Out of Order

A friend emailed last night to ask whether my day had been as bad as hers. "Yes," was my response. Yes, I supposed, even though I have no idea what made her day so rotten. Yes, I supposed my day was at least as bad as hers had been, but I was pretty damn sure neither of us had as bad a day as the old friends of mine I saw yesterday, at their fifteen year old son's wake. Days don't get any worse than that.

When a child dies, everything else seems meaningless. Divorce, petty disagreements, even premenstrual bloating (and who says I lack perspective?). The funeral home was already packed by the time I arrived, but the ever increasing number of live bodies was insufficient to mask the telltale smell of tragic loss. It's a smell I associate with embalming, even though I have no real idea of what embalming smells like. Like the smell of old age that assaults you when you enter a nursing home. Or Old Country Buffet. There is no mistaking it, no question about where you are.

If the world is to be divided into his side and mine as we trudge into year three of our divorce proceedings, this wake was situated well inside my husband's camp. The grieving father is a long time work colleague, the mom a person I always enjoyed seeing but only really saw at work related events. That was the nature of our relationship -- the occasional  social engagements, long and often revealing conversations over multiple glasses of wine, well intentioned promises to get together some time, just on our own. As it turns out, yesterday was the first time I have seen these folks in several years; and it was the first time I have seen many of the other mourners, people I had grown accustomed to seeing in black tie, not funeral black.

Like everyone else in the room, I struggled to make sense of it all. To figure out why parents were burying a child, why things had happened in the wrong order. And, I struggled to figure out where I fit in, suddenly an outsider in this room filled with my husband's colleagues and their spouses. Greetings were awkward; an open bar would have been nice. (The child's mom confided that she had taken an occasional trip outside to grab a swig from a flask; I offered myself up as a companion for her next break.) As I stood in a surreal circle that included me, my husband, and his companion of the past two years, I thought for a moment that maybe a foray into the next room to view the body would be less uncomfortable. It wasn't. Not by a long shot.

I'd met Sam when he was little. What I recall as remarkable about him was that you would never know by looking at him that his heart wasn't in mint condition. Despite a lifetime of worries and surgeries and constant contact with a pediatric cardiologist, his parents struggled to give him as normal a life as possible. He lived doing what other kids do, and he died playing basketball -- doing what other kids do. This wake was a celebration of Sam, filled with his fifteen year old friends, some crying, some standing around feeling out of place, some writing messages to Sam with markers on large posters taped to the wall. It wasn't just me; nobody felt right being there. There is nothing right about the death of a child.

Like many of the adults in attendance, I went home to hug my children -- either in the flesh or over the phone. The mom and I promised each other we would get together, as soon as things calm down. Maybe on a not so bad day, some time down the road.