In Which We Bury Someone's Kid

I went to a funeral today. 

Leaving Cali we got a phone call that a cousin-in-law had died. Waking up the next morning I got the call that a boy wrote a note and grabbed a gun. I let everything go to voice mail for the next week. Because really, that was enough of that. The boy in question wasn't someone I knew. At first I was like, wow, that's sad but luckily we don't… and then it hit me. I know the mother very well. She would say "My son" or "My daughter" and I never paid much attention to their actual names. Her son went to the same school as my older kid, a year ahead. He was 14 when he died. He was popular, academically advanced and athletically gifted. Despite a truly unfortunate yearbook photo he was conventionally attractive with a winning and frequent smile. His reputation was of a kind and considerate young man with an assured future. His father was in medicine, his mother was one of my younger kid's teachers. She took it much harder than her sibling. 

"I would be MUCH sadder" she said "if he died from a good reason instead of a stupid one. I would be MUCH more sorry for him if he hadn't done this to his mother, because she is a VERY GOOD person and I do NOT agree with hurting her."How do you explain depression and suicide to a nine year old? You just do. You talk about momentary impulses and malfunctioning brains and proximity to methodology and you never ever, not for a single second introduce the concept that you understand what he was thinking very well indeed. Because she is nine. So you tell her that he is very sorry, that he didn't know how much he would hurt his mom, that he would take it back if he could (even if, perhaps, he would not) and that she has to try very hard not to be angry at him. He didn't do it to hurt other people, he did it because he didn't know how to do anything else. 

"Well, I didn't know him so it doesn't matter to me." Explaining suicide to a 13 year old isn't much easier. The boy is only a few months older than her. Her favorite teachers cannot speak for their grief. Some of her friend's parents can't stop asking their children to promise that this will never, ever be them. It is everywhere in town. It is in the chat rooms, in the gyms, in the shops that are running out of black dresses. You take her to find your outfit so she will know, one day when she has to know, the appropriate things to do and say and wear when inappropriate things happen. You talk to her about how people will do anything to avoid using the word suicide, how they fear the contagion of it spreading to the point that they won't discuss it at all. Suicide is the death that must not ever be named. You remind her that if she ever has any doubt, any concern, any inkling at all that she knows someone considering it she must tell you. Then you tell her that it's very common for there to be no warning caught at all. You talk about suicide prevention in a dozen dressing rooms. Because it is, she continues to tell you, not at all important. You say ok. But just in case it is one day, listen to another thing. Let's not whistle in this dark. 

You find a black dress. You've made her crazy looking for the right black dress. No one will care. No one will notice. Some people will wear ridiculous things. You tell her about wearing a ridiculous thing yourself once, to your grandmother's service when all the stores were closed and the options were small but the grief immense. You ran in late, in a spring confection, and you told every person in the receiving line how much your grandmother loved florals. She asks if it's true. You tell her that her great grandmother didn't give a crap about florals but she would have loved the straight faced fiction as much as she wouldn't have cared what you wore. She tells you that when she dies she wants everyone to wear party clothes and throw a happy event where they drink and laugh and shoot fireworks. You tell her that you hope very much to be long gone before that day, but if you're not you will absolutely make that the case. One day. Eventually. When you can breathe again. She agrees it might be easier if she lives to one hundred and eighty. 

The day of the service your car acts up. You're not going because you are bereaved. You're going because so many people you know are. You are going because just thinking of the mother makes you so sad. You are going because your nine year old made a card reading "Thinking of you" with "A drawing of my signature cats, but sad, but not all the way sad, to help her feel better" and wrote everything in her best, most careful cursive. So you wave off the neighbor who tells you to skip it and you go. The line is around the block. It's a big church, but a bigger crowd. Three schools of teachers. Four sports worth of teammates. Coworkers, friends, family, the parishioners. In one of he rudest, pushiest towns you've ever lived, no one fusses. You all drive in a neat line. You park in a neat line. You walk in a neat line. You wrap around the entire church twice in a neat line. The first person you see is the mother's co-teacher and she embraces you. You realize what a small town you live in, that there are hundreds of people here but you know almost every one. There is a crisis staff set up at the middle school directly following the service. It gets whispered down the very long and slow line. You realize you forgot to wear hosiery. No one cares. 

The 14 year old girl in front you is playing it off like she does this every day. She breaks your heart because once you were 14 and your friend died and you stood in line in an inappropriate dress pretending you didn't care. She is wearing a party frock. She is alone. Other girls join her in line and she says "My mother is in the car. She has a book and I asked her not to come in." It's a scorching hot day, You're pretty sure she came alone and her parents are not here. She hugs a teacher and hears about the crisis team. She tosses her head like it's stupid but tells everyone she passes about it, just in case they care. Suddenly, almost to the door, she stops with a panic that betrays her age. "How much is it to pay your respects? Like, do you really PAY them? I haven't any money and I'm broke." The girls with her say they don't know - sometimes there is collection at church but this is their first memorial service. You want to hold them and call them baby and tell them the things an adult should have told them long before they approached today, but you can't. She is so very brittle, this girl who does this every day, and you remember how quickly she's going to shatter when the service starts. 

