An Uncomplicated Life Read Online Free

took Jillian’s hand in mine. I turned it over, palm upward. Horizontal lines ran the breadth of her tiny palm. I looked at my own palm. Different lines. At moments like that, fear assumes its own visceral presence. It becomes part of you. Eyes, ears, mouth. Heart, lungs, blood. Fear.
    I go home for a second time to pick up Kelly and bring him to the hospital and introduce him to his little sister.
    By mid-morning, Kerry’s parents arrive at the hospital from their home in Pittsburgh. She tells them. Sid Phillips, her father, says nothing. He sits down, mulling it. We wonder if he knows what Down syndrome is. Kerry’s mother, Jean, covers her in a hug. Both cry silently. “Don’t cry, Mom,” Kerry said. “I don’t want Kelly to think there’s anything wrong with his sister.”
    Kelly sits in a chair, holding a stuffed bear meant for Jillian. He is three years old. “You have a cool little sister” is what I tell him.
    I call my parents in Florida for the second time that day. On that first day, heartbreak runs in a continuous loop.
    “I need you to sit down,” I tell my stepmother. I break the news.
    “I’ll have to call you back,” she says. Later she will tell me she spent that afternoon meditating and had a vision of Jesus, holding Jillian in His arms and telling her everything wouldbe fine. But for now, my stepmother has to get off the phone and cry.
    My dad gets on. “Who does she look like?” he asks. The most beautiful and personal moments of a lifetime can die in a hospital room. It was all he could think to ask.
    “Dad, she doesn’t look like anyone.”
    And so it went. Kerry’s parents left after a while. They took Kelly back to our house. I took a shower in the hospital room. I needed something to be washed away. I wasn’t sure what it was. Guilt, maybe. Regret. Sadness. Surely, sadness. The water felt like tears from a faucet.
    The negotiation with God was a failure. I was still here. Jillian still had Down syndrome. Figuring I had nothing to lose at this point, I hurled invectives like fastballs at the Almighty. A just God would not have allowed this. So screw Him.
    At 8:00 p.m., ABC sports broadcaster Al Michaels was in the television booth at Candlestick Park, setting up the first pitch of the first game of the 1989 World Series. Then the earth shook all around him. Michaels nearly fell from his stool. The earthquake would delay the Series an entire week. People died. Journalists would work by candlelight. They would feel their way, wondering if the earth was done quaking. A friend covering the Series told me it felt as if the Bay Area—disconnected, broken, devastated—was the last, worst place on earth.
    “You have no idea,” he said.
    “Yes,” I replied. “I do.”
    It was 2:00 a.m. when Kerry’s crying woke me up. The heartbreak in that small space in time seemed irreversible. There was nothing to do but cry. Kerry hadn’t cried all day. Every time she wanted to, some counselor would come in. She didn’t wantto upset Sid, Jean and Kelly, either, but they were back at our house now.
    “I don’t know what we’re going to do, Paul,” Kerry says.
    I knew what we were going to do. But only for that moment. I didn’t know it then, but I would learn: When you have a child with a disability, all that matters is now. What can you do this minute, this hour, this day? The circle is as tight and dense as a fist. Yesterday is meaningless, tomorrow is overwhelming. Now is the only thing you can do something about.
    With one hand, I rub my wife’s red and swollen face and push the hair from her eyes. With the other, I take her arm.
    “Come on,” I say.
    I pull her up slowly. Grief weighs. Kerry had spent nine months adding weight. Some 24 hours earlier, she’d shed it, gloriously. Now, she feels leaden and a little less alive. With both hands, I help her from the bed.
    “Let’s go.”
    At 2:00 a.m. a hospital ward comes with its own contradictions. Quiet and too quiet. Hopeful and