Decisions

There may come a time in your life when you are faced with some really tough decisions.  Decisions that you never really thought you would have to think about.  You are suddenly faced with decisions like what to do with your husband’s remains.  And you have to make phone calls to find out if you are even authorized to make this decision because you have been separated for a year and were nearly divorced.  And you are really, really sad and traumatized and angry right now and don’t quite have your wits about you, but nonetheless you have to make this decision.

Making this unthinkable decision becomes even more difficult when you have your in-laws trying to take this decision away from you and they are making phone calls to authorities behind your back because they want to take his body and do religious things to it and bury him the way their religion says you should.  And you understand that they are grieving and in shock too, but you know he hated their religion and that he would not want this.  And even though you hate him at this point, and the last thing you want to be doing right now is thinking about what he would want, still, you must.  And you have your children to think about as well, and of course you want what is best for them in this very, very horrible situation.  So you stand up to your in-laws and you do what needs to be done and make arrangements to have him cremated and his ashes buried in the cemetery next to where you buried your babies.

And this is not the only difficult decision you must make.  You must also decide what kind of service to have but you don’t think there is even an inkling of a chance that you could possibly survive sitting through a service listening to people talk about him.  And you know that Family would want to turn a service into a religious event, but he hated their religion, remember?  So you decide there will be no service but instead an open house at the funeral home where you and his family will receive people who want to express their condolences.

And then you must decide what his obituary will say.  And this is very, very hard indeed.  Because right now you cannot think of one single god-damned good thing to say about the man who made the choice to leave your three children fatherless.  So you keep it short and simple and luckily you can take up space by including his middle name and the date of his death.  And that will just have to do because you don’t have much more to say.

And you must also decide what you want him dressed in when your children will see him for the last time.  And it is terribly heartbreaking to even fathom the thought of taking them to do this.  But they want to see him again, one last time.  So you pick out his favorite flannel shirt and some jeans, because even though it is not what the mortician recommends, you know it would not seem right to your children for him to be wearing a suit.  And you let your children wear whatever the hell they want because you want them to be as comfortable as they can be when they say goodbye to their father.  And when you see that they have come downstairs ready to go in their T-shirts and sweat pants, you go put on your sweatpants, too.  Because you know that his family and your family will be dressed in their Sunday’s Finest, and you don’t want them to feel out of place in their sT-shirts and sweatpants, because all you really want is for them to be as comfortable as they can when they say goodbye to their father.