Then you're inside and you take the last seat in the last row of the farthest corner of the church. Soon all the pews are full and the walls are lined. You wonder, if half the town wasn't away for the summer, how they'd ever have dealt with the crowds. As it is they had to suspend signing the guestbook to rush everyone inside. You offer your seat to kids you know but they refuse to take it. Folding chairs begin to appear and the family files in. His mother isn't walking the confident stride you associate with her. She looks a hundred years older and vaguely far away. Someone whispers that they heard she was at a conference when it happened. You wave it off. The details are just details, the whats and the whys and the wheres change nothing. Her life is shattered and nothing can help her. The pastor beings to speak and you hate him. There is a slide show of a recent family vacation where this golden boy appears effervescent in his happiness, a cruise taken a few weeks before. You wonder if he'd already decided, if this joy was his relief at the choice made and the plan formed. The pastor says what might be the stupidest thing you've ever heard at a memorial service.

"He was fine Monday and gone Tuesday." That's not how it works. If he was fine Monday he wouldn't have died Tuesday. You're looking at the faces of all the kids here and you want to stand up and shout "Don't tell them that. That's a lie!" This is the family's church. This is their pastor. This is the man who comforts them and celebrates with him and you are not the audience. It's just as well. Because you want to punch him in the face. He talks about insane things. There are stories about 9/11 and how just like we couldn't stop 9/11 and must live with it, now too we must live with this. He talks about the bombing of London in WW2 and how we will never be able to answer the whys of this until we face God and ask. He tells a story about another pastor and that pastor's son's suicide and the failure of steel to float until assembled to completion. He says that because Jesus still lives, so too does this boy. He gives the most bewildering sermon after a young suicide you can imagine. You feel he's blaming the boy as he talks about our shared desire for just five minutes with him on Tuesday to prevent this, that five minutes would have changed the choice. He talks about facing, accepting or changing yourself through communion with others. You start to wonder if the boy was gay. You hope he wasn't. But then you can't find anything to hope he was and go back to reminding yourself the details don't matter. 

The pastor says he will explain it, that he heard a story that explained this, the unexplainable. He launches into a theatrical tale about dodgeball. You pray this is helping the family because you can't think it's helping anyone else. His dodgeball tale conveys the evil excitement young men get at the chance to strike helpless young women. You think this dude is twisted. He goes on to say but not the dead boy. He would get the same gleam, have the same impulse, but his balls would always hit the ground first, and then the girl. He always minimized the impact on others, he always thought of other people. This seems a surreal way to explain a suicide but perhaps it means something to the family. The pastor talks about the famous athletic coaches the boy met, the opportunities he had. He is older, probably in his sixties, and suddenly he slips into his version of Youth Speak. He's planning, at 4 pm next week, a meeting of teens and he wants everyone to come, all the kids present. "Nothing negative man, just a hang. Our best two counselors and some special ways to celebrate and remember this life, man. All positive stuff." He hits the man note several times while urging you to recall the time and place. It's next week because most of the dead kid's friends are up at the church's summer retreat. You wonder who he thinks the sobbing kids in the pews are. 

And that's it. There's a miked singer for two songs and some piano instrumental and four long pieces by the pastor and then he tells you the family will file out after the benediction. There is a map with directions to a wake, if you are so inclined, at a private home. Please sign the guest book so this wonderful family knows who was here. Benediction and goodnight. You watch the family slowly move up the aisle, his older sister rubbing her mom's back then striding ahead of everyone else, ramrod straight. His mother is a thousand years old, wearing a sweater in crippling heat and leaning on her husband to walk. The family is dozens strong, a thin line through a massive crowd of completely silent people, people who generally jostle and bitch and rush and push and hustle. Not today. Today, even after the family is gone, there is silence and proper conduct in every corner. Because they came here to give comfort and seek answers and a boy is dead. 

I walked outside and sat in my car to process everything. I texted a distraught out of state friend the details. I dropped my car at the dealership and took the kids to their appointments and we went to the late showing of Despicable Me 2. We needed to laugh after today because I didn't cry. I've never been to a memorial where no one spoke. No one offered the family and friends a fresh story, a new perspective, a new lifeline to grab for a second, a moment of their loved one's life they hadn't seen. There was just a hall full of people and the pastor. Every faith is alien to an outsider. The church I was at today is one of those lifestyle Christian places that offer vague fellowship brochures that read like singles ads. Looking for a family? An embrace of positivity? Jesus working it? Look here, with us. The church was new and expensive and well appointed but I walked out it's doors emptier than I have ever left any church I've ever stood in. 

At one point the pastor urged that it is not the words he was using that were important. The words of the scriptures are not the words, it is by existing in those words that the Holy Spirit can work in you, let the words exist around you and they will become power. (The last time I heard that it was Transcendental Meditation night at the UU church.) He told the family they were awesome, and not to blame themselves, that no one there should blame themselves as they didn't cause this. Who then, to blame? I waited through the entire service but he never said not to blame the boy. He only used the word suicide once. He used various permutations of choice a lot. I wanted him to tell the children present not to be angry, not to blame their friend. He never did. It was proof that no matter how big you build your house, no matter how carefully you study your theology, the essence of the Divine can still elude you. Those kids didn't need next week's positivity outreach pitch. They didn't need to hear about WW2 or 9/11. They needed someone to tell them that it's okay to be angry but depression is an awful disease and sometimes it kills you. 

That's not the victim's fault.