by Teresa Roman
I closed my eyes and pushed those memories out of my head. But that only made room for other thoughts. Like the argument Ryan and I had gotten into the afternoon before he’d died. He was so angry with me that he’d stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind himself as he left for work. I shook my head, not wanting to think about the words he’d used and the tone of voice he’d used them in.
As soon as I managed to stop thinking about that ugly blowup, my head filled with worries. How would we get by without Ryan’s salary? He made more than I did. Way more. I knew he had life insurance and a retirement plan through work, but I doubted either of them would pay enough to make up for the loss of his income. Soon, hospital bills would start coming in. Ryan was a spender and had credit card debt that would need to be paid off. What would be left over after?
Suddenly ashamed of myself, I tried once more to steer my thoughts elsewhere. My husband had just died, and here I was, worrying about money instead of grieving over him. What kind of wife did that?
In the morning, I decided to keep the kids out of school. I called the school office and told the secretary that Jacob and Lydia Collins would be absent for the rest of the week because their father had just passed away.
“Goodness gracious,” she said. “How terrible. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
“Please let me know if there is anything we can do to help.”
“We’ll be fine,” I said, trying to sound gracious while, at the same time, figuring out a way to get off the phone before she could ask any more questions. “I’m sorry but I … I’ve gotta run.”
I pressed the Hang Up button on my phone and sat down in front of the computer to email the kids’ teachers.
By then, the kids were out of bed and had made their way into the kitchen.
“Won’t we be late for school?” Lydia asked.
“You’re not going today. Or tomorrow. I think you two need a little break and some Mommy time.”
“But I have a math test on Friday,” Jacob said.
“I just emailed your teacher. I’m sure they can reschedule it given—”
“That Daddy just died,” Jacob said, finishing my sentence for me. He sounded so sad that my heart broke for him.
“Yes.”
I waited for either of them to say something else about their father or ask me questions. I knew they had to have some, but instead Jacob poured bowls of cereal for himself and Lydia. That was new. Normally, he had to be asked to help his sister, and even then, he did it grudgingly. I wondered how long this would last.
For the next few days, I did my best to distract the kids from the pain they had to be feeling by taking them for pizza and ice cream and to the movies. Not that it did much good. There were a lot of tears—mostly from Lydia because Jacob was trying his best to be tough—and neither of them felt like eating much. I knew their behavior was normal, but everything in me wanted to make things right for them with a snap of my fingers. If only life really worked that way.
On Friday evening, Marla came over. Jacob and Lydia’s faces brightened as she stepped into the family room. I made popcorn, and we watched a movie. Halfway through it Jacob looked up at Marla, his expression shy and slightly pained. “Do you know what happened to my dad?” he practically whispered.
“I do, honey. And I’m so sorry.” She hugged both of the kids. “You guys know if you ever need to talk to anyone, Auntie Marla is only a few doors away, right?”
Though she wasn’t technically their aunt, sometimes it kind of felt like she was.
“We know,” Jacob replied.
That night, after the kids went to bed, I worked myself up to calling my mother and brother. They did their best to sympathize, but my brother had never met Ryan, and my mother was too self-absorbed to truly care that her daughter was now a widow.
“Well, I managed to survive losing your father,” she said.
I didn’t bother to point out that our situations weren’t really the same. True, she’d survived, but I prayed that I’d do a lot better of a job surviving than she had.
A week later, when the kids were back in school, I’d finally made up my mind about Ryan’s final arrangements. I hadn’t succeeded in contacting either his father or brother. I’d looked through the contact list on Ryan’s cell phone, but both his father’s and brother’s numbers were disconnected. I sent them emails, but neither replied. Facebook was another dead end. Apparently, they weren’t social-media users. With my lack of success in tracking down his family, I didn’t see the point in a funeral. It wasn’t like Ryan had an army of friends who wanted to pay their respects either. Cremation seemed like the best option.
I met with a funeral-home director who I’d talked to on the phone a few days earlier. She explained that I’d be given Ryan’s ashes and showed me a catalog of urns they sold to keep them in, but I couldn’t see myself placing Ryan’s ashes in an urn on my fireplace mantel.
“You can always scatter the ashes if that’s something you’re more comfortable with.”
I thought about it for a moment. “That sounds like a good idea, actually.”
“You can’t just scatter them anywhere, though. I’ll give you a list of places to call to get more information on that.”
Almost as soon as I finished signing the papers at the crematorium, I was hit with a wave of guilt. Did I choose cremation because it was the easiest and cheapest thing to do? Did I really think Ryan would be okay with it? He’d never told me he wanted a funeral and a burial, but what if he had and somehow expected that I’d just know that? He wasn’t around to answer any of those questions, though, which left it up to me to decide.
At night, I tossed and turned in bed, thoughts of Ryan haunting me. He was gone, I told myself. He wouldn’t know or care about what I decided to do ever again, so why did I feel so guilty about my choice to cremate his body? It was too late to change my mind. The papers had been signed and the fee paid out of the measly savings Ryan and I had accumulated. I just prayed I could live with the guilt.
