Standing in front of the mirror I can see what a mess I am. I haven’t showered in days. Dark rings encircle my eyes. The sparse facial hair I have has grown in patches. If I cared enough to notice, I probably would have noticed the stench of body odor.

My parents are worried. Since I dropped off Eleanor, they’ve called once or twice a day. Once, usually in the morning, so that Eleanor and I could talk. Then another time, usually at night when Eleanor’s asleep, where they’d phrase carefully guarded questions to better understand how I was doing. My answers were typically as guarded to make sure they felt that I was okay.

Today was the first day they didn’t call. When I hear a knock on the door, I expect that it is them stopping by to check in on me.

But when I open the door, it’s the parish priest, Father Matthias, standing on the doorstep.

“Hi,” I say. I’m sure it sounds more like a question since he’s the last person I expected to see. But he’s also the first human being I have talked to face-to-face in over a week and I feel awkward and out of practice.

“Hello,” Father Matthias says. “I hope you don’t mind that I am stopping by unannounced.”

“Oh no, it’s fine,” I lied. I can feel my stress levels increasing; a tightness in the back of my head.

“Your parents—” of course it was my parents, “—reached out to me. They’ve been worried. Frankly, I’ve been a bit worried about you since the funeral. I hadn’t seen you at mass since then. You or Eleanor.”

“Yeah,” I say, drawing out the syllables. “It’s been a tough few weeks.”

“Do you mind if I come in?” he asks.

I hold the door open to him in response and he steps inside.

I follow closely behind him, turning on a couple of lights, picking up discarded delivery boxes off the sofa and coffee table, carrying them into the kitchen and placing them on top of the dirty dishes piled high on top of the counter.

“Do you want something to drink?” I ask.

“No. Thank you though,” Father Matthias responds.

I find the cleanest dirty cup on the counter and fill it up for myself with water from the tap.

When I return to the living room, he’s still standing, observing, taking in the wanton destruction of my apparent distress.

“Please, sit,” I say, gesturing to the couch. He smiles, nods a thank you, and sits.

A long silence stretches between us before he turns to me and asks, “How are you doing?”

“It’s been a tough few weeks,” I repeat.

He smiles gently. “That doesn’t answer my question, though. How are you doing?”

There’s something genuine about the way that Father Matthias asks the question, the way he leans in and holds my gaze. It doesn’t feel like he’s there to say a prayer to make himself feel better about performing his priestly duty for a parishioner, but because he cares about me.

“Do you want my honest answer or the answer I’ve been giving everyone since Veronica died?” I ask.

“If you want to share your honest answer,” Father Matthias responds, “I’d rather hear that.”

I pause. Taking a moment to form the words.

“I feel broken,” I start. “I feel like my mind especially is broken. I keep seeing and experiencing things and there’s no explanation that truly makes sense of those things. But something deep within feels broken as well. I don’t know what to call it. My heart? A soul perhaps? I can’t seem to function as a parent anymore without Veronica. Everything I try to do for Eleanor is wrong and I feel like I’ll just hurt her or cause her more trauma.”

I’m quiet.

Father Matthias is quiet too. He breathes in deeply and exhales a thoughtful “Hmmmm” before speaking. “Thank you for sharing,” he says slowly. “I appreciate that you felt willing to be open with me and share those feelings. At the funeral when you spoke, I could sense that there was a lot of confusion and anger regarding Veronica’s death, does that sound accurate?”

I nod.

He continued, “You said something along the lines of—and forgive me if I phrase this inaccurately—’If God is a good God, why does cancer exist?’ Does that sound right?”

Again, I nod.

“Suffering and why we suffer is an important, but tough question. I come across examples of suffering almost daily and when I encounter suffering amongst our parish and parishioners, this question comes up a lot: how can God be good or just or all-powerful, when there is so much evil and suffering in the world? So much suffering that God appears to do nothing about. How can God be Love and sustain what He has created when there is so much suffering?”

