Now, after eleven and a half years, multiple break-ups, two university degrees, a few trips, dozens of jobs, some spectacular fights, lots of awesome sex, a wedding, a police graduation, a broken ankle, and countless conversations over coffee, it’s all over. These photos are the bookends of our life together. The present has become hell on earth and my future looms ahead like a sixty-five-year prison sentence, so the past is looking damn appealing. I grab my precious pictures and go into our bedroom to begin building a photographic shrine to Sam.
I’m already in bed when I think, what the heck? I run back downstairs, fill a sherry glass full of water for Sam’s soul to sip, then take it into my room and place it among the photos.
WAKING UP Sunday morning is, to my astonishment, even more painful than yesterday. By 5:30 a.m., the precious Hope is gone. Sam is dead; I am a widow. That I will perhaps see him again in heaven does nothing to comfort me. I lie sprawled out on my bed like a starfish clinging to a rock, waiting for the tide to return.
I fantasize about what this morning should have held, had our lives continued on their probable path. Since Sam would have worked the night shift, he would’ve still been sleeping. I’d be getting up and having a coffee. Then I would’ve puttered around the house and maybe worked a little in my office. Writing? Sam would have woken up around noon and we’d have hung out in the living room, reading the newspaper—me in my big blue chair, him on the couch.
“Hey, Adri,” he would’ve said, “pass me the city section, will ya?”
I’d have handed it to him, making a cheeky comment like, “There’s more to life than just what happens on the streets of this town you know.”
“You read what you want,” he’d have said, “and I’ll read what I want.”
I’d have leapt off my chair and tackled him on the couch. Sasha would’ve jumped up to join in and we’d have tossed her the tennis ball a few times. Then Sam would have gone downstairs to the perch and watched TV while I yakked on the phone. In the late afternoon, we’d have hit the off-leash park and then stopped in at the grocery store to pick up roast chicken and potato salad for dinner…
The knock on the door comes. Katrina takes one look at me, lying on my back as tears stream onto a drenched pillow. “Uh oh.”
“This,” I sob, “isn’t how it was supposed to be.”
She sits on the end of my bed.
“How am I gonna do this?” I ask.
“Do what?”
“Live without him.”
She shakes her head. “You have to take this one day at a time.”
“I can’t even get out of bed.”
“You don’t have to. You can lie there all day if you like.”
“Good.” I scowl at the ceiling, gripping Sam’s pendants. Except that if I continue lying here thinking about how life is supposed to be, they’ll have to commit me by noon.
The doorbell rings.
“Who the hell is here at this time of day?” I snap.
“Uh well, yesterday, you asked…”
From downstairs, I recognize Jodie’s voice.
“Oh right.” Yesterday, I’d asked my best friend, Jodie, to shop for me. Between the lessons on Hope and heaven, I’d somehow squeezed in fashion: what to wear to Sam’s funeral?
Now there are two women sitting on the end of my bed staring at me, still sprawled out on my back. I struggle to sit up, but my body feels like a sack of wet sand.
“Do you guys really believe Sam’s in a better place?” I ask.
They both nod, wide-eyed.
“But what if we’re just fooling ourselves?” I say. “What if when you die, it’s all just fucking over?”
Jodie winces.
“I think you do believe Sam is in a better place,” Katrina says, “and you’re just torturing yourself by doubting everything.”
“How do we really know, though?” I ask.
“We don’t. That’s what faith is, Adri. You’re either a believer or you’re not.”
I point to the shopping bags and ask Jodie how she did with the hat and shoes.
From one bag, she produces a fetching black hat with a chiffon bow. “I bought you a couple of each, so you’d have a choice.”
I get out of bed and try on the first hat. “I love it.”
Jodie pulls out a pair of black Mary Jane heels. I put them on. “These are they.”
Katrina asks me what dress I’ll wear.
I pull the black one out of my closet. “I just wore this to the wedding in Disneyland. That’ll teach me to wear black to a wedding.”
“You’re going to look simply beautiful for Sam,” is her response.
I look in the mirror and let out a snort. In his flowered shirt, plaid boxer shorts, a fancy black hat and high-heels, my eyes tiny slits from hours of crying and all the sorrow, fear, doubt, anger, confusion and self-pity simmering below the surface, I am miles from beautiful—outside and in.
NEXT ON today’s agenda is the Writing of the Obituary. Amidst a house full of family, constantly ringing phone and chiming doorbell, I sit down at my computer. I want to write “I hope you appreciate that my husband gave his life protecting your precious city” but this wouldn’t be socially acceptable. Thus I write a normal obituary for a man who was far from ordinary.
For the photo, I choose the self-portrait of Sam and I took in Vancouver three months ago. “You don’t think,” I ask Katrina, “that by using a picture of the two of us, people will think we both died, do you?”
“No. And besides, it’s important that you show Sam the person instead of Sam the police officer because the papers are already filled with those pictures.”
I haven’t seen a newspaper yet and I have no urge to.
“So that photo,” she finishes, “is a powerful reminder that Sam was also your husband.”
Oh, I won’t let them forget.
