Chapter 7
The time between waking from my coma and the funeral was a complete daze. I’d been released from the hospital on Thursday morning only to stay in my bed until I had to get up for my sister’s wake Saturday morning. Bronwyn came over, at my grandmother’s request, to help get me ready. After a couple of lame attempts at conversation, she gave up and went about the motions of getting me ready in silence. I sat on the toilet lid in my robe while she brushed and dried my hair with a feather-light touch. We both knew if she tugged too hard I might shatter.
I put on the dress that someone set out for me without really looking at it, thankful that I didn’t have to make any decisions for myself. Mom left for the funeral home early with Grandma Nora, so Bronwyn drove my brother and me over in her mother’s minivan. Aaron was dressed in one of our dad’s suits and kept fingering the knot of his tie, trying to loosen it enough for comfort, but not so much that our mother would freak out on him.
I’d been in Grandview Funeral Home a few years earlier, when my Grandpa Bill passed away, so I thought I knew what to expect. I learned really quickly that an elderly man’s funeral, even one who was respected and loved like my Grandpa, couldn’t compare with that of a popular sixteen-year-old cheerleader. Parked cars lined the avenue on both sides of the street for three blocks. It seemed as if everyone in Dubuque was here.
“I better drop you guys off at the door,” Bronwyn said. “It’s gonna take me forever to find a parking place, and I don’t want you to be late.” She turned into the lot and pulled up in the fire lane to let us out.
“Thanks,” Aaron muttered before hopping out of the back.
My posterior felt glued to the passenger seat.
Aaron didn’t notice I wasn’t behind him until he turned to hold the funeral home door open for me. His already grim face fell a little further, and he returned to retrieve me from the vehicle.
“Come on, Cady,” he said, opening the passenger door and unhooking my seatbelt for me. “It sucks, but we have to do this. If it’s too awful, I’ll find a way to take you home early, okay?”
“Okay,” I replied, my voice dry and crackled. With a hand on his shoulder to steady myself, I slid out of the seat. Leaning on my brother seemed to magnify my sorrow, and I struggled with the heaviness in my chest. It was just the two of us now. The odd feeling vanished as Aaron, seeing that I was steady on my feet, started walking ahead of me toward the building. I flashed a weak wave to Bronwyn as she pulled away from the curb.
Several people, mostly students from school, stared at us as we made our way inside the building. The pity in their eyes felt strong enough to touch, making me long for the safety of my bed.
Aaron took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”
Aunt Tina, our dad’s younger sister who drove in from Chicago, met us right inside the door.
“There you are!” she exclaimed, drawing us both into a tight hug, her bleach blond extensions tickling my nose. “The family seating is in the reserved rows up front. They just started the receiving line.”
Aunt Tina crushed my hand in hers and dragged me through the crowd. Aaron followed behind us. My emotions were all over the map, making me feel like a computer getting ready to short circuit. I’d taken half of a Valium before leaving the house. Not enough to make me sleepy, but just enough to separate my mind from my body with a thick layer of numbness. I could sense tension and sorrow vibrating through me, but at the same time, it was like it was happening to someone else. Even with the medication, the pressure of the crowd triggered claustrophobia, making my chest heave and my palms dampen. Between that and the mass of people making the air thick and stuffy, my stomach tumbled with nausea.
I was halfway up the aisle before I spotted the white wooden casket, the door hinged open to show the lavender-tinted satin interior. I snapped my gaze away before I could see her. After our Grandpa’s funeral, Lony and I both agreed that viewing the dead was creepy, and we wanted to be cremated. I tried to tell my mother this when she was driving me home from the hospital, but she’d kept her eyes on the road like she was all alone in the car. I probably should’ve let Grandma Nora know, since she was the one making most of the arrangements. Once I’d woken up and Mom didn’t have to worry about me, she had to face Lony’s death, and she slipped into a strange kind of depression, pretty much making her useless for anything other than staying in bed all day.
Our aunt presented us to our parents like china dolls to be inspected. Mom looked like someone had beaten her with a hammer and superglued her back together. Her navy blue suit, freshly blown out hair and make-up were perfect, but anyone could see all that was only a thin veneer barely holding the pieces of her together. She reached forward mechanically and straightened Aaron’s tie. Her eyes reflected a glassy shine.
Dad stood shifting his weight from foot to foot as if his dress shoes were too tight. He drew me in next to him with a light squeeze on my shoulder. Once Aaron and I were between them like a buffer zone, the receiving line began moving again.
Thick grief washed over me with every new person who stood before me, making it difficult to breathe. I let my body shift into autopilot. While my arms hugged and my head bobbed in mute acknowledgment to the whispered words of sympathy, I shrank into myself and tried to fight off the urge to blow chunks all over my shoes. The line was insanely long, winding its way out the door, and after an hour, Dad let Aaron and I retreat upstairs to the family lounge to relax until the service started.
