaren
BIO: Bridget Verhaaren holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University. Together, Bridget and Gary Garner have eight children and enjoy spending time in the mountains with their VEGA (Verhaaren-Garner) Family. Read more at www.bridgetverhaaren.com