I said my goodbyes. The ashes of my mother, father and brother were buried side by side this week. Not one of the three of them wanted any of this. I stood on wet grass with my jaw clenched trying to hold it together. A man said words. A few people sang some hymns over canned music. I guess I was supposed to pray for something. It all just blurred. The man in the collar asked for memories but how do you pick anything out of a lifetime? Most of what we remember is wrong anyway. Colored by years and distance and retellings to the point they probably never even happened...at least not the way we recall them. Is that better or worse?
But each of them are now nothing but memories. Some good, a few bad. Isn't that what everyone is in the end? Fading light and failing recollections. A generation or two and it's all gone except the stone.
I wanted desperately to be alone with them for a last little while. I tried to take a couple minutes as everyone was leaving to put my hand on each box for the final time...trying to know what to feel. Remembering. Wondering if I could ever grieve enough. Even that got cut short.
There was lunch afterward but I couldn't do it. I've been away so long. So much water under the bridge. I wondered if Dad would have pushed through it like he always did at big gatherings. Doug would have laughed. Mom would have understood I think. Why do we do this to ourselves?
Far wiser people than I have written volumes about grief and loss. Quotes by famous people are abundant. There's a lot of platitudes and Kalil Gibran/Hallmark nonsense. Religion tells tales of life everlasting. Thoughts and prayers. None of it makes sense and I can't add anything deep or meaningful to the collection. All I know is that each of us gets through it in our own way.
There are things we are supposed to say and ways we are supposed to act when we lose people. Painful formality and rituals. "It's for the living", is the cliche'. Maybe, but if that's so, it's a travesty of anything remotely comforting. Dress up in your best black and bring a dish to pass. Say the words and wonder when it's your turn. I guess that's just how it is.
I wonder sometimes when a song comes on or a picture pops up or a random reminder comes to mind...will it ever get better? If getting easier means I remember them less, is that how it's supposed to work? When the stone is all that's left and all the memories are gone, what then? I know this isn't very original thinking. I don't care. It's my thinking right now.
And I miss them. I miss them. As an uncountable number have before me, I miss the ones who've gone. I'm dancing around the holes they left in the world. The hammer will fall one of these days and I'll collapse for a while I imagine. Every tear I gritted my teeth to hold onto at that awful cemetery will come loose. I'll figure out how to grieve. Then maybe...just maybe...it'll be ok.
Mom. Dad. Doug. It'll be ok.