I go upstairs, take my excruciating shower then get dressed. Today, I wear black.
AFTER LUNCH, Tom picks me, my dad and Katrina up to drive us to the funeral home. Arrangements must be made. En route, Tom explains he’s the family liaison officer and therefore responsible for keeping me in the loop for all police-related matters.
“Well, I’m glad they chose you,” I say, “and not some stranger.”
We’re stopped at a red light, and he turns to look at me. “I requested to do this.”
The light turns green. He resumes driving.
“Did they catch the bad guy?” I ask. “The one Sam was searching for?”
Tom shakes his head. “They’re pretty sure it was a false alarm.”
And I’m pretty sure that’s gonna be a huge problem.
Other than the crackle of the police radio, the car is silent; the tension inside palpable. I stare out the window.
“Hmmm…” I say. “Isn’t that interesting?”
For lining both sides of the street are hundreds of people holding signs that read: Abortion Kills Children.
Are you gonna raise the unwanted kids? I think to myself, echoing my mother’s perspective on the matter. No? Then take your stupid signs and go home.
“We’ve got a ten-day-old child with severe head injuries…”
All four of us stare at the police radio, from which the female dispatcher speaks.
“Did you say ten day or ten month?” we hear a male officer ask.
“Ten day,” replies dispatch. “The father threw him to the floor and he landed on his head.”
Again with the head injuries. I turn to Tom and open my mouth a few times, goldfish-style.
“I’m sorry,” he says, reaching over and turning off the radio.
I give him my don’t-you-worry-about-it wave. “That’s OK.”
But it’s not. Nothing whatsoever is OK. Sam is gone, and I’m left behind to find my own way in this screwed-up world. He’d cared deeply about what was wrong in society. Does his death mean the end of his commitment to trying to make it better? Is it me who has to deal with the crap now? Why does Sam
get to float around some fluffy-clouded, pearly-gated heaven while I’m stuck in hellville? How am I gonna find peace on a planet where mothers abort their fetuses, fathers throw their sons on their heads, and decent guys don’t make it home from work? I wish Tom could reach over and turn off my mind like he did the radio.
At the funeral home, Nick and Angela are waiting for us. The funeral director takes us to his office, sits behind a massive oak desk and pulls out a pad of paper. “The first order of business is the obituary. Did you get a chance to start that, Adri?”
I pull out a piece of paper covered in red scribbles. “Yeah.”
He suggests I read to him what I’ve written, then he’ll write it down and his assistant will type it up. To me, this seems inefficient—but obituaries are his business, not mine. I read him the first line and watch in irritation as he slowly writes it out.
“Listen,” I say, “How about you let me type it. Is there a computer I can use?”
I spend the next two hours retyping, and therefore rewriting, Sam’s obituary in a back office. I type a line, sprint back to the herd for advice then race down the hallway again. I can see Sam shaking his head at me for running through a funeral home. After I finish, I plop in the chair in front of the funeral director. “Now what?” I ask.
“Well, we were just discussing the decisions you’ll have to make.”
“Such as?”
“Choosing a casket, flowers, where the reception will be held, the funeral service pamphlet, the burial plot…”
“Oh my God!” I say. Did I just fall off the turnip truck? It sounds like a wedding we’re planning—only they bury the groom when it’s over.
Misinterpreting my response, the funeral director sighs. “There are some tough decisions ahead, but you will get through it.” Then he slides a folder across the desk toward me. “And here’s some information on grieving as well as some more, er…practical suggestions.”
“Such as…”
“Oh, places to record who gave you what food, baking, cards, flowers…”
I fold my arms across my chest. I was brought up to thank people for their kindness but two days after Sam’s death the whole idea pisses me off. Am I to thank people for caring that my husband’s head was smashed open like a goddamn pumpkin?
Katrina grabs the folder. “I’ll take that,” she says to the Director. “I’m sure it’ll come in handy.”
To line the bottom of a bird cage, maybe.
“If you’re finished here,” Tom says from the doorway, “then we better keep moving because we’ve got that meeting at Sam’s church tonight.”
My hackles go up. If choosing flowers for Sam’s casket and reading up on grief etiquette don’t kill me, dealing with the Greek Orthodox Church will.
We all file into the hall and I assume we’re heading home. Not quite.
Angela turns to me. “Would you like to see Sam?”
I slump against the nearest wall. “Sam? Where’s he?”
Apparently neither the church nor the grief folder will have the honour of finishing me off. Seeing Sam’s dead body for the first time will likely do the trick.
Angela looks at me as if I have just fallen off the turnip truck. “In the basement.”
Why have I not yet considered the whereabouts of Sam’s body?
“Mom’s anointing him with oil right now,” says Angela.
“What?” I cry.
“It’s a Greek Orthodox thing.”
Bile rises in my throat.
“A purification ritual,” she adds. “It’s really important to my parents.”
I swallow to keep down the vomit and the fury. But would Sam have wanted his mother rubbing oil on his naked body? I think not.
“You might want to see Sam before the prayer service,” Angela says, “because that’ll probably be pretty crazy.”
I have no clue what she’s referring to and I’m not about to ask. If I open my mouth right now, I will regret what comes out.
