‘Do You Know Who Died?’

Katherine Streeter

Heavy boots woke me. They struck the floor upstairs like mallets on a wooden gong. They paced the room above, paused, then paced back again.

My basement bedroom was dark, except for the glow of the clock. It was 4 a.m.

Someone was calling my name. It was a man, or two men. “Celia,” they called again in loud, unfamiliar voices.

Panic struck. Something was very wrong. At first, I thought: Mom. My mother is 93 and has moderate dementia. Her bedroom is on the ground floor, near the front door; mine is below. Mom is dead, I thought. But how would anybody know?

Maybe she was ill and had called an ambulance.

Finally awake, I hit the lights, threw the covers off and ran up the stairs into the living room, pajamas flapping. Two state troopers, big stolid men, stood by the sofa. Their wide hat brims tipped upward as I opened the door.

“Celia?” said one.

From behind them, out of the shadow, stepped Mom. Mom was not ill, not injured. She must have let the officers into the house.

She had her coat on. She likes to put her coat on when she is anxious or confused. That way, she is ready for anything.

Then the troopers asked us both to sit down, and I knew it would be terrible.

Mom was not ready for this. Her beloved grandson Spencer, her pride, her delight, had taken his own life in his fraternity room at Penn State. He was 21 years old. He was my firstborn son.

She could not take it in. Not simply because of the dementia. She was perfectly capable of understanding other things about Spencer. When I told her, “Spencer’s going on a trip to Texas to meet his cousins,” she’d asked if he would see her sister-in-law, Marilyn. When I told her, after Christmas break, that Spencer had gone back to college, she had nodded and asked, “And goes to Penn State?”

But this journey was incomprehensible to her.

And I needed her to understand.

The troopers stood at the end of the couch, side by side.

Mom asked again: What happened? What happened?

There was a police detective from State College on the phone. He wanted to talk to me. He wanted to tell me what had happened. I told the troopers: Not yet. I couldn’t hear it yet. “You talk to him,” I said.

Is there someone you can call? The troopers were asking me. Is there a relative? Someone who can come over? Is there a relative we can call for you?

I couldn’t think of anyone. I couldn’t think. My only remaining relative was sitting in the armchair, a look of wonder on her face. “Did someone die?”

“Spencer is dead,” I shouted at her. “Spencer is dead.”

The troopers moved uneasily. “Don’t leave yet,” I said.

“We won’t leave you alone,” said a trooper. “We”ll stay until you have someone here with you.”

“She’s not alone!” said my mother. “I am here with her.”

It was 5 a.m. One trooper made us tea in the kitchen while the other stood at the end of the couch. When I finally spoke to the police detective from State College, when I hurled the receiver to the floor, one trooper stood at the end of the couch while the other went out onto the front porch to get a breath of air. Mom sat motionless.

Then everything, except Mom, began to change. My old friend Daria came over. She also takes care of her mother with dementia, and we are close. The troopers helped me get in touch with my younger son, Taylor, who was at his nearby college.

Mom sat mute in the chair as Daria held me.

Daylight began to brood on the deck, creeping up into the windows. Taylor arrived from school with two friends. The troopers disappeared. My sister-in-law, Lyndsey, arrived from Boston with a suitcase.

Mom recognized Lyndsey, whom she has known for 21 years. As she clung to Lyndsey, she whispered, “What happened?”

All that day and all the next, and the next, friends came, bringing their grief and love. Cooking food, running errands, helping with Mom. But Mom never liked having a lot of people coming and going, even before she developed dementia. She was sitting in the armchair, smiling politely, biting her lower lip, her usually sharp eyes glazed. I was getting scared for her.

“Mom,” I asked her quietly, “are you O.K.?”

“I’m O.K.,” she said, nodding.

“Any pains?”

“No pains.”

“Do you know what is going on?” I asked.

Her eyes tilted toward mine. “Maybe it’s better if I don’t,” she said.

After that, I told my friends not to talk about Spencer in front of her. The next day, when Mom asked my friend Elizabeth what was happening, Elizabeth told her gently, “Well, something upsetting happened, but it’s going to be all right.”

“No,” my mother said to Elizabeth, “it’s never going to be all right again.”

It was yet another morning. I woke in darkness, wandered upstairs for coffee. I had taken to leaving a light on in the living room. The house was very quiet; it was only 4 a.m. Lyndsey was still asleep. Later, more people would come. Blackness pressed in on the sliding glass doors. Bright and shiny, they reflected the long white couch, the lamp, the empty armchair.

As was her habit, Mom rose as soon as she heard me in the kitchen.

I made coffee for us both. We didn’t speak. We never speak much. After a while, pale light outside began to make the windows transparent.

“Is someone here?” asked Mom.

I nodded. “Lyndsey is here. She’s sleeping.”

Mom bowed her head.

“Mom,” I asked, “do you know what’s going on?”

She looked up at me slowly. Her blue eyes were pale and tired. “Somebody died.”

I nodded, my eyes filling, and she lowered her head again.

“Do you know who died?”

She looked up at me again. “Spencer,” she said. This time, there were tears in her eyes.

I knelt beside her chair and she put her arms around me. We put our heads together, and wept.

The author’s son, Spencer Watson Seupel, took his life on Feb. 17, 2012.