Page 84 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

I don’t recall the actual layers of the Earth from high school science, but here’s a quick tutorial. The first layer is the one we live on. The next is the one we lie down in after our bodies have fulfilled their purpose. Then the layer after that, it’s a pit of despair, rocky and hard, but not bottom. Because after that is the hot, sticky slide of embarrassment and self-loathing into the true bottom.

It is darkness. A blank mind. A pain behind the eyes and a thumping in the temples. Hitting the bottom is an incorrect analogy. It’s more like crashing into the bottom. It’s a cartoon fall so fast and hard, your body leaves an impression, and the only thing you can do is stare back up into the spaces that tricked you into believing this time is it, there is nowhere left to go.

But as they say, you have to truly hit bottom in order to find your way back to the top. I’m definitely not back at the top, but I’m working my way there.

Thank you, everyone, for the nice messages, worrying about my absence. I read them, and I’ll try to reply to them all individually, but consider this my apology to you and appreciation of you. I have a lot of mea culpas to make, and don’t worry, I’ll disclose all the dirty details once the dust settles. Thanks for sticking with me on this journey so far, friends. It’s only up from here.

#Grief #Journey #Epiphany

CHAPTER 30

After weeks of self-reflection, one of the things I’ve come to terms with is my tendency to make snap judgments about people. It’s not one of my better qualities, and I’m working to curtail that, even if my judgments are not always wrong. For instance, I knew when Paul Sandino escorted me to the nurse’s office in first grade, after I fell during recess, that he’d end up helping the world, and, lo, social media tells me he’s working in some special lab for HIV medication.

I also knew the first time I met Shayna that her personality was as fake as her eyelashes. In hindsight, it’s probably why my brother was attracted to her, two lost souls trying to find an anchor. Unfortunately, they couldn’t help each other, and now that Ray’s gone, Shayna’s out there waving in the wind, attaching herself to any post she thinks is steady. That means Todd is out, and Bryson is in. I’m tempted to leave a comment on the picture of the four of them at Thanksgiving dinner together, but I don’t want to hurt her. Not really. I only want her to stop doing what she’s doing. In the end, she’ll only hurt Lucy and Lara.

My judgment about Nell, however, was totally wrong. I tap the heart button underneath the picture she posted of the two of us shopping at six in the morning on Black Friday. After I admitted that I’d never gone, she somehow convinced me to tag along with her. Why we had to go so early, though, I don’t know. No one actually shops in stores anymore. We weren’t beating a crowd for Furbies or laughing Elmos.

But I had a lot of fun with her. With an understated sense of humor, she’s considerate and thoughtful, not the horrible person I assumed she was for having an affair with a married man. One late night over a pitcher of sangria, she explained how much she loved my brother. She believed he was the one. She said she tried to ignore it, forget about him, but couldn’t. Not like he tried very hard either.

“Should I force myself to let him go and be miserable, or should I fight to make it right, as best I can, for the man I love?” she said, and I couldn’t argue otherwise.

She showed me the timeline she’d made with Ray, saved on her computer in an orderly table. It outlined months of events they could accomplish with the best interest of the twins in mind: when he would move out of the house, when he would introduce Nell to the twins, when and what family counselor they would all see, when Ray and Nell would get married. It was hopeful then, but now it’s a digital reminder of a future left unlived.

Nell, for her part, does the best she can, loving a ghost. “It’s what we have in common,” she told me over coffee the day we ran into each other at the cemetery. “Ghosts are perfect in their absence. They remain faultless in our minds. That’s the hard part. I’ll compare every guy I meet to him, and you’ll constantly compare yourself to him. Hard to compete with someone who can’t fail.”

She was exactly right.

It took me months to get there, but I finally stopped making Raymond an excuse not to move forward with my life.

With a good word from Aunt Joanie, I found a job. It’s a terribly boring administrative position, where I mostly file papers and answer phones, but it’s a salary and benefits. I even opened a retirement account. Nell let me sleep on her couch for a few nights until I found a little apartment, the third floor of a townhouse. It’s covered in old yellow wallpaper and the stove only works half of the time, but it’s a step in the right direction. I also found a counselor to talk to, Maryanne, and I go every two weeks. It’s not like I assumed it would be. There is no couch or deep psychoanalyzing, but there is discussion of my anxiety, and she helps me figure out solutions so I don’t become overwhelmed by it.

I’m figuring out my life, except for the most important part, Vince. I haven’t told Maryanne about him yet, not sure where to begin. Back when I was a fourteen-year-old kid hanging on his every word or when he walked through my parents’ front door the day after my brother died or the kiss on the baseball field. Or his hand on my neck or the party with Patch or the night we shared a bowl full of ice cream in my parents’ kitchen. Our story is full of fits and starts, and that’s my fault. I know the only way back to him is to once again start, but with myself first.

I close down Instagram and toss my phone into my purse. I told my mom I’d be at her house in fifteen minutes, and I’m already late. As I speed down the street, Christmas decorations blur together out of my window, blow-up Santas and snowmen, wreaths on doors, and trees in windows.

With Dad permanently living in the city now, Mom decided to sell the house. She said it was too big for one person, and a little too much to live with the memories. She didn’t say which memories, but it’s not hard to guess. As I pull into the driveway, I’m overcome with sadness that soon the house I grew up in alongside Ray will belong to another family. I never thought I’d be so attached to stone and brick, but I cry through all of George Michael singing “Last Christmas” and some of “Jingle Bell Rock” before shutting off the car.

Maryanne tells me not to shy away from the journey, rather to embrace it. I’m supposed to give myself the freedom and respect to grieve, and I have to give it to others as well. I can help my mother work through her own grief, but I don’t have to add it to my own. I should be a model, Maryanne says. So that’s what I’m trying to do.

The front door’s open, and I let myself in, stepping out of my boots before striding across the carpet. I unwind my scarf and take off my coat, leaving them on the sofa in the living room. All the decorations are already packed up, the pictures, lamps, books, and the oil painting of Tuscany that used to hang above the fireplace.

“Mom?”

“Up here,” she answers, and I follow her voice upstairs. She’s in the hall, taping an empty cardboard box together. Two are already stacked up and labeled behind her, and she looks good, healthy.

After my episode in the city, I was too embarrassed to go home. I was afraid to face her, knowing I’d hurt her. Neither one of my parents had ever hit me in my life, and while her slap was physically painful, it wasn’t nearly as bad as what I said to her. With Nell’s help, I rehearsed my apology, but when I finally went home, I didn’t get to deliver it. Before I spoke even one syllable, Mom towed me in for a hug and didn’t let go. We both cried, for what seemed like hours, and when I finally tried to apologize, she stopped me, her hands on either side of my face saying, “I know. Me too.”

And that was it. We haven’t brought it up since. Now when we talk, we try to move forward. It’s not easy, especially when she gets weepy at the mention of Ray’s name, but she’s been acknowledging my own loss too.

“What do you need me to do?” I ask her.

She readjusts her headband, keeping her newly trimmed bangs away from her face. I talked her into them since I recently got mine back, but she hates hers. Oops.

“I packed up the guest bathroom,” she tells me. “Wanted to wait until you were here to go through the closet.”

I pick up a box and shuffle to the guest room, which used to be Raymond’s bedroom. The closet became storage for all of our old belongings we didn’t take with us when we moved out. Mom doesn’t have to voice the reason she waited for me to do this part. When I open the closet door, I’m met with the ordered chaos of old boxes and big plastic bins stacked on top of one another. Some are open, spilling out Barbie dolls and high school yearbooks.

“I can’t believe you kept this,” I say, picking up a scruffy pink Care Bear.

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