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The three of us were doing burpees. It wasn’t pretty, but there we were: three sisters, jumping around in our makeshift dens turned gyms at the height of the pandemic. Every morning, we’d tune in to our favorite YouTube instructors, get on Facetime, and squat it out. Like many sisters, we had our ups and downs, our rivalries and resentments. Over the decades, we circled each other, vied for attention, gossiped about each other. We also sent birthday presents and celebrated holidays. We got under each other’s skins one minute and made each other pee our pants laughing the next. We drew close when our dad was dying, put aside petty grievances and made difficult decisions together. And again when our mom died. I always thought that is what counted most: That in the worst of times, we would count on each other. Only the worst was yet to come.
In June 2019, my teenage niece and nephew, Ruby and Hart Campbell, were killed by a drunk driver going 90 miles an hour near the desert town of Joshua Tree, 133 miles east of Los Angeles. They were with their parents, tagging along on a home inspection for what they hoped would be a vacation house in one of their favorite places on earth. Ruby and Hart loved to scramble up the massive boulders in Joshua Tree State Park, and my sister Gail and brother-in-law Colin loved the surreal vistas and glorious calm away from their hectic lives in Los Angeles. All those dreams ended in minutes. Ruby died on impact, Hart a short while later.
After the week of shiva passed, Gail and Colin asked my older sister and me to stay with them in Los Angeles. Their bodies were badly bruised from the accident. Gail had shards of glass in her tongue. They were traumatized, uncertain how they could get through an hour let alone a day. Their synagogue had already set up a food chain. People couldn’t sign up fast enough. Their rabbi had breakfast with them once a week after the morning prayers. The community at large, their friends and coworkers, friends of my niece and nephew, were there for them. Hundreds attended the funeral. Condolence notes poured in, books about grief arrived, grief groups were suggested, therapists made themselves available. Ruby had obsessive-compulsive disorder, and her brilliant doctor helped all of us manage the repetitive thinking: What if they hadn’t found a house, what if the inspection had been on a different day, what if the drunk driver had taken a different route—or better yet, what if someone had stopped her from getting behind the wheel? For me, the what-ifs clustered around getting the middle-of-the-night call. Rationally, I know that not answering the phone wouldn’t have changed anything, but nothing was rational about that moment.
The first person I called after I heard the news was my older sister. Nina, more than Gail and me, had followed most closely in our mother’s footsteps—marrying and having kids, giving up her career to raise them. We considered her bossy, even a control freak at times. I was the classic middle: troubled, attention-seeking, thoughtless. And Gail, 10 years our junior, was the beloved, golden-haired baby. Nowhere were Nina’s qualities more needed than in those hours following the phone call. Nina figured out the fastest way for us to get to LA when I could barely speak or pack a suitcase. She is the sister you want in your foxhole.
After the funeral, we took turns staying with Gail and Colin in their basement apartment, amid all the photos of the kids, listening to them wail in the night. We folded laundry, shopped for groceries, cooked meals. We used to take walks around the Silver Lake reservoir, cooking up screenplay ideas and complaining about our jobs, friends, and weight. Only now, we’d fixate on things that upset us. Namely when people said things like the kids were “in a better place.” A few people mentioned psychics who could channel Ruby and Hart from the beyond. It was during one of those walks that I coined the phrase “Hate du jour” for all the people who said the wrong thing or who kept their distance.
Rationally, my sisters and I understood that people sometimes said or did things that triggered us because they were struck by the magnitude of our loss—not just that of Hart and Ruby, but of our mother, who had died two months before the crash. More than a few people said it was a blessing that she had died and didn’t have to live through the tragic loss of her grandchildren. But they had no idea how much we needed her, how much Gail especially needed her, and what many people didn’t know was that she, too, had lost a child, a two-year-old girl named Barbara who had died of pneumonia. She knew something about survival.
The last time we had all been together was when my mother was dying. I can still see Ruby and Hart anxiously entering her room. Ruby knelt by her bed, while Hart kept a distance; it was scary seeing his beloved grandmother, always impeccably put together, now with her hair matted, her skin mottled, her breathing uneven, her voice hoarse. She patted the bed and Hart perched at first, then lay in bed next to his grandma. At the funeral, Ruby spoke of all the wonderful times they had together. These kids were deeply connected to their grandmother; her generosity and interest in their lives was legend. When Ruby announced that she was gay at our Passover seder, my mother was the first to respond: “So what!”
Seven months after the kids were killed, Covid curtailed our traveling to LA. Nina and I reported back to each other after every call we had with Gail. We’d fill each other in: How did she sound, what did she say, who had done something nice. If she didn’t pick up our calls for more than a day, we would panic. Sometimes Gail texted and said she was too exhausted to talk. We’d phone each other then, too, and worry together. “I want eyes on her,” Nina said. “We need eyes on her.” That’s when I thought of it. Gail had been having an understandably hard time getting out of bed. She said she sometimes spent hours doom scrolling. The term took on a gallows humor without the humor. She complained about not getting enough exercise, and then again: Who cared about exercise when your kids were dead? I suggested we work out together over Facetime. Over the next weeks and months throughout the pandemic, the three of us grunted, squatted, and lifted together. After our workouts, we’d banter about all the usual things: our sore muscles, our plans for the day, who had earned the “Hate du jour” tag and why.
When the vaccinations rolled out and we no longer had to quarantine, our morning workout sessions gave way to all the usual demands of work and life. But our bond had been cemented over those months of jumping jacks and modified burpees in a way that was different than before. No matter our petty grievances and rivalries that sometimes threatened or overshadowed our connection, our different parenting styles and life choices, we were there for each other every morning. Three sisters, siloed in New Haven, Boston, and LA, pulled together and found a way forward. Most of all, we had eyes on her, our baby sister.
I wish I could say that five years later our grief has dissipated, that time has healed. I wish I could tell you that we never again gossiped, complained, or undercut each other. I wish I could say that nothing we ever did again pissed the other off. Most of all, I wish I could tell you that five years later Ruby graduated from college and Hart, a budding actor, was starring in his high school senior play. What I can tell you, all I can tell you, is that we were there.
Betsy Lerner is the author of Shred Sisters, out today.