He pauses, so I interject with, “My parents used to say that our suffering is caused by our sins. We sin, so God punishes us with all the things we suffer from.”

“But there’s the irony,” Father Matthias says, smiling. “There’s a story where one of the disciples asked Jesus how often he should forgive his brother and Jesus tells him that he should forgive him ‘seventy-times-seven.’ The point of that number, at least the way I was taught in theology class, was that it was meant to represent an infinite number. So, if we are to forgive an infinite amount of times, shouldn’t God also? So what would be the point of causing us to suffer?”

“Then what is the point?” I ask.

“If we are created in God’s image, and if we, as creations of God, suffer, then God must also be suffering. The central image of our church, behind the altar, is of a crucified God. And I believe that he walks alongside his crucified people. He doesn’t observe our suffering from a distance, but is within our suffering; suffering alongside us. And that brings us into solidarity with suffering on a universal level. It joins all of our suffering as one, so we are never alone in it. But that’s where we have to separate out what is truly in God’s control and what is in ours. While God knows and understands suffering and suffers alongside of us, we can’t truly lay pain at God’s feet and ask, ‘Why does this exist?’ Why can’t you stop suffering?

“Most of what we suffer comes from man not living in harmony with Nature. That lack of harmony is Chaos; the heart of suffering. God didn’t create your wife’s cancer. Nature did not create your wife’s cancer. Man did. It was in their rebellion against Nature that created it. Unknown to them, in their discovery and pursuit of knowledge and the sciences, that as they were seeking control over Nature, what they were truly seeking to gain control over was God. And in that, Chaos was born; a cancer upon the world. Only by seeking a closer harmony with Nature, can we truly have life and be free of suffering.”

“Why haven’t you ever shared this at Mass?” I ask.

“Because,” Father Matthias responds, “people aren’t really looking for this answer. A part of them is attached to their suffering and they wouldn’t accept such a simple answer to a complex problem. Telling ourselves that we were given dominance over Nature was the biggest lie of religion. Adam named the animals not because he held dominance over them, but because he knew and understood them in a way where he could speak into existence what they were.”

It was too much. For weeks, months, since the beginning of Veronica’s sickness, I had built up an anger within me. I had stoked the fire and I couldn’t justify the existence of that burning inferno within me any longer. It was doused. Still hot. Still smoldering. Still there. But no longer roaring.

I’m quiet for a moment, wrestling with the torrent of emotions gripping my chest.

While I couldn’t blame God for her suffering, I still had blame for myself. Veronica was alone when she died. I left her alone in her suffering; amplifying it in her final moments.

“She died alone,” I whisper.

“She didn’t die alone,” Father Mattias says, laying a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“No,” I say. “She did. She did. I left the room and she was gone. I didn’t tell her goodbye. I didn’t tell her that I loved her.” I wipe a few errant tears off my cheeks.

“Veronica knew you loved her.”

“Did she? Sure. Maybe. But not then. Not at that moment.”

“She knew. She knew.” Father Matthias pats me on the shoulder as he says this before removing his hand and resting it in his lap. “Love is a funny thing. There’s teenagers in our youth group that are going through this cycle of being in and out of love with each other. ‘So-and-so is in love with so-and-so,’ I hear almost daily in the rumor mill. Love as an emotion can live and die in and outside of any moment. But Love as a force, as an ideal, as the manifestation of God in the universe, doesn’t die. It lives and is felt in every moment. That is what I believe you held for Veronica. Not the emotion, but the force. And that is felt and was felt by her no matter where you were when she died. She knew you loved her. She felt it all around her.”

I sit, letting his words sink in, feeling the tears course down my face, watching them drip from my jawline and pitter-patter onto my pants leaving a dark impression of their passing.

I sigh, wiping my eyes again and sit up. “Well, that was fun.”

Father Matthias laughs, “Was it?”

“No,” I shake my head, “not really.”

