(This is ninth in a series reflecting on how life changed in a way that was–and still is five years later–unfathomable to me.)
We had an open casket viewing before Mass for family and close friends. I kissed Terry for the last time before the lid of the casket was closed. Our three sons and Terry’s sister, Rosemary, spoke before Mass.
It was a kind of out-of-body experience; emotionally, I had to distance myself. I am not one to openly show emotions. The finality of it all would not set in until tomorrow when Terry’s ashes would be lowered into the ground at Holy Sepulchre.
After the Mass, we had an outdoor reception in our—my—backyard in East Greenville. Friends stepped up and took care of all the logistics. My son, Michael, arranged for the catering.
Terry would have loved the gathering. The people, the food, the beautiful afternoon and all for her. Once in a while, my unguarded mind would reflexively wonder where she was, and I would glance to the deck or listen for her voice from the kitchen until, a split second later, grief would malevolently seep through the denial barrier.
During the hosting and socializing, the finality was delayed. Eventually, everyone left and Rio and I were left to contemplate the silence of the night. After dark, I took Rio out for his final pee event of the night and looked up at the stars. Almost directly over the house was an arrangement of stars in the shape of a T. I stared and stared at it while my eyes moistened and blew it a kiss before going back inside.
Until I moved away in 2022, I checked for the T almost every clear night (and through the magic of a search engine I later learned that the constellation Cygnus, the Swan, is in the shape of a T and visible in the Northern Hemisphere from June to December).
Terry was cremated overnight, there would not have been room in the plot for a casket, and the funeral director and Deacon Mike brought the ashes to the house, as I had requested. One last chance to have Terry home before we started for the cemetery. Sixteen days ago, the ambulance had carried Terry away.
A small group of family and friends were waiting at the grave when we pulled up. Terry was laid to rest with her grandparents, parents, brother, and “aunt” Martha. I will be joining her when I pass, my name already etched into the tombstone.
I drove back to the house alone.
Really alone now.
The message for the day in the grief book said, “My joy may be diminished now, but I am still alive to be more joyful ahead.”
I did not believe that for one second. I was never going to feel happiness again, let alone joy. Positive emotions had flatlined.
I was more aligned with Nora McInereny, who, in her memoir on her own grief journey, No Happy Endings, put it this way, “…what you’ve been through, you’ll feel it. It’s cold and icy and dark and heavy. It’s the unmistakable knowledge that everything is as broken as you thought it was.
“Especially you.”
Especially me.
The Q-View 