Burying Somebody

Truly a brutal day, just the start of a brutal three days. I went to work today and of course, my heart wasn't in it. This afternoon I got my beautiful, wonderful kids off the bus and we hung out and did homework together. At six, I loaded them in the car and drove them 25 miles to the home of friends and dropped them off, then drove five miles back to the funeral home to the wake of my wife's cousin. He was the only boy and had four little sisters. They were, of course, distraught, and the pain was palpable. A steady parade of family and well wishers lasted more than two hours. I didn't have the heart to tell them that burying their beloved brother tomorrow is going to be worse.

I shepherded my wife to the car and we drove back to our friends' house to collect our kids, who feigned sleep as my wife and I decompressed with a bevvy or three. Margy is one of my wife's closest friends and my wife's pain spilled out. Racked with sobs, she sat at their breakfast table and tried to make sense of a senseless act. I didn't have the heart to tell her that tomorrow is going to be worse.

Later today (Thursday), we will be celebrating a mass in Keith's honor, a service in a religion that may condemn him for taking his own life. After that, we will mournfully follow his body to a plot of earth where he will be buried, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This is when shit really gets bad.

How do I know this? Just over eleven years ago I said goodbye to my brother. We had him cremated, held a memorial service for him at his place of employment, and took his ashes to California a month later. We held a party in his honor with friends and family and then, the next morning, spread his ashes on a beach along the Pacific Coast. Spreading his ashes was the goodbye, the burial. It was the worst day of my life.

That's what they will be facing today.

It's particularly poignant for me. While Keith wasn't my cousin, I did know him. I didn't know him well, but my kids played with his kids. He was a father, like me, he was a son, like me, he was a brother, like me. And his sisters, like me, will have to say goodbye to someone they loved.

Then, they go home. Without the possibility of ever seeing him again, alone with their thoughts. No more wakes, no more funerals, no more celebrations. Just the rest of their lives without their loved one. That's what happens after the funeral. It's over.

Except for those special occasions when you get to remember the departed. Like the anniversary of their death, or their birthday. And you all get together again and rip open the scabs and let the pain bleed out of you again. Or, you just rip open your own scabs and let the pain bleed out of you all alone and revel in the melancholy, wondering what if.

Later today, I will watch my wife's family go through this and I will remember doing the same thing for my brother. Later today I will be clenched in my own pain at watching them go through what I have gone through. Later today, I will have flashbacks to that walk on the beach, spreading my brother's ashes, and I will cry inside. I will cry inside because I know what they are going through. I will not cry because I know it is their pain, and not mine. But, I will know that pain, because I have felt it, because I feel it. Later today I will stand by my wife and tell her it will get better, even though I know that it won't. Later today I will help bury their beloved brother, son, and cousin.

And then, tomorrow, alone, I will celebrate my brother's 51st birthday without him.