“Grief takes time. It doesn’t always go through clear, established stages. You need to be patient with yourself. Give yourself some grace. You’ll get through it. You and Eleanor both.”

Father Matthias stands, wiping the back of his black dress pants as he does, a few crumbs of food falling back down onto the couch cushions. He opens his mouth to make his farewells, but pauses. Reaching down to the coffee table, he picks up a scrap of paper, a drawing of the shadowy figure with the softball bat on it.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I replied.

“No,” he says. “At least not in the traditional, Hollywood sense of ghosts. I do think people can experience something that is akin to ghosts, but is more than likely a memory or if supernatural, a blessed vision of an angel or saint that is living in the presence of God. Why?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Never mind. It’s nothing,” I gesture to the drawing. “Just a doodle.”

“It’s cool,” Father Matthias says. “Makes me think of that baseball movie when they are all out in that field and all the ball players start to appear. Now that’s a good ghost story.”

We say our goodbyes and Father Matthias leaves, saying as his parting words, that he’ll pray for me.

I don’t say it, but they’re needed, because I don’t know what the fuck I am going to do.

Leaning against the door, I let myself slide down to the floor.

The image of Veronica dying alone in her bed surrounds me. She wasn’t alone, Father Matthias had shared. But she was, at least in the sense that I wasn’t there physically.

What I had done to her was unforgivable. And I knew that I would eventually do the same to Eleanor.

Something feels broken inside me, as if a distant earthquake was pushing a tidal wave towards me, looming over me, almost to the point of crashing down and destroying everything. Pulling my knees to my chest, I close my eyes, letting my thoughts drift.

We are in Veronica’s apartment.

All is quiet.

She reaches out to me as I’m rushing around, trying to get out the door for an appointment. My focus is on the tasks, not on her. Veronica grabs my hand as I walk past, grabbing my jacket. She pulls me into an embrace, wrapping her arms around my back and shoulder, but I don’t have time. I need to leave, so I inhale, my chest pushing forward as it inflates, ending the embrace as I walk out the door.

We are sitting in our house having dinner.

Eleanor, not even a year old, sits between us in a high chair.

I had gotten home from work later than usual. I was tired and hungry, and as soon as I walked in the door, I started to judge Veronica’s organizational and planning skills as dinner preparations still hadn't started. Veronica tried to explain that Eleanor was off her typical napping schedule, but I saw so many different paths the day could have taken for Veronica that would have led to having an on-time dinner that I just took over the entire process: hastily peeling and chopping vegetables, laying them out in a stone baker and placing it in the oven as I started to cook chicken thighs on the stove. In the background Veronica paced, bouncing Eleanor on her hip, asking if she could help, but I dismissed her saying that I had everything under control.

As we sat at the table eating dinner, all was quiet except for the occasional squeals and intense mashing of food coming from Eleanor. This wasn’t unusual behavior for me and my assholery typically would continue for the rest of the night.

“All I want is for you to say you’re sorry,” Veronica says quietly.

“For what,” I responded immediately. I don’t even pause for a moment to consider my actions or attitude.

“For the way you talked to me or aren’t talking to me,” Veronica says.

“I don’t mind helping with dinner,” I start with. “But if you had given me a head’s up, I would have been in the right mental space to dive in and help out. Or I would have tried coming home earlier so that we could have had dinner at a normal time. If we don’t eat at our normal time, Eleanor’s bedtime routine is pushed back. We have to clean-up dinner, then bath, then teeth brushing, and book reading. There’s only so much time and when we push things back, she always is a little bit more difficult to put to sleep and she never sleeps in, so for every minute of lost sleep, we’re putting her and us at risk for having a crappy day tomorrow. And the later she goes to bed, the less time we have for ourselves.”

“I understand,” she says, “but it’s not about what you said, but the way you said it.”

“I’m sorry that you misinterpreted what I said,” I responded.

“It’s not really an apology if you’re not admitting fault.”

