I want to be honest about a period in early October, about three weeks after the dinner, when I was not handling this well.
The adrenaline of the dinner had worn off. The initial conversations with Paige and Andrew and Ruth had settled into a quieter period of adjustment, and in the absence of the immediate drama I was left with the underlying reality: my daughter had told her husband’s family I was dead and had maintained that lie for eighteen months, and I had missed her wedding, and I had spent that time believing a story that was not true.
In early October I was angry in a way that was harder to manage than the productive anger I had brought to the dinner. It was the slower, duller anger that sets in when the crisis is over and you are left with the plain facts without the urgency of action to focus on. I did not want to perform calm. I was not calm.
I was short with Donna in a way she called me on directly, which is what Donna does. I had two evenings in a row where I came home from work and sat in my kitchen and did not do anything for hours, not productively processing, just sitting with the particular weight of what had happened in a way that was not moving me forward.
I called Paige on the second of those evenings and I said something I had been trying not to say: “Do you understand that I have been alone on every major occasion in your married life? Your wedding. Andrew’s birthday. Your first anniversary. Every holiday. All of it has happened without me existing in it.”