Away from the crowd, I finally felt like I could breathe again. I waited on a couch, letting a mug of coffee grow cold between my palms as various family members rotated in and out. My thirteen-year-old cousin, Geoffrey, sat in the corner playing Mario on his DS until Aunt Tina hustled him out with orders to talk to our great-aunts.
Aaron and I didn’t speak. He sat across from me on another sofa with his eyes closed as if catching a cat-nap, although I could tell by the way he flinched whenever someone else entered the room, that he was wide awake.
When it was time for the memorial to start, our grandma came to fetch us. While my family is not religious, Grandma hired Bronwyn’s father to hold the inter-faith service. As we entered the small chapel, I saw with horror that our front-row seats were situated directly in front of the casket. Panic hit me hard. I wasn’t ready to see Lony. Somehow, seeing her body lying in that coffin would make her death official, and I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for that. I swallowed hard and stared at my feet the whole way up the aisle. I discovered with immense relief once I sat down that my line of vision was low enough to prevent me from seeing inside the box.
Just before Pastor Tom began to speak, someone sank into the seat on the other side of Aaron. I looked down the row to see Cane Matthews. I’d forgotten all about him. My parents must have invited him to sit with the family. His face appeared to be carved out of stone, as if betrayal of the slightest emotion would cause the whole thing to crumble off his head.
The ceremony passed in a great rush, each second bringing me closer to having to say my final good-bye to my sister. While Pastor Tom talked, I fingered the vintage butterfly hair clip that I had stashed in my pocket. I’d found it a couple of years ago in a junk shop downtown. The wings were made of delicate sheets of abalone and tiny rhinestones formed the body. Lony was constantly stealing it from my jewelry box, leading to many arguments about how I should just give it to her since I rarely wore my hair up. The thing is I probably would’ve let her have it if she hadn’t been so demanding about it. Instead, I held onto it out of spite. The clip now was fastened around a badly composed poem to my sister that I’d written in third grade. A few of the words were misspelled and the overly melodramatic lines didn’t really rhyme, but Lony had kept it pinned to her bulletin board in her bedroom ever since. I planned to slip it and the hair clip into the casket before it was closed.
Aunt Tina gave the eulogy for the family. Grandma had asked me to do it, but I begged off. I didn’t like public speaking on a good day, and there was no way I’d be able to hold it together on this one. My aunt’s words washed over me without sinking in. My mind whirled with all of the things I wanted to say to Lony before they closed the casket on her forever. The last time I’d seen her, she and Cane had been bickering. I snuck a glance down the row at him. The muscles of his jaw twitched beneath the surface of his freshly shaven skin, and his blood-shot eyes appeared tired and dry. It was sad that her final moments had been spent fighting. When the eulogy was over, our family remained seated while ushers dismissed everyone else with instructions that the burial would be a private, family ceremony.
Once the bulk of the crowd cleared out of the chapel, our family members drifted up one at a time to kneel on the velvet cushion before the coffin to pay their last respects. I waited as long as possible. I didn’t want an audience.
When my turn came, I settled on my knees beside her and folded my hands on the waxy wooden rail. Carefully, I allowed my gaze to drift over my sister from waist to head.
I had expected to see Lony there, but I realized with some surprise that body lying there was not her. My sister was long gone. The mortician had made her up to appear younger and more conservative than she’d been in life. Her hair was brushed and positioned so that it framed her face. She wore the plum colored dress that we had taken our family pictures in the year before, a dress that I remembered her complaining made her neck itch. The smoky eye make-up that I’d been so accustomed to seeing on her over the past year was gone, leaving a fresh face with only a hint of mascara and lip gloss. It looked more like my body in the coffin than hers. I shuddered.
I’d been so absorbed with drinking in her appearance, I didn’t notice the long moments that passed. When Dad touched my shoulder and indicated that my turn was up, my heart jumped into my throat. No! I screamed inside. I’m not ready for her to be gone!
Pastor Tom gathered the remaining family members and Cane in front of the coffin to say some last words. The tenor of his voice sounded far away, and I concentrated on saying my own silent good-byes, which I’d neglected to do before.
One by one, people began heading for their cars to get ready for the procession to the cemetery.
As I left the chapel, I turned back to see Cane, all alone now, watching the two somber men from the funeral home close the lid and set an arrangement of roses on top. He’d been the last person to see her in life. It seemed fitting that he be the last to see her in death.
It wasn’t until we were in the car on the way home that I felt the butterfly hair clip still in my pocket.