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will be there with you.”
    The next morning Spencer got dressed in his blue blazer and gray trousers, looking every bit his father’s son. But he was not our happy little boy of the morning before. He didn’t cry. Something that had been there yesterday was not there today.
    “Daddy will be sleeping,” I told him as we drove to the hospital. “But even so, he’ll be able to hear you.”
    Spencer and I walked into the ICU holding hands. The staff stood practically at attention. It was as quiet as it had ever been. We made small talk with the nurses. They pulled a chair up to Howard’s bed and hoisted Spencer onto it so he could see his father. The nurse had given Howard a shave and combed his hair and cleaned him up, and tried to make the room look as normal as possible.
    “Can I be alone with Daddy?” he asked.
    “Of course, angel,” I said, and walked out of the bay with the others. A nurse pulled the curtains.
    From inside we heard Spencer’s young, tentative voice begin to sing:
    You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…
    Please don’t take my sunshine away
.
    Typically, at school or at home, when anyone sang that song Spencer ran from the room in tears. “The song is too sad,” he said, “because it’s about the sun going away.”
    Now, as it came softly from his lips, I cried. The nurses cried, too. And then the singing stopped.
    Spencer pulled back the curtains and walked out of Howard’s room with red, bruised eyes. “I said good-bye,” he said, taking my hand. “Can we go home?” We walked down the long empty corridor in silence.
    Through that long night, at Howard’s bedside, I said my own good-byes. The next day, at ten-sixteen on the morning of Saturday, February 1, 1997, three weeks and a day after I had driven him to the hospital, with Martha and my brothers and our medical team at his side and his hand in mine, Howard Joynt died. He was fifty-seven years old.

Ch apte r 4
    T HIS IS THE thing about grief: If you allow it to, it will protect you. It’s an organic drug for the broken soul. Mine was an all-encompassing fog, and I welcomed it. This doesn’t mean I didn’t ache or feel shattered, but each time I reached the breaking point, the fog would roll in and I could function. With a grieving little boy, I had to function. But here’s the other thing about grief: There’s no road map.
    In the first hours after Howard’s death we escaped to our house on the Chesapeake Bay. Even though it was primarily a weekend retreat, it felt like home and was where we as a family had been our happiest. Now with Howard gone, it echoed with memories like an empty shell echoes the sea.
    Spencer knew something momentous and irreversible had happened. He knew his father was gone and not coming back. By his logic, Daddy was in heaven, whatever
that
was. Distractions worked for only a little while. Spencer couldn’t understand why his toys didn’t keep him happy. He’d go from playing with Legos to playing with toy tools to playing outside. He’d be into it for a while and then quickly lose interest. He’d retreat to his room to fondle his cuddle toy, “Baby,” and suck his thumb. Or, he’d veer to the other extreme. One day as I was toweling him dry after a bath he cried and begged, “Please stab me, Mommy, kill me. I want to be with Daddy in heaven.”
    On another afternoon, as I washed dishes by the kitchen window, Spencer walked down to the water’s edge and looked out. I dried my hands and joined him. I gave him a squeeze and a kiss and plopped down on the grass beside him, on my back, resting on my elbows, looking out to where his gaze was fixed. “What are you thinking?” I asked.
    “I’m just missing Daddy and wishing he was out there in his boat.” At bedtime, between tears, he had more questions.
    “Why did God take Daddy? Why did he
do
that?”
    Some parents might respond with an affirmation of faith and explain how the ways of God are beyond our understanding, but we have to