4
A few days later, someone from the funeral home called to tell me Ryan’s ashes were ready. I couldn’t believe how fast things were moving. A part of me still couldn’t truly accept that Ryan was gone. Less than two weeks ago, I’d been a wife. Now I was a widow and a single mother of two. It didn’t seem impossible.
I texted Marla. She was only working a half day and made me promise to wait for her so I wouldn’t have to be alone when I went to pick up Ryan’s ashes.
At just after one, she rang the doorbell, and the two of us climbed into my car.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ve been too busy to really have time to stop and think. You can’t even begin to imagine all the paperwork involved after someone dies.”
Over the past few days, I’d spent hours on the phone settling Ryan’s credit card accounts. Every one of them needed a copy of his death certificate. Thank goodness I had a home office with a fax machine. Ryan’s credit card accounts were only the tip of the iceberg, though. There was the hospital billing department and the ambulance service who’d brought him to the ER after his accident. The stack of bills I needed to pay seemed to grow by the day, but I couldn’t take care of all those outstanding bills until I collected Ryan’s life-insurance money, and that wasn’t going to happen until I finished filling out the paperwork they sent me.
“What about Jake and Lydia? How are they doing?”
I shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Lately, neither of them seems to want to talk about their dad.” I glanced at her. “Do you think that’s normal?”
“I don’t know. Your kids are a million times closer to you than they ever were to Ryan.”
“He’s still their dad, though. They have to be feeling something. I just wish they’d tell me what.”
“Have you asked them?”
I shook my head. “Not directly.”
“Maybe you sh
ould.”
Marla was right. The problem was that over the past few years, I’d gotten good at avoiding conflict, at not talking about feelings and instead burying my head in the sand. It was the only way to survive the kind of marriage I had. What good was talking about your feelings when nothing ever changed?
“I was planning on having a small funeral service outside in our backyard before scattering Ryan’s ashes. I figured it would give the kids a chance to talk about their feelings.”
“That sounds like a great idea.”
I glanced at Marla out of the corner of my eye. Her long honey-blond hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail. “Do you think you could come?”
“If you need me to be there, then I will be.” She leaned back in her seat.
A few minutes later, as I pulled into the funeral home parking lot, I noticed a weird grin on her face.
“What are you smiling about?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It’s so wrong of me to say this, but I was just thinking that it’s a good thing Ryan is already dead, because he would just die if he knew I was coming to his funeral.”
Marla was right about that. It would be an understatement to say she and Ryan had never got along. They both absolutely loathed each other. “Well, it’s not really a funeral.”
“Oh, you know what I mean.”
Before I could stop myself, I laughed. And then I laughed some more. Marla joined in, which just made me laugh even harder. She was right. Ryan would hate that she was coming to his memorial service. He despised Marla because he hated anything or anyone that took attention or time from him. Marla loathed him right back, mostly because she was my best friend and she thought I deserved better than him. Perhaps I did, but when you have children with someone, your lives become irrevocably intertwined. I couldn’t just walk away, no matter how many times I felt like I really wanted to.
I pulled myself together. It would not be good to walk into a funeral home laughing. Truthfully, there was nothing funny about this situation, but sometimes, when things got too overwhelming, that’s what I did. I laughed at the absurdity of life and the way it never failed to throw a curve ball when I least expected one.
After signing a few more papers, I was handed Ryan’s ashes, which had been placed in a sturdy cardboard box. As I stared down at it, I did my best to push away the wave of guilty thoughts that plowed toward me. There was nothing funny about Ryan being dead. I felt terrible about laughing at what Marla had said earlier in the car. It was wrong for me to feel anything but sad at a time like this.
People told me all the time that I thought too much. They were right, but I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was because I hadn’t had the easiest of lives. All that was supposed to change when Ryan and I fell in love. He was handsome and sweet, or at least he had been in the beginning. We bonded over the many things we had in common like the fact that we were both finishing up our college degrees even though we were in our mid-twenties. Or that we both came from broken families. I’d convinced myself that we were destined to be together. What an idiot I’d been back then.
As I pulled into Marla’s driveway, she put her hand on my shoulder. “You do know that it’s still okay to laugh every now and then, right?”
I smiled at her. “Thanks, Marla.”
One of the reasons I loved her so much was because she got me, even though, in many ways, she was my complete opposite. Her house was total chaos, and she seemed to revel in that. I was sort of a neat freak who’d sweep and mop my floors until not a speck of dirt was left behind. Of the two of us, I was the serious one, while Marla was the ball of energy.
She gave me a hug before hopping out of the car. I drove off and headed to the kids’ school to pick them up. I didn’t say anything to them about their dad’s ashes being in the trunk. The idea of it sort of freaked me out, and I was an adult. I could only imagine what two kids would think about sharing a car ride with their dead father’s ashes.
Over dinner, I told them about my plan to have a memorial service for their dad on Saturday and, after, take Ryan’s ashes and scatter them in one of the parks near our home.
“Will it just be the three of us?” Jacob asked.
“Marla’s coming over too,” I said. I’d contemplated asking my mom to come, but the kids weren’t really comfortable around her.
