Follow-through

So you make all off the difficult decisions, but unfortunately now you have to see them through.  It is time for the open house where people want to express their condolences.  And of course you have to be there because it is you and your children they are coming to see.  You know your children want to be there but you also know they are not necessarily equipped to deal with what will be coming through those doors at any moment.  Because who would be?  So you strategically place them on a couch behind you, flanked by their cousins who act as very good distractors throughout the two-hour window.  They have their pretty mourning clothes on now, and so do you.  Ready to receive condolences.

And then the doors open and they start coming and it seems that they will never stop.  The line stretches down the hallway and around the corner, and you never do see the end of it.  Your children are sitting behind you and your dear friends stand behind you, like body guards, waiting for the onslaught of condolences.  You don’t have your shit together, not even in the slightest.  You are a blubbering mess and you are grateful for those friends and acquaintance who blubber with you.  And you are grateful for their kind words, for them telling you how sorry they are, and for the heartfelt hugs, because you have learned that it is much better to cry with somebody than to cry alone.  But every time you look up after one hug, you again see the line that extends into nowhere. 

Mixed up in the line of people you know and love are the people, the many, many people who were his patients.  And you don’t know any of them from Adam.  And they want to hug you and shake your hand and tell you what a good person he was.  And you smile and nod your head, but all you can think about is how much you hate him.  And for every person that tells you what a great person he was, you think to yourself, “Really?  Is this what great people do?”  You think you might suffocate on their words.  They are heavy and hurtful and cut you to the core.  You are so extremely grateful to your friends who smuggled in a water bottle full of vodka.  You take a swig and you think to yourself that if you have to nod and smile while one more stranger tells you what a great man your dead husband was you really might toss your cookies all over them.  And the line never ends.  They just keep coming.

As if this isn’t enough, on top of all the people you don’t even know, and the line that stretches out the door, there is the photo-video set to music that your mother-in-law put together that plays loudly on the TV at the other end of the room.  It plays pictures of you and him and your children and all of those moments in life that in a normal situation you would want to memorialize.  And it plays over and over again, so many times that it makes you dizzy.  And you try not to watch it because it is making you dizzy, but you happen to be facing it and cannot turn away.

Your friends keep trying to get you to sit down.  And even though they don’t come right out and say it, you are pretty sure that you must look like shit.  They bring a chair over and tell you to sit.  But you do not want to sit.  You want to get through this line, so this moment of your life can be over.  And then there is the woman who approaches, in tears.  You do not know her, but she is in tears and she gives you a hug.  She tells you, amidst her blubbering, that your husband saved her life.  That he caught her oral cancer before it was too late, and that because of him she went to the doctor and got the appropriate treatment and she is alive.  And she is very broken up about your husband’s death.  You feel sorry for her, that her hero is dead. 

Finally the two hours are up.  And your friend notices that you must go.  Now.  So she links her arm in yours and she pulls you through the crowds, without a word, past all of the people and into the parking lot.  Her husband pulls up the car.  But you don’t get in.  Not yet.  You finally break down and the blubbering turns into full-fledged sorrow.  And she holds you and lets you tell her how much you hate him.  She just holds you.  Without a word.  And after some time has passed you look up and notice a staff member from the mortuary watching you out of a side window.  You regard this with passing interest and wonder to yourself if someone in her line of work ever gets used to seeing people so very, very sad.