Something Good for Someone Else: a Firefly Story

After her mother’s death, 11-year-old Victoria was asking the very same questions that were plaguing me. And with my failure to provide satisfactory answers, Victoria could only cry, summoning tears, and anguish from a place deep in her soul. Huge, racking sobs that only relented long enough for an instinctively stuttered gulp of air.

This would go on every night, her body convulsing, arms beating an imaginary demon on her tear-soaked pillow. Yet I had no words of comfort for the person who mattered most. After almost two months of these nightly crying jags, I was emotionally exhausted.

As a last desperate hope, I visited my friend, Dr. Steve Marans, a psychoanalyst PhD at the Yale Child Study Center. I sat in Steve’s office, expectantly awaiting some professional words of wisdom. Surely his hard-won PhD had taught him something. Having an endowed chair Yale must certify that brilliance comes off his tongue almost inadvertently.

Steve thought for a moment, and I could tell from the brightening in his eyes that he would deliver guidance that would fix this problem and release my evening dread. “Victoria loves you,” he began. “She trusts you. Have you told her to stop crying and go to sleep?”

“What? Tell her to stop crying and go to sleep? Steve, you gotta be kidding me. You don’t think I told her to stop crying? I’ve asked her, ordered her, stayed with her and left her in the room alone. I’ve threatened punishment and threatened kisses. Nothing works.”

It took all my self-control to not suggest that perhaps his PhD should be abandoned along with his endowed chair. I had never been in therapy and had no idea what kind of helpful advice was delivered after the client’s costly monologue. But it had to be better than “tell her to stop.”

My friend saw my skepticism and smiled. “Stephen,” he said. “I’ve seen Victoria. She loves and trusts you. Let her cry for a few minutes. Then put your hand on her arm and say, ‘Okay, that is enough for tonight. We can talk about this in the morning.’ Try that.”

Great. Sure. That’s going to work. I weakly tried to hide my disappointment, but it was clear that the expert had failed me. Tell her to stop. What kind of sage advice was that?

I was upset at everything as I left his office. I cursed Apollo and Helios, the Greek gods of the sun. How could they allow such a beauteous day in the middle of my doom? Shouldn’t there be clouds that mirrored my mood?

My last hope had just dissolved before my eyes. As evening approached, I grew increasingly anxious.

After a dinner of chicken stir-fry, a reading from the world of Narnia, and a reprise of a Shakespearean sonnet, now, in the quiet of night, Victoria began her zealous pilgrimage to her mother. Finding no quiet in those thoughts, she began to cry. I knew what lay ahead.

As usual, I tucked in Victoria, gave her three quick kisses on the forehead, three on her cheeks, three on her nose, and chin, a long hug – our nightly ritual – and said, “Good night, sweetheart, I love you.”

“I love you too, Dad. But… I… miss… MOMMY!” And the tears started to flow.

“I know, sweetheart, I miss her too. She is looking down on us and has her hand guiding us. She loves us too and will always be in our hearts.”

“I know, but I want her here so I can talk to her!” she replied, voice shaky.

“But you can still talk to her, whenever you want.”

“But she is not here, and she can’t answer,” was the unassailable reply.

I slumped on the bed, my shoulders sinking, circling towards each other as my chin tapped my breastbone. My lips parted just enough to emit an almost silent, defeated sigh. I was not surprised as Victoria started to tremble, her body reacting to a fever of love and loss. Her bottom lip started to quiver, tears streaming from her closed eyelids. I gripped my knees, knowing three hours of crying lay ahead.

I squeezed Victoria by the shoulders, holding her firmly, and told her that I would be there for her.

“But you are not Mommy!”

I changed topics. “Honey, I look forward to your Elm City Girls’ Choir concert in a few weeks.”

“But Mommy won’t get to hear us sing.”

I asked her if she wanted me to continue reading the stories of Narnia. “No. I want

Mommy!”

I began to panic. Exhausted and desperate, I rocked my daughter in my arms, gently put her down in bed, kissing her forehead. I touched her arm and then used the only tactic I had left.

“Okay, sweetheart,” I said. “That is enough for tonight. We can talk about this in the morning.” I cupped her cheek in the palm of my hand, wiping away the tears. “It’s all right, sweetheart. I love you.”

“Okay, Dad. I love you too!” Victoria levitated up, threw her arms around my neck, hugged tightly, and fell back to the bed, ready for rest.

I was in shock. I sat there, motionless, fearful that the slightest movement would crack the calm. I listened to the questions in my head. Am I imagining this? Is she going to sleep? What miracle just happened? I didn’t know what to do. Should I get while the getting was good? Or should I stay until Victoria lapsed into the heavy breathing that signified deep sleep? I sat at the edge of her bed for a few minutes as her breathing steadied and her body calmed. She grabbed a handful of her curly hair with her right hand and stretched it so that she could place her palm between her cheek and pillow. She slowly closed her eyes.

I was petrified that the sound of my pounding heart would damage this delicate equilibrium. I stood up slowly and, like a cat burglar in some old cartoon, crept forward, lifting each leg high in the air as I made my way to the door. Every creaking floorboard, none of which I had ever noticed before, sounded like an explosion that might shatter the silence. As I reached the door, I turned to look. Victoria was fast asleep.

After weeks of our repeated bedtime scene, the logic of the Marans mantra came back to haunt me. One evening, after I delivered my usual closing line, Victoria replied, “Dad, you say that every night, but we never talk about it in the morning.” She was right. Delighting in the supernatural force of Steve’s spell, I had never stopped to ponder the promise it contained, never considered that perhaps the promise itself was what quieted her tears.

“You’re right, sweetheart,” I sheepishly said. “Tomorrow I’ll wake you up a half hour early and we can talk about it.”

“No, I want to talk about it now,” Victoria protested.

“But you need to go to sleep now.”

“Dad, I’ve been thinking about this,” she said in a steady voice, interrupting my internal monologue of existential dred. “I know what we need to do. We need to find a way to turn Mommy’s death into something good for someone else.”

I stared back at her. Had I just heard my 11-year-old daughter correctly? We need to find a way to turn Mommy’s death into something good for someone else. I let the words find their home in my brain, in my heart, in my soul.

And all at once, I recognized a happy truth. Victoria, in her darkest moment, found the meaning of our existence. That in life, you take your good fortune and pass it on to others, and you take your bad fortune and turn it into something good for someone else. That even in your most desperate moments, you find ways to share love. I thought to myself, “That is God.”

There in the dark, the distance of our 33 years disappeared. I was no longer her father, teaching and guiding her, the voice of knowledge and wisdom. We were simply two souls trying to find our way to the light. And she was leading us there.

I took her hand. “I’ve been thinking about this,” she continued. “We should give our money away to people who need it.”

“But we need it,” I countered.

“Not as much as others. You always say that when we feel sorry for ourselves we should find others who are in worse shape and help them.”

“But Victoria, we have to eat, to pay our bills,” I said, somehow feeling that an injection of parental reality was necessary. We fell into silence. “Well, perhaps we can give away part of our savings,” I said. “We can read about charities that we think do good things and give them a donation.”

“That would be good, Dad I love you,” she said. And with that, Victoria hugged me hard, kissed me on the cheek and dropped down into her bed as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. “You’re crying,” she said softly as she wiped my tears from her lips. “It’s all right, Dad. We can talk about it in the morning.”

Victoria pointed us to the path of acceptance and healing. Memories of Kathleen no longer had to be relegated to our closet of pain, loss, sadness, and anger. Now we had an outward focus for our inner turmoil. And we had a mission: to turn Kathleen’s death into something good for someone else.