Don’t Tell Me How to Grieve This
The
infant casket was basically a Styrofoam cooler. The sort that you might pack some cans of
soda pop in with a layer of bagged ice.
I’m not entirely sure why that is the only thought that pops in my mind
during the funeral service but that’s what it was. They charged a bit for it too, bastards, as
though they’d deserved that much. He
was cold the last time I’d held him, in the hospital, we hadn’t been there ten
minutes before the doctor on duty at the ER had pronounced him. He had asked me if I wanted to hold him one
last time. I felt the body responding
to nothing, the fingers clasping for nothing, not for my finger or the way they
clung at my breast at three ‘o’ clock in the morning. I cradled him in my arms, and lightly swung
him back and forth as though he were sleeping, but he was cold. “He’s starting to turn blue,” I tell the
doctor, but I didn’t cry. It was like
handing over a block of ice, I was disconnected. The infant cooler housed the cold body of my
son, but that wasn’t possible, because my son was cooing and kicking at
home. It was okay that it was Styrofoam,
it reminded me of an impromptu family picnic.
My
husband clutched onto my hand, and squeezed.
I turned toward him with no feelings of crying, not even at the sight of
his teared face blotched red and rough from hours of crying. He seemed to study my face a moment and
sucked up a glob of snot that I had eyed coming out of his nostrils. He wiped at his eyes, and turned his
attention away from me and listened to the words of the lord being read off by
the preacher. “Too soon, too soon, too
soon.” Those were the words I remembered
as though that was unique to this situation, “God needed another angel, he will
join with that holy choir,” I audibly scoff as though I’m at a stand-up comedy
night and just heard the lamest joke possible.
I want to tell everyone, “He was only four months old, he wasn’t going
to be a part of any choir.” I felt like
no one would get that.
After
the service the people gather around in various states of snorts and hiccups,
blubbering like babies and hugging me too long as though that was going to help
me let loose. My son was in a beer
cooler being prepared to be lowered into the earth in just a couple of
hours. They thought they had a better
grasp on the situation because they were blubbering and hugging. I see my oldest son sitting near his father
and he’s got his head buried in that man’s side. That man spilling tears over his nice polo
shirt, looking like he’d just spilled grease on it like so many other family
outings. My sister Gracie prepared the
food, little dinner rolls with slices of deli ham and Colby cheese lined out
like a potluck. I don’t see why we
should have bothered to feed everyone, it wasn’t their baby that died. Why should we be supplying the food just
because my son’s funeral inconvenienced their day. My youngest son is clinging to the side of my
black dress, and I almost forgot he was there except that I almost knocked him
over when I turned to go outside to the car.
He isn’t crying either, it’s his birthday in a couple days, guess we
will try to remember to celebrate it. I
take his hand and lead him outside where I sit in the car and avoid the people
who want to make me feel what they think I should feel.
When
all the people have left I send my kids off with my mother-in-law. I don’t want to but people keep telling me
it might be good for my husband and I to get out of town for a couple days, and
I don’t want to go back to the house. It’s
still as though he’s there, and I hadn’t slept a wink since I found him silent
in the crib. Still, as my youngest and
my oldest drive off in my mother-in-laws car I can’t help feeling a twinge of
guilt. They should be with people who
are going to laugh and make them smile, not the walking dead.
We
get into our station wagon and I feel I should drive because he’s not going to
be able to in the state he’s in. Looking
like he doused himself with boiling batter his cheeks so red and swollen. The roads are a little slick that day, and
it seems only fitting that I hit a patch of ice not even a mile from our
house. The car spins around, and I brace
myself against the door and then the front end collides down into a ditch. There’s a moment of silence, and I wonder if
I’m alive or dead, I figured it wouldn’t matter. We look at each other, he and I, and then we
burst out laughing. “What next God! Keep the hits coming!” My face is beat red with guttural bursts of
laughter, and then I sigh and then I cry.
I cry harder than I ever have, I cry for the moment I knew he was gone,
for the moment the ambulance turned on its lights courteously, and when the
doctor handed me a corpse, and I cry that I didn’t hold him longer. I cry at that fucking beer cooler buried in
the ground a half a mile from our front door.
I cry because my life is never going to be whole again.
No comments:
Post a Comment