07/25/2013

   My wife and I waited outside the church for the morning services to end so we could try to make contact with the minister. The only previous time we had been to this church was the most recent Christmas Eve service. We had been impressed with the openness of the people and the joyous atmosphere  of the service. It was a large church which we felt was important. We assumed Curtis's service would draw many people to pay their respects and say goodbye. Later, we would be proven right in this assumption. We were able to meet only briefly with the minister at this time, but he assured us that he and the church would certainly be available to us. He already knew of the accident and was very compassionate and sympathetic towards us. We set an appointment time to return on Tuesday evening to discuss what we wanted for Curtis's funeral and headed out to the cemetery. Again, the staff at the cemetery was so very kind and helpful. What we needed to do, while dealing with all three families at once, was find a spot in the cemetery where there were seven plots available, preferably side by side. We were told that we would need to exchange our three plots, then look for new spots because the parents who had been driving the car also wanted to be buried next to their daughter. This whole thing felt so bizarre. I mentioned before that both my wife and I had too much experience with this kind of situation, but except for when my older brother died in 1969 at the age of 22, we'd always been dealing with older people who had passed. We'd never really thought much at this stage of our lives about our own wishes for where we would end up when the time came, let alone try to coordinate things with other families at the same time. All of that was far off into the future, but here we were, faced with the unthinkable-again. The staff person helped us find what we required, and the new plots would only be a short distance away from our initial selections. We wrapped up the business at hand for what we hoped was the final time. I felt relieved that this part at least now appeared to be done once and for all. We headed back home. We had more relatives to pick up at the airport. We also found that we had received more flowers, plants, notes, calls, and food (we had enough fried chicken to open our own restaurant-we started sending people home with bags of chicken so it wouldn't go to waste.) Still, I did not find any of the food the least bit appealing. Again, I wondered to myself if anything would ever really be important to me again. The only thing that seemed to matter at the moment was this horrendous pain I was beginning to feel, and the emptiness deep in my soul. Keeping busy allowed me to not think about the horrible truth-was my son really gone?