“Will we have to touch the ashes?” Lydia asked.
“Of course not. In fact, if you prefer not to come along for that part, you can always stay back at the house with Marla.”
“No, we want to go with you,” Jacob said.
“Yeah,” Lydia chimed in.
That night, while I lay in bed, I couldn’t help but wonder, yet again, if I’d made a mistake. Maybe having Ryan buried in a local cemetery would have been better. But it was too late for that. Still, I couldn’t stop picturing the frightened look on Lydia’s face when I’d talked about scattering Ryan’s ashes. Lots of people did it, but lots of people also kept ashes in beautiful urns on their mantel pieces. Should I have just chosen that option? For some reason the idea of keeping cremated remains in my house made me feel ill. And leaving them in the garage just seemed wrong.
In the end, I decided it was better to move forward with my plan. Changing it would just confuse the kids. And that was the last thing I wanted to do.
5
On a cold late-January Saturday afternoon, Marla came over with a lasagna and a pie. It was her ex-husband’s weekend with their kids, so she’d spent the morning cooking a meal for us. I hugged her, touched by her thoughtfulness. Having almost no family to speak of made it easy to appreciate my friends that much more.
I put the lasagna in the fridge. “Am I crazy for doing this?” I asked Marla.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
We joined Jacob and Lydia in the family room. “Are you guys ready?”
“Ready for what?” Lydia asked, staring at the TV instead of me.
“We’re going to say goodbye to Daddy,” I reminded her. It was the best way I knew how to explain what was going on to my six-year-old.
Jacob turned the TV off. “C’mon,” he said to his sister.
With the box that held Ryan’s ashes in my hands, I headed to the backyard. Marla and the kids trailed behind me. Earlier I’d set a giant beach blanket down on the grass. The four of us took a seat on it.
“The reason I wanted to have this gathering was to give you both a chance to talk about your dad. Maybe there’s things you want to get off your chest, or some words you might want to say in his honor.”
Marla put her arm over Jakey’s shoulder, then she reached for Lydia’s hand. “Sometimes it’s good to talk about your feelings.”
Jacob shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t really think of anything to say.” He wasn’t much for words, but it troubled me that he didn’t want to say anything. He had to be feeling something about losing his father. Why was it so hard for him to put his thoughts into words?
“I’m sorry you’re gone, Daddy,” Lydia said, her voice soft. “I really miss you.”
I struggled to come up with a few words of my own. I tried reaching into my mind for happier memories of Ryan. Like the day he finally got me that engagement ring he’d promised. It was gorgeous, and he was so proud to give it to me. A month later we exchanged vows in front of a small group of friends. The only family either of us had in attendance was my mother, who’d shown up stoned from her anxiety pills.
I remembered waking up on the morning of our wedding, petrified that I was making a huge mistake, but I refused to listen to that voice. I’d lost count of how many times I looked back on that day, full of regret.
I sighed. It was hard to find a happy memory of Ryan because every single one I had was overshadowed by remorse and anger with myself for not listening to my gut all those years ago. The only thing that made up for the nightmare our marriage turned out to be was the kids Ryan and I had had together. They were the only good thing that had come out of our curs
ed union.
“Your daddy loved the two of you so much,” I said. “He might not have always been good at showing it, but he really did. I know that you’re both sad he’s gone, so if you ever want to talk to me and tell me how you’re feeling, I want you to know that I’ll listen.”
“And I will too,” Marla added.
“I just hope that wherever Daddy is right now, that at least he’s happy,” Jacob said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Apparently, even my nine-year-old had come to realize how deeply unsatisfied with life Ryan was. Was he blaming himself, as I often did, for Ryan’s unhappiness? I would have to ask him about that later. Maybe he’d feel more comfortable talking about his feelings if it was just the two of us.
“I think he is,” I said. “I know he misses you guys, but he’s looking down on the two of you, and he’s proud that you’re being so brave.”
For a moment it looked like Jacob was going to say something else, but he must’ve changed his mind because, instead, he lowered his head and stared at his hands, which were folded in his lap. Lydia also sat quietly. This “service” was supposed to be their opportunity to talk about their feelings, yet both my children were alarmingly silent. I looked at Marla who just gave me a shrug.
After another few minutes of trying to get my kids to open up, I finally decided it was time to head back inside. Jacob and Lydia happily agreed.
“Are you two still sure you want to come with me? You can stay here with Marla if you prefer.”
“We want to go with you,” Lydia insisted.
“Can Marla come too?” Jacob asked.
I glanced at Marla who nodded. A few minutes later, we piled into the car. I looked at my kids’ faces through my rearview mirror. Jacob had a blank look on his face, and tears streamed down Lydia’s. A hopeless feeling settled over me. Seeing their sad faces was like a knife to my heart.
The kids remained quiet as I discreetly scattered their father’s ashes in a park just a few miles from our house. I wasn’t even sure that what I was doing was entirely legal since California had so many laws, but the deed was quickly done, and in less than an hour, we were back in the car. The kids’ faces remained stony until we returned home. Once we did, they planted themselves in front of the TV while Marla helped me in the kitchen.
