Page 67 of Must Love Flowers
“You lost your daughter?”
Phil looked off into the distance as if to say how difficult it was to speak of his daughter’s death even now.
“Oh Phil, I’m so sorry.” Joan couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to lose a child. The very thought of burying Steve or Nick made her stomach hurt.
“I no longer have any contact with Katelyn, Amanda’s mother,” he admitted, and then as if he wanted to change the subject, he explained, “It makes sense that you assumed I was married. After Mom died, Dad was never the same. It wasn’t long after her passing that he retired. He lived alone, and I did as well, so it made sense for us to combine our households. Dad likes to cook, and it gives him purpose besides advising me on the business and handling the bookkeeping. Amanda’s mother and I haven’t spoken in years.”
“Oh.” Joan felt incredibly foolish. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Given the circumstances, it’s understandable. Dad was the one who suggested I get help after I buried Amanda. Losing her broke me, Joan. I was lost in a sea of grief and drowning with every breath I drew.”
Hearing the agony in his voice, Joan reached for his hand, curling her fingers around his. Silently she let him know she understood. She had the strongest desire to hug him and hesitated, thinking how inappropriate it would be to touch someone in such a familiar way, and yet she couldn’t stop herself. She knew this pain, had walked this rut-filled path herself. Following the impulse, she wrapped her arms around his middle and gave him a gentle squeeze.
“Thank you.” He briefly hugged her, and it seemed he had something more he wanted to say but held back.
“Forgive me…I…”
“No, please don’t apologize. I welcomed that hug.” Joan hardly knew what to say, and so she remained silent.
“Like Jared was to you, Amanda was my whole world,” Phil said. “Katelyn and I divorced when Amanda was three. She’d gotten pregnant while we were in college, and we married. It was never a good marriage. Katelyn felt trapped and quickly grew disillusioned with being a wife and mother. She left to find herself and instead found the man she told me was her soulmate. Apparently not, because they divorced sometime later. She granted me full custody of Amanda and moved on, rarely connecting with our daughter, so it was always just the two of us.
“I was her soccer coach, her Sunday school teacher, and her calculus tutor. I stayed up all night with her after she broke her arm on the school grounds.”
Knowing how difficult it was for him to speak of his daughter, Joan briefly closed her eyes, as his pain was clearly visible. “You don’t…”
“No, I want you to know what happened.” Phil appeared to gather some inner strength before he continued. “Amanda was brilliant and graduated from high school as the class valedictorian. I was so proud of her on graduation day. I sat in the audience, and it felt as if the buttons would burst off my shirt. She gave a speech that stirred me and several others to tears.” His voice cracked, and he hesitated before continuing.
“Oh Phil, this is too painful. I’m so sorry.”
“I know.”
This was a phrase Joan had often repeated when friends spoke of their own feelings at Jared’s loss. She didn’t want Phil to explain anything more, seeing how difficult this was for him.
“No, it sometimes helps to talk about it. It reminds me my daughter lived and isn’t forgotten.”
She admired his determination to bare his soul over a loss that had clearly devastated him.
“Amanda, as you can imagine, had the opportunity to attend any university she wanted. After giving it a lot of consideration, she chose the University of Washington, the main campus right here in Seattle. We’d toured Pepperdine, and it was my first choice for her, but the decision was hers. When it came down to it, she wanted to be independent and at the same time close enough to run home with a load of wash if she wanted. It was where her mother and I attended, and while she never said as much, I think that’s the real reason she chose there.”
Joan smiled. So typical of a teenager, wanting to be on theirown but close enough to home for when the need arose. And to follow in her father’s footsteps.
“Amanda quickly became friends with her college roommate. The two did everything together. Julie, her roommate, and Amanda were excited to attend a concert at the Gorge.”
Joan knew the Gorge, in eastern Washington, was a huge venue for bands and major artists, plus several rising ones.
“Julie drove and the two decided to head back that night following the concert. As best we can figure, Julie fell asleep at the wheel. Amanda was instantly killed, while Julie walked away with barely a scratch.” He paused long enough to take in a deep breath, as if it took all his strength to finish explaining what happened.
Joan gasped at the horror of it. “Oh Phil, what a terrible shock her death must have been.”
He shook his head as though to dismiss her words. “No more surprising than you losing Jared. At first it felt unreal, like there’d been some terrible mistake…like a nightmare I would wake up from sooner or later. Even after I was notified, I refused to believe it until I saw her body.”
Joan had felt all that herself when the kind doctor in the ER had told her there was nothing more the medical team could do for Jared. He was gone. She remembered standing there, her knees growing weak as she shook her head back and forth, wanting to dismiss his words, wanting to say that he was wrong, that Jared would be fine once he got the care he needed.
“I’ll admit I didn’t deal well with losing my only child,” Phil continued as he wiped his hand down his face. “I went through several stages of grief: The first, of course, was denial. That didn’t last long, seeing that I had to make the arrangements forher funeral. All the details leading up to the services sort of hit me in the face with the fact that I was burying her.”
Joan remembered how painful that time period had been for her as well. She’d relied heavily on her two sons and her sister, who’d immediately flown to Seattle to help her through that first couple weeks while she dealt with the funeral arrangements and the dental practice.
“I was so angry,” Phil said, and Joan heard the regret in his voice. “I lashed out at Julie, wanting her to assume some responsibility.” He exhaled, as if he found it difficult to continue.
