When They Saw Him Break

By Katie Blackburn
@katiemblackburn

I’m standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing off the dishes from our peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, when I hear my phone ding with the sound of a text message. 

Alex: Babe, I’m calling in sick tomorrow. 

I pause for a moment. As a respiratory nurse, Alex has never made it a habit to call in sick from work. The text message is only six words, but those six words say something far more than my husband’s plans for the next day. There are months and months of anxiety built up behind those six words. There are dozens, maybe closer to hundreds, of men and women he’s cared for diligently, and then had to watch as a virus only known to the world for two years steals their final breath. Three in one afternoon a few weeks ago. One we knew from church last Tuesday. The woman whose teeth Alex brushed residue of red jello off of before her husband came to say goodbye. Hundreds of phone calls to anxious family members begging for an update on people they love.

Today, he’s raising a white flag. His mind and body are teetering on the edge of brokenness.

Katie: Ok babe. Ok. I love you.

***

A little after 4:00pm, Alex walks in from the garage to our kitchen, the kids anxiously waiting for him as usual. They know by now that we do not hug daddy until after his scrubs are off and he’s taken a shower, so they offer him the after-work space they’ve been giving for nearly two years—which isn’t much space at all. The toddlers usually follow him into the bathroom and smash their faces against the glass shower door until he is done. But today, I don’t let them.

“Daddy needs some peace and quiet for a few minutes, okay guys?” 

When more than a few minutes pass, I go check on him. He’s sitting on the edge of our bed, eyes fixed on the wall in front of him. “I need a break, Babe,” he tells me. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.” 

We talk for a few minutes about the panic that rises up in his mind every morning he walks into the hospital, the way his hands shake, how he can hear the constant beeping of machines and alarms for low oxygen in his sleep, about the woman who sat with her husband all day waiting for him to pass, only to have it happen when she left for one hour to eat a meal. 

“She came back into the room and just fell on the floor screaming,” he tells me, “It was the most intense grief I have ever seen.” 

I don’t know what to say back to my husband. No one does. He fights a war every day that, while we all know about it, none of us see like him. He is, quite literally, the last line of defense. A human being can only clean up carnage for so long before the trauma and pain takes their legs out from under them.

Harper, our oldest, walks into the room, and right away picks up on the sadness hovering inside. “Are you okay, Daddy?” she asks him so gently, so childlike. 

There are a few seconds of silence before he takes a deep breath, perhaps thinking of how much to say to our 9-year-old daughter, who already knows the answer to the question she’s asking. Based on that alone, he decides the truth is best. “I’m not okay today, Harper. But I love you.” 

Her observations are confirmed. And that’s all she needs to know. 

Alex and I talk for a few more minutes and decide he ought to go stay the night at my parents’ house. He is exhausted in every way, from his head to his toes and every emotion held between them; he has nothing left to give. And as much as the kids are a joy to him, they are work, too. He will not be able to rest when the toddlers cry to be held, or our son relentlessly begs him to jump on the trampoline, or the baby wakes up one or two times in the middle of the night. At my parents’, he can sleep as long as he needs, watch SportsCenter, or simply let his mind sit in silence. He packs a bag, kisses all of us on the forehead, and heads to his car as soon as we finish dinner. We watch the door close behind him. 

“Okay team,” I turn to the six kids still at the dinner table, “it’s just us for the night, anyone want to watch a movie? I’ll even make popcorn!” A few cheers fill the space my husband just left. 

I know they all saw him, I know they felt the absence of his joy, and they all are in the process of making sense of his despair in their own way. The baby and toddlers don’t seem to notice anything more than a missing playmate, but the oldest three are already making a category for their dad that they haven’t had to before, one where he’s not smiling at them, not playing with them, not able to be there with them. 

We make the best of the few hours until bedtime, eating popcorn and watching the new Paw Patrol movie, trying not to dwell on the person we are all missing, or the reason he’s not there—which isn’t work or a night out with the guys, but brokenness. I get the three littles to sleep in their rooms, and when I come back to the living room, Harper and Jordi ask to have a sleepover with me. I happily say yes. I would have asked them if they hadn’t asked first because their company is exactly what I need tonight. 

The kids get busy transferring all of the blankets, pillows, and beloved stuffies from their room to mine, and I somehow find the motivation to clean the kitchen before I go join them.

“How long will Daddy be gone?” Jordi asks me when I come in the bedroom.

“A night, Jo, maybe two. He just needs to rest, Bud. His job is very hard right now, and he’s very tired.”

“And he’s sad.” Jordi says matter-of-factly.

“He is.” I say back. Jordi holds his lips together, looks down at the floor, and nods. 

We read Anne of Green Gables together for a few minutes, which lulls Jordi to sleep next to me. 

“Harper?” I ask down toward the ground next to the bed where she’s lying. “Are you still awake?” 

“I’m just resting my eyes, Mom.” 

I smile. That’s her go-to line when she wants to stay awake but can’t. “Okay, I’ll stop here so you can really rest your eyes. Goodnight. I love you.” When I get up to turn off the small lamp on our bedside table, my eyes land on the card Harper had set there earlier, the one she slipped away to her bedroom to make the moment her dad told her he wasn’t okay. In her very best cursive, she wrote: I love you mom. Remember I will always be your girl. You are the best mom I could ask for. Alex found a similar card in his backpack later that night, too.

It’s amazing to me that at 6 and 9 years old, my kids know something about grief that I don’t remember ever teaching them. 

They know it’s okay to ask questions: “How long will Dad be gone?”

They know to name what they see: “He’s sad.”  

And they know when there is pain around us, sometimes the most beautiful thing we can offer is the assurance of who we are to others: “I will always be your girl.”