Roger had loved his grandmother and she had loved him. 

​

After her death in 2016, there was a big hole in his life, and in mine. I was aching with loss.

 

At home, Rachel and Josh left to drive back to Philly and Roger and Lara went to bed early. The next day, Randy and I sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee. We were patiently waiting for Roger and Lara to come down and have breakfast with the family. Morning coffee and the reading of the New York Times was a family tradition that everyone in our family enjoyed.

 

But as the morning dragged on with no sign of Roger or Lara, I got anxious and confused. Roger was always a good sleeper. Since the beds in my mom’s house were simply terrible, perhaps Roger slept badly while at her house on Cape Cod. Down there in the musty darkness of the basement, the air quality was poor. At our bright, big house in Rhode Island, he had a real bed, in a room with windows, room-darkening curtains and a private bathroom. Of course, he was taking advantage of it.

 

But when midafternoon arrived and he still had not emerged from the bedroom, I began to worry. We were supposed to drive them back to Logan airport to catch their plane to Portland. Minute by minute, I became more and more anxious. They were going to miss the plane if we didn’t get going. Randy was annoyed because he wanted to feed Roger a Sunday family breakfast as he had always done when his children were small. Bacon and eggs and toast, plus hash browns, and perhaps some sliced strawberries. Big breakfast was a Hobbs family tradition.

 

My husband Randy was tense with anxiety. “Did Roger have to leave that day? Could he perhaps reschedule his flight?”

 

These were questions I could not possibly answer.

​

When he finally came downstairs with his small backpack suitcase, Roger was grumpy, disheveled, and out of sorts. He did not seem to have showered. He refused a cup of coffee. Randy gave his goodbyes to Roger and Lara on the front porch; he had decided not to drive to the airport with us.

 

The young couple went out to the car and sat in the back seat together. So, there I was, playing the chauffeur, with the passenger seat empty and my passengers in the back seat. It felt so weird. What was happening here? 

Roger had become accustomed to being the famous young author, it seems. Certainly, he was more comfortable sitting in the back seat. After all, he was regularly ferried about in black sedans to literary events and readings and meetings with publishers and movie producers and agents.

 

No amount of small talk was going to cut the silence in that car. How did he sleep? No answer. I cast a look back in the rearview mirror. “Of course, all of New England would vote for Hillary,” I explained, “but how tight would the presidential election be in his state of Oregon?” No response.

 

It seems as if Roger was choosing not to interact with me. Every one of my questions imploded, each one drowned in silence or with Roger dripping out dribbles of words with morose, monosyllabic answers. During the long drive, girlfriend Lara was nearly as silent and did little to compensate.

​

It was a lonely drive. Eventually, I embraced the silence, as nerve-wracking and exhausting as it was. My mind rolled over and over the unknowable questions. Was he mad at Lara? Were they fighting? Was Roger mad at me? My guilt rose up and I could feel it suffuse through my whole being.

Yes, that was it. Roger was mad at me.

​

It’s the only thing that made sense. It’s the story I always told myself to explain Roger’s behavior. The funeral weekend had proved what I deep down knew to be true: I was both a bad daughter and a bad mother. My feelings of inadequacy welled up. Roger hated me and could barely stand to be in a room with me. That was it.

 

As I drove in grieving silence with my adult son and his girlfriend in the back of the car, I pieced together the narrative from the fragments of my bruised and broken feelings: Roger was refusing to participate in family life was a way of snubbing me. After all, I had put my own needs and ambition ahead of my children’s needs on numerous occasions.

 

Really, since the beginning. I started reviewing all the subtle jabs I’d received from my family members for my selfish ways, and my eyebrows knitted together as the memories flooded in.

​

From the very beginning, I had juggled home and career, and often I put my career first. At the funeral, I thought, Roger simply could not pretend anymore to love me when he clearly did not. He was unsettled by the funeral, and everything was unraveling. That was it. The matriarch had now passed, and the cracks in the family tree were starting to show. No one was really acting normal – including me -- during these strange days of grieving.

​

Yes, I had plenty of experience in giving my parents the silent treatment. I remember how I created as much distance as possible between me and my mom to evade her control. To protect my feelings from her critique. Sullenness was a state I had mastered myself during my own adolescence, when I used silence to indicate my disapproval of my parents’ many rules and restrictions. Now I was feeling the power of it from the other side.

​

As I drove in silence, with Roger and Lara in the back seat, I found myself looking back at him in the rear-view mirror as I drove, thinking, “You can’t push me away with silence. I’m just going to love you no matter what.”

 

I was determined to get him to the airport, to finally be a good mom in an impossible situation. Racing by the Boston Sunday drivers, I miraculously arrived at Logan Airport just about an hour and fifteen minutes before departure, enough time for Roger and Lara to get on the plane. I remember feeling both relieved and terrified that they were leaving. At Terminal B, I watched them unload their bags and I gave Roger a big hug.

“I love you, Roger. I will always love you,” I said. “I am so proud of you.”

​

The hug was a long and meaningful one. Roger hugged me close. We connected. His blue sparkly eyes were shining, sparkling, shimmering with light.

 

Finally, at the end of the long hug, he said, “I love you, Mom.”

​

As they headed into the terminal, I got back in the car and sat in the car, crying. He was the light of my life. Of course, he loved me. How could I possibly think otherwise? He was my only son, and with my daughter, these two children were my greatest accomplishment.

​

That was the last moment I would ever see my son alive.