Pam can’t move. She sits, wrapped in her mother’s arms. Her voice is weak. “The kids.”

“They are alright. Alex knows. Sophie is asleep.” Catherine Beesly says. She wishes there was something that could comfort her daughter. When her own husband had died it was after a long battle with cancer. His death was a welcome end to the long battle. It was expected and planned. Jim’s death had been all too sudden. Pam looked as if she no longer had the will to live.

“I have to tell them,” Pam can’t imagine doing this. How do you tell kids that their father won’t ever read them a story again, won’t laugh at their jokes, won’t be around to teach them to play sports, to go camping, to do anything that fathers normally do. Pam wipes away the last stray tear that found its way down her cheek. She used every ounce of strength she had to stand up, but felt her knees nearly buckle as she walked out the door. Pam wanted to see Jim. One look from him gave her the courage to do anything. It was he who convinced her to go further with her art. He who was with her at her first showing. He who told her that she would be a great art teacher. Now he was gone. She could not imagine walking down the hall without some help. But now, her constant companion was gone.

Catherine saw the weakness in her daughter’s eyes. She longed to help, but felt helpless. Pam was strong; she had proven that in the past. She remembered the steely look in her eyes when she was canceling the wedding plans with Roy. Yet, with Jim, everything became easy. It wasn’t that Pam lost her strength; it was that it wasn’t needed. They worked together so well. Catherine hoped that her daughter could remember how to be strong, and get through this… yet had the feeling that a love and a loss like this, one could never really get through. You survive it, sure. But reaching the other side merely means you are at the other side, not that you are better for it.

Catherine follows Pam, giving her support as she walks to the children.

Alex immediately notices his mother and grandmother. It was then that the thought fully forms in his head. “He died,” he says, barely audible. He was the first person he knew to have a dead parent. He knew it happened, sure. People died all the time. They were always talking about it on the news. It had always seemed so removed though. Those weren’t real people. Parents lived forever. Even when his grandfather died (he was only 4, it was a faint memory in the back of his head), he didn’t connect the funeral and the words with the actual meaning behind them. He remembered his mom crying, but smiling through the tears. There was no smile this time. His mom looked sick.

“Hey boy,” Pam says, rustling through his hair. He looked so much like Jim; Pam’s heart was breaking at the mere sight.

“Pumpkin,” Pam says, shaking Sophie’s shoulder. “Pumpkin, we need to talk, okay?”

Sophie slowly wakes up, a bit confused at where she was. “Can we see daddy now?”

That sweet little voice asking for her father breaks Pam. A tear runs down her face. Pam takes a deep breath, shuddering as she does. “Sophie, Alex. Your daddy was in an accident. He was really hurt, and…” Pam cannot bring herself to say the words, she tries, but, her mouth hangs open, and no sound comes out.

“And he died,” Alex finishes quietly.

Pam quietly nods. Alex brings his knees up, and buries his face in them. Sophie, however, doesn’t understand. “What does dat mean? Can I see him?”

Pam pulls Sophie into her lap. “Sweetie, you remember the Lion King?” Sophie had just watched the movie for the first time last weekend. Pam had gotten the soundtrack stuck in her head, and had spent the next few days singing Hakuna Matata. Sophie nods. “Well, remember when Mufasa saved Simba, but then he died?” Sophie again nods, not really connecting it yet. “Well, your daddy got hurt, just like Mufasa did. He got hurt really badly. He had boo boos all over. And the doctors couldn’t fix him.”

“Like humpty dumpty?” Sophie asks, trying to piece this all together in her head.

“Well, yes. Like humpty dumpty. And so, he… he died just like Mufasa. So, you will always remember him as your daddy, he just won’t be able to play. But, just like Mufasa, he will always be watching out for you.”

Sophie is quiet for a while. It is because of this conversation that for the next few years, whenever she thinks of her father, she will get a jumble of images included lions and eggs in her head.

Pam reaches over to Alex in the next seat. Rubbing his back, she repeats, “Its okay, Alex. It’s all going to be okay.”

“Mom?” Alex asks looking up at Pam with tears streaked down his little cheeks. “I wanna see him.” His voice has such resolve that even Pam is surprised.

“Okay,” Pam can’t say no. She hadn’t even thought about seeing Jim. She didn’t know if she wanted to, but Alex wanted to, and she was going to give him that. He was just ten, but she could not deny him that. Pam hands the still quiet (and by now, slightly dozing) Sophie off to her mother, and walks back to the reception desk.

She can’t help the emotions that overcome her as she walks closer, remembering how just a few hours ago, she raced in, panicked. It seemed so long ago. And it was. Maybe not in physical hours, but in emotional ones. It was a lifetime ago, a time that she could never return to.

The worker had changed. Pam was slightly grateful. It was a new face, one that wouldn’t remember the emotional mess. Pam takes a deep breath, and finds a resolve in her that she didn’t know she had. She remembers the story she just told her daughter, and smiled for the first time. She thought of Jim, looking down on her, giving his strength to her. “I would like to know how to see my husband.”