Oct. 20 something Part 2

  It's quiet, here, in the chapel of graceful degradation where George and Pauline keep Patrick.  It's only us here.  In a few short hours other people will come to say goodbye to Patrick.  He lays in a generic casket, wearing his favorite band's shirt and clothes that I knew he would have worn if he were living.  I was tasked with shopping and deciding his "viewing" clothes.  My younger brother as well as George and Pauline's son and Jackie's near twin lay, too good for his surroundings.  His eyes glued shut.  The gray enveloping his should be fair completion and  pigment. He is very cold.  Stiff.  Silent.  His hands rest on his belly in a well known fashion.  His head propped by a small pillow.  I notice that the clothes were cut along the sides.  The person responsible for putting his clothes on has learned a trick to this staging process.  An illusion we never wanted to know.

   How contrary the weather is, it eludes tragedy.  I can hear the birds outside singing and the sway of the trees as they dance with the breeze.  I can hardly remember anything routine from the last few days concerning hygiene or driving or sleeping, yet somehow Jackie and myself are sitting in the front pews, as George and Pauline hold each other standing over Patrick, quietly sobbing.  Jackie is catatonic.  Her stare, piercing and focused.  Her eyes need not blink due to the constant tears.

   This funeral home is understandably fake and smells like an old library.  It's a mock chapel.  No religious fixtures anywhere so as to accommodate the dead and their mourners with ambiguity.  The lights are dim and the ambiance is calming.  Immediately after the "viewing" Patrick is to be put in a van and taken to a crematorium.  These employees of the funeral home or vultures of human emotion, keep using words and phrases that annoy me.  On the surface, compassion, but hanging over us, just above our heads, they pluck for the $2000 urn, because "Patrick deserves the best."  These f*****g animals.  There are cards all around, on the pews, at the podium, with a prayer and Patrick's full name.  F*****g vultures.  Funeral keepsakes?  People are going to show up soon and ruin the quietness.  Whispering nonsense, trying not to stare, keeping time, looking at their cell phone, planning dinner, thinking about work.  My anger and rage make me hate them for nothing.

   I'm so angry.  Today is the day we say goodbye to his body.  I'm so sad.  His smile and spirit will never fade but torment me until I lose my mind.  I really hate this.  Patrick was never much on social graces.  He loved who he loved and dismissed everything else.  Violent and beautiful swam through his blood constantly battling to the surface.  He dealt in absolutes.  There is no in-between with Patrick.  An intelligent, good looking, 22 year old boy lay and will never wake up again.  He is no saint by any means.  He is no villain to those he loved.  Just a person with all the flaws to be considered human.  He suffered from mental afflictions from boyhood.  As kids we found his medical chart in Pauline's records and read his many diagnosis's.  That was not a good time.  He cried.  The records revealed the words "Abnormal", "homosexual" and "depressive", "bipolar".  He questioned the world.  The 80's were less understanding than now and so were we considering we were children.  He started to really spiral out of control in his teens with self mutilation.  Cutting himself to "take the pain away".  I still don't understand that concept.  He would sow himself up and would wait until he was sober to start.  He never said why he did any of it.  He would just shrug and smile to himself as you asked him 10's of thousands of times to stop.  Ten's of thousands of times why, 10's of thousands of times saying that's not helping and to get help, stop hurting yourself, things will get better, I love you, you're hurting mom.

   He was institutionalized for drug use.  I remember that day.  He had been up for days.  He was scared to go to sleep.  Something was tormenting him.  A drug he had taken 3 days before fried his brain.  He was just a child.  Pauline, Jackie and myself were watching TV and he stood at the doorway.  He said, "Mom I need to go to the hospital."  He said it so calmly and as a matter of fact.  Before Pauline had a chance to ask why, he yelled it again and began to cry but not before raising a blade to his wrist and slicing the flesh.  He began to wipe the blood on the walls and scream, "Now! Now!"

    Those times were not out weighed by the good times.  His smile.  His sense of humor.  Our provocative conversations about God and sex.  His laugh.  His ability to make a point and have it hit even if you didn't agree with him.  He would make you loathe the fact that his point of view was undeniable.  The jokes, the stories, the scariest times were all floating in the air.  They were so tangent that you could grab one and hold it until reality stripped it from you and pointed to the casket.