Awake (Passing Away)

"I'm sorry, Michael..."

I nodded slightly, the same automatic nod I'd been giving all day. I'd found my way out into the alcove, away from the stifling crowd and the overwhelming scent of flowers. The chair I settled into was hard-backed, kind of old fashioned like the funeral home itself. I guessed that they'd been taking care of bodies since last century. I wondered how they kept the family tradition going - how they kept the kids growing up and wanting to artfully arrange the corpses to look less dead. Maybe there was a lot of money in it. They'd certainly charged enough for everything.... my father's meager savings was nearly gone.

"Michael? Michael, I know that sounds insincere. Everyone says that, right?"

I glanced up at Jenny. She was wearing a soft brown dress, as out of place among the funerary atmosphere as the burgundy shirt I'd put on at the last minute this morning because these past few days I've grown damn tired of everything being black. Together we were like some autumn birds, hovering on the edge of life, trying not to fall the rest of the way over. I was very thankful for her brown dress, and her soft hand on my shoulder as she sat down on the alcove's other aging chair.

"I guess they don't know what else to say," I muttered, reaching for the pamphlet the funeral director had given me earlier to have something to do with my hands. It was about dealing with the loss of a parent, with a touchy-feely-Hallmark cover photo of a father and son and everything. How it was supposed to make me feel better, I didn't grasp. Unless maybe I could use it to swat people who said stupid things, like 'He looks good - they did a nice job.'

Jenny glanced at the pamphlet, then up at me. "Is that helpful?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said, shrugging a shoulder. "I haven't read it yet."

Jenny took it from my hands, and opened it up. The back cover facing me had the funeral home's name and address stamped on the back, just in case you forgot where you'd stored your stiff or if someone else died and you needed to use their services again.

"Helping Yourself Heal When A Parent Dies by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D," Jenny read in her soft, calm voice.

"Oh, this has got to be good- he's got a doctorate, after all." I snapped, harsher than I'd intended. I was immediately sorry that I'd said it - but Jenny didn't pay that any mind. She just kept on reading.

"Your mother or father has died. Whether you had a good, bad or indifferent relationship with the parent who died, your feelings for him or her were probably quite strong. At bottom, most of us love our parents deeply. And they love us with the most unconditional love that imperfect human beings can summon..."

Unconditional love my ass. My father'd loved me conditionally - as long as I was toeing the line and being the boy he thought I should be. As long as I didn't remind him of my mother, or why she'd left. He loved me like Saran Wrap - thin, transparent, and suffocating. And then in the end, that son-of-a-bitch died, and left me alone....

I curled up my hands, digging my nails into my palms. I didn't want to hear what this booklet was saying.

"You are now faced with the difficult, but necessary, need to mourn the loss of this significant person in your life. Mourning is the open expression of your thoughts and feelings about the death. It is an essential part of healing..."

He wasn't significant! He didn't mean anything to me, nothing more than I meant to him. I'd seen him lying there hooked up to all those damn tubes, day after day struggling to hang on and for what? So he could just give up and die all alone? I'd been there almost every moment of the past couple of weeks, holding his hand, trying to understand... and for what? He'd told me to go home, get some sleep. I obeyed. I did what he told me to, damnit. I was a good son. I left him to die alone.

Why didn't he want me there?

I felt the uncomfortable pressure in my eyes, but I didn't want to cry in front of Jenny so I blinked it back - maybe I looked like I was about to have a seizure, but at least I was a man.

"Your grief is unique. No one grieves in exactly the same way. Your particular experience will be influenced by the type of relationship you had with your parent, the circumstances surrounding the death, your emotional support system and your cultural and religious background."

The hospital called me the next morning, at nine am - he'd 'passed away', they'd explained, during the night. What kind of euphemism is 'passing away', anyhow? He'd been shriveling towards death for months, his body husking by degrees. Sometimes I'd turn around and look back at him, and it seemed that he was even closer, just by those few seconds. There was no passing. There was progression.

They wanted me to go identify the body and make arrangements for it to be taken away to a funeral home. I could have gotten things ready ahead of time- I should have, there'd been all the signs and the prognosis was nothing but fatal. Still I hadn't made the calls, hadn't arranged the arrangements. And I didn't go right to the hospital. He wasn't going anywhere, after all. I drove to the park where we'd seen a baseball game once - minor league, but still a good show. I'd been about sixteen years old, and it was a weekend where he was sober enough to want to do something. We'd gone and sat in the bleachers, and talked about how neither one of us had ever been good at sports... and how we didn't really even watch them, or understand the rules of baseball. It was good, still, to be out there in the fresh air and sunshine eating semi-stale pretzels in the stands and watching hardware-sponsored teams run the bases. I sat in the bleachers, alone in the off season, until the sun went down.


Jenny was still reading, quietly. "The parent-child bond is perhaps the most fundamental of all human ties. When your mother or father dies, that bond is torn. In response to this loss you may feel a multitude of strong emotions. Numbness, confusion, fear, guilt, relief and anger are just a few of the feelings you may have. Sometimes these emotions will follow each other within a short period of time. Or they may occur simultaneously."

I was beginning to really dislike that pamphlet. Smug PHD bastard. I looked over at the text that followed, all arranged neatly into subsections. "You can skip right on down to there," I said , tapping my finger over the Relief section. "Or maybe Anger, hell, I don't know..."

"I can stop reading if you want," Jenny offered, lowering the pamphlet.

"Nah, it's okay.. I mean... it's helping, sure." At least the sound of her voice was- it was something to focus on other than the drone of people I could hear from the parlor.

Ignoring my suggested reading places, she went straight on to Guilt. "If your relationship with your parent was rocky, distant or ambivalent, you may feel guilty when that parent dies. You may wish you had said things you wanted to say but never did—or you may wish you could unsay hurtful things. "

Ambivalent. That was the perfect word for it. There'd never been a more ambivalent situation than my relationship with Arthur Malone. We'd hurt each other far more than either one of us ever intended...

I did some more of the spastic blinking, and got up from my chair. "I'll be back," I whispered to Jenny, touching her hand to let her know I was grateful for her being here with me.

"I'll be here," she assured me. She set the pamphlet down, and watched me as I turned to go.

Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I waded out into the sea of black clothes and sympathetic faces. I shook hands when hands were offered, I nodded and thanked my father's co-workers and our distant relatives when they told me how sorry they were. Finally, I arrived at my destination. The Autumn Oak casket with the Drexel Crepe interior was a wise choice, the funeral director had assured me. Affordable, stylish, and comfortable. My father certainly looked comfy in there- hands folded, eyes closed, hair neatly combed. He was wearing the suit he'd worn to my graduation - I'd picked it out of his closet myself, but I'd forgotten that fact until now. He did in fact, look good. In life, his brow had been creased with worry, and his lips had been curled back in bitterness. In fact, I think he looked better than he ever had.

"I'm sorry, Dad..." I whispered, leaning in to kiss his forehead. The skin was cool and smooth, almost entirely unlike flesh. Like kissing a manikin. This was only the body of the man I'd ambivalently loved and hated all my life. His spirit was gone. I didn't want to wait until I died to 'look good'. I didn't want to have death be my only peace. I didn't want to pass away.

The tears came flooding forward. I sobbed, heaved, stumbled. Jules and Mac stepped out of the crowd quickly to catch my arms.

"We've got you, buddy..." Mac said. "Don't worry, we've got you..."

 (part of a series - you can see the complete list of Michael-stories posted so far and learn more about the characters  here  )