*Unvarnished grief, real-talk, inappropriate and uncomfortable subject matter. But I need to let it out, and somewhere, someone might just need to read it. To know: you’re not alone.
~
I needa shower.
Feel gross.
…Eleven hour car rides (one way) through snow and ice storms to get to Oregon, turn around the next day, and do it all over again, in the single most depressing field trip of all time.
Because death isn’t funny.
…Except when it is ironic, or unreal.
…Which it nearly always is…
…Once upon a time, my shrink said, “the second you can laugh at or make fun of a thing, is the second you win control of it.”
…But really, I’ve been far too pissed off to make fun of death lately. With or without irony. I know it isn’t supposed to be the “funny, ha, ha” kind of laugh…it’s the dark and twisted side. Obviously. Like where Tim Burton lives. Like if Tim Burton were a Funeral Director, instead of just a movie one.
…It sort of makes sense, because death is something we all deal with and will all have to face, and fearing and raging and crying about it doesn’t lessen any of those facts.
For me, it’s the awesome moments of “slap-stings” occurring…as if from no where, instant microseconds of time which wallop you so fucking hard and fast that you have forgotten how to breathe and when you come-to again, can’t understand how you are even still standing up and not in a clump on the floor.
…Cuz you FEEL like you’re a clump on the floor.
…In fact, a clump on the floor, sounds like a soothing place to be.
…But you’re not.
…Instead, you’re in another city. In another state. In a funeral home. Waiting for the Director (a youngish, clean-cut guy in a suit, not at all resembling Tim Burton) to get the paperwork to sign.
…And the sheer weight of morbidity for you to be standing here in this place, just about manages to send you into an anxiety attack.
…But you don’t let it.
…You push back.
…From the middle of the room…by the chairs you’ve just been asked to sit in.
Giant, overstuffed leather.
In front: a giant round table, with a giant box of kleenex, masked in a faux giant stack of books. You don’t sit (of course), because that would require motor skills and the confidence in your ability to stand back up again. Instead, you just stand there…trying not to become enclosed in the shrines of death all around…the walls of boxes and urns, the pillowed caskets, plaques and stone mock ups, and to the left, apparently: “pet haven”…where you can have all of the same in miniature version, or have Sparky turned into a pendant made of his own pressed ash.
…And that is when this shit just gets totally unreal. Like beyond ridiculous.
…And somewhere you must realize it’s prob’ly not reasonable to be so pissed off at the fact that there is a “pet” section at the funeral home you are here to claim a family member from. “Pets” are people too (or so they say.) But at that second, it becomes sorta the turning point of, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?! THEY HAVE A PET DEATH SECTION, LIKE JUST OUT HERE, RIGHT IN YOUR FACE?! AS IF LOSING A GODDAMN DOG BELONGS IN EVEN REMOTELY THE SAME REAL ESTATE OF FLOOR SPACE, AS LOSING AN ACTUAL HUMAN BEING?! I HATE ALL YOUR FUCKING DOGS! AND CATS! FUCK YOUR FUCKING BIRDS AND GERBILS TOO!! FUCK ‘EM ALL!!!”
…Is what you are thinking.
Really, really loudly.
To yourself.
…But you must confess, it does help a little. Having something tangible to become angry at. Because up till then it was all about trying not to look at and note the weirdness of various makes and models of open caskets with pillows, resting on the floor…like they were inviting you to take them for a test drive or something…and the wall of urns and boxes and cylinders and mini “keepsake” vials…that hold the remains of what “remains” when we are, you know…not alive anymore…but for some reason, people want to keep you around anyway.
…Creeped out, more by the second…thrown back instantly to every Holocaust film and research flashback…and bad horror film you’ve ever heard with your eyes shut… you were, in the end, semi-saved by a rage-fest at the “pet haven” section.
Which lasted exactly as long as it takes for a guy to walk from his office, back again, with a manila full of documents to sign.
…Then it all comes crashing back to real-times again. And that hurting-to-breathe thing. And stinging eyeballs. And you try to hold your shit together, just a little while longer, so as to NOT lose it in front of this stranger (who I’m sure is totally used to it by now)…”just three minutes more,” you think, “And it’ll all be over.”
But then it all comes to this silent, silent moment where time and space and life completely freezes. It’s like being out in the country after a new snow. The silence is SO silent, and pure, that all you can hear is your own breath…and your own heartbeat. You can actually feel it’s thump so hard that you can hear it. Pure, pure, silence of: STOP.
You’ve been handed a box.
It is heavy. Heavier than you would suppose, had you ever thought of the weight, which you never have, until now. In your hands. Maybe a million what-others-might-consider-morbid-thoughts, cram your head full, but you don’t think of them as morbid. They are wonders. They are private. I don’t even know if they are articulate enough to convey. But the single biggest two, you know:
“It’s wrong that I can pick him up, now.”
And…
“I need to get the hell out of here, before I blow.”
…So, you do.
…Get the hell out of there.
…And because you don’t know what else to do…because you don’t know the “protocol” for transporting your uncle’s remains in a car ride, a full state away…you do the only thing that comes to mind.
You put him, very carefully, on the back seat, with a seat belt securing him in.
…And you get into the car…
…And you ball your fucking eyeballs out.
…Until you really can’t see or breathe anymore.
…And you squeeze your Mom’s hand.
…And then…because life has to go on…you turn out on the road. And drive home.
There are all kinds of grieving, and ways that people come to terms and deal with the things they must. For me, it’s been a lot of anger, this time ’round. Anger of “too soon,” and “simple causes that can’t be reasoned with” and “what about his son?” and much, much more. Too pissed off to cry as much as I probably should. But there are no rules, no “how-tos,” no right and wrong ways when it comes to grief…I don’t give a shit how many books you read or shrinks you go to. Everyone sees and feels and deals with the after-effects differently. Everyone needs their space to do so. Everyone needs to come, in their own time, in their own way, to that silent-snowfall moment…where it finally sinks in, and the enormity of the loss is so loud, it renders the entire world deaf with it.
I am thankful for a belief that all he is doesn’t rest in a box that I can hold in my hands.
I am thankful for a belief that he has moved on to a place where he can watch us and his son, and laugh and make merry, and be the “he” that he always was here, only care-free.
I am thankful that I have such a hilarious, cheerleading, go-to-guy up there…so close to the ear of the dude that makes “the calls.”
…But none of that replaces or excuses the fact of what we had to do that day, or what he had to live through for fourteen before all this, or what his son will have lost, for the rest of his life.
I have a bone to pick with God on that one, and I think I always will.
I’ve added it to the list.
So noted.
…Now, to that other one:
“Take a shower. Get human again.”
~D