“I don’t feel like I need to apologize. I came home with the expectation that I could sit, eat and relax. There was no head’s up that I’d be entering into this chaotic mess. My day in the office was chaotic enough.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I failed your expectations in playing the part of a 1950’s housewife,” Veronica says, her voice raising.

Eleanor senses the growing tension and starts to cry. Veronica gets up from the table to pull her out of her highchair, with a “Hey, hey, hey. Everything’s alright.”

I can’t stand it.

I shove the rest of the food on my plate into my mouth. “I’m going out.”

“Where are you going?” Veronica asks.

“Out. I just need some time to wind down. I’ll clean up the mess when I get home.”

She calls my cell as I’m driving and I reject it, sending it to voicemail. If she wants to know where I am, she can use the phone location app that she always forgets she has.

Pulling into a hole-in-the-wall comic book shop, I go in. Escapism is key. I hadn’t bought any comics in a long time. What was disposable income is now going to disposable diapers. I’d still stop by, looking at the covers on the shelf, appreciating the art while remaining confused about the current story arcs. Occasionally I’d buy trades, but only for stories that began and ended within in. There were so many crossover events that it was easy to accidentally pick up a trade that was only one part of a story and before you knew it, you had an irritated wife wondering why you had overspent your allocated monthly budget ... again.

Flipping through a trade, I’m tapped on the shoulder.

“Do you work here?”

“No,” I say, turning back to the trade I’m flipping through. I realize I was too short and not very helpful so I look back up, but she’s already walking away. I watch her walk down the aisle, appreciating her short edgy haircut. She was attractive. At least from behind.

My mind wandered, building a fantastical relationship with Comic Book Girl. What was she like? Would she understand me better than Veronica? Would she accept my various psychosis? Would she apply emotional words and phrases when it wasn’t intended?

It wasn’t the first time I had let my mind wander. There was a girl at the coffee shop with a bird tattoo on her wrist, a female coworker I’d work long hours with, and a woman running ahead of me on the trail that managed to keep at a pace I couldn’t overtake.

But then I start feeling guilty. Why was I thinking such thoughts? Why did I think that Veronica didn’t understand me or accept my psychosis? Why did I lack empathy? Was it because, at the heart of it all, I was a borderline sociopath?

It was a lack of control.

It was a lack of trying.

It was a lack of trying to control what I had allowed to unravel.

Sometimes I wondered what was wrong with me.

Driving home that night, while crossing a bridge, I look in the rearview mirror and see a semi merge into the right lane, pushing a black family sedan against the guardrail. The car looks like it’s being squeezed like a bar of soap until it pops out, flipping, the trunk popping open and suitcases and clothes tumbling through the air.

What am I doing?

Why am I driving in the middle of the night?

Why am I not with my family?

Love is hard. No one had ever told me that. Love had always seemed to be the easiest human emotion to convey, because it naturally happens. But love on an emotional level was fleeting.

When things were new and fresh, the fabric of our relationship was a tight weave. There were moments in time when love was everything. A force, as Father Matthias described it, radiating from Veronica every moment of every day, but after a while it was only a spark in me on most occasions. I had forgotten what it meant to get lost within the idea of love. To fully let go and to just let it wash over me.

I couldn’t keep holding on to this idea of Veronica. I had to let her go so I could fully embrace what it means to be a father and to love a child. Even though Eleanor was without a mother, I had to provide her with that sense of whatever it is that mothers give their children.

Fishing my phone out of my pocket, I call my parents and ask them to bring Eleanor back home.

Then I begin to cry. The weight that had been present for so long began to shift and I feel a brief moment of euphoria before I choke and gasp and sputter, beginning to shake and sob as I let Veronica go.

My head is in my hands; my hands resting on my knees as I catch my breath, watching the tears mark the wood flooring beneath me. A warm, gentle hand touches my shoulder. Looking up, it’s Veronica. Her face is curious and full of empathy and life.

“Are you a ghost?” she asks.