WE TAKE the elevator to the basement of the funeral home. As the doors open, I see Sam’s mom sort of…floating toward me. I mean, she’s walking but she looks lighter somehow and has a quasi-serene expression on her face.
“Are you OK?” I ask.
She takes my hand. “I just saw Sam and he looks so peaceful.”
That’s because he’s dead.
“I gave him his first bath, Adri, and now I’ve given him his last.”
I don’t know what to say to this.
“God gave me my angel and now I’ve sent him back.”
There is nothing to say. My anger dissipates, and I’m left with raw empathy for a mother who just bathed her thirty-two-year-old son’s dead body.
“Go see him,” she whispers, “his body is warmer than it should be.”
I grab the hand of the unsuspecting Hope Chaplain, who happens to be standing nearest me. “Come with me,” I say.
This takes us both by surprise. As I’m dragging him through the doorway, he tries to shift the notebook he’s holding from the hand I’ve grabbed to his free one, which means we end up doing a sort of untangling dance into the room where Sam is lying on yet another stainless steel gurney. So much for a grand entrance. Seeing Sam all by himself in such sterile surroundings—not to mention dead as a doornail—shocks me. I double over as if punched in the stomach and since the chaplain is still firmly attached, crush his hand in the process.
Then the futility of a dramatic breakdown hits me; theatrics won’t change the facts. I release the chaplain, stand up properly and walk the several steps toward Sam—and toward growing up. My husband is now a body without a soul, a car without a driver. Unlike in the emergency room on Friday morning when I first saw him, I know now how the story ends—for Sam anyway. Nothing I do, say, think, feel or believe is going to change the reality that he is now a corpse. I can either accept this as truth or seek refuge from it within the labyrinth of my mind.
I once read that some primates have been observed dragging the dead body of a family member around for a few days after the animal has died. At first, a dead husband does seem better than no husband at all. But when I lean over to kiss his lips, I smell formaldehyde. And his skin is the colour of a Ken doll. When I place my hand on his forehead, it feels stretched too tight. But the fever is gone. Then I see the stitches at the base of his neck and consider pulling the sheet down to look at his incision. No. I will choose to remember Sam’s chest the way it looked last week when we’d hung out in our hotel bed till noon, eating leftover fried chicken and boysenberry pie—not as the exit point for his heart.
“May I pray?” the chaplain asks.
“Sure.”
“Dear Lord Jesus, please bless Sam’s soul and care for him in the place you have prepared in your Heavenly Father’s home…”
Is Sam waiting somewhere else—or is his soul still right here on earth? It doesn’t seem to me that a soul, if such a thing really exists, can be in two places at once.
I think again of the infant whose father had thrown him on his head. Why had I heard that on the radio? Is it a blessing that Sam doesn’t have to deal with such sad stuff anymore? Does the soul cease to care once released from the confines of the body? Does the essence of a person end with death?
Sam’s compassion had been a driving force behind his determination to become a police officer in the first place. Years ago, his mom had told me that when Sam was seven, he’d seen a homeless person on a park bench and had been so upset she’d had to take him to talk to the priest.
“Sam cried for days,” his mom had said, “there was no consoling him. He just couldn’t understand why some people didn’t have homes.”
I recall the homeless woman Sam and I had passed on Santa Monica Beach last Monday. Could she have been a…signpost of sorts, marking the end of our vacation and happy times together, as well as symbolizing the return to Sam’s caring childhood self? For once the adult Sam had faced the reality of police work, he’d changed. He began to perceive
that his potential for making a significant difference to complex societal problems was minimal.
“It’s frustrating,” he’d said, “because most offenders just get their wrists slapped for breaking the law. The consequences for their actions are minimal so they just go out and re-offend.”
“But you’re doing the best you can within the legal system,” I’d reminded him.
“A fundamentally flawed one,” had been his response, “that often protects the rights of criminals over victims. Young offenders are a perfect example.”
“Sam…”
“Most of the time, I feel more like a babysitter than a cop, Adri. When I take a young offender home to his or her parents, half the time they refuse to accept responsibility for their kid’s criminal behavior. And even when parents do admit their little angel screwed up, they usually ask me to discipline them.”
It’s not that Sam had stopped caring but in the last two years, he’d definitely refocused his efforts into an area of police work through which he believed he could make a difference: undercover work. He’d also been putting a great deal of effort into getting me back on the writing track, which had entailed some tough love on his part.
I open my eyes and look down at Sam on the gurney. You were yanked from the game, my friend.
The chaplain opens his eyes. “Amen.”
“Amen,” I say.
Then I kiss Sam on the forehead, give him my little wave and walk out.
I, HOWEVER, am very much still in the game and this evening’s opponent is the Greek Orthodox Church. After dinner, Tom delivers me, my dad and Katrina to Sam’s church where the tall chaplain meets us in the foyer.
“They’re just inside the hall,” he says, referring to the Hope chaplain and Sam’s priest, “talking about Sam’s eulogy.”
“What about it?” I ask, folding my arms across my chest. “Stan’s gonna do it.”
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