Growing Up and Finding Her

Ryan’s Funeral Home came several blocks later. The front entrance opened right onto the sidewalk. They walked into a small lobby that was filled with the aroma of freshly cut flowers. Everything was hushed. A small man left an office, approached Bill, and whispered something. Brad saw a little stand next to a door with a book on it. He tugged on his mother’s skirt to ask what it was for, but she brushed his hand away, her face frozen on the doorway. Bill motioned for her to go in. Brad stayed at her side as she stepped into a long narrow room. At the far end were two funny lamps that aimed their light onto the ceiling. They were surrounded with flowers that framed a low rectangular box with a kneeler in front of it. After they took a few more steps, Brad could see Bobby inside the container. “Bobby!” His mother’s scream pierced Brad’s ears. His head flinched as if Mike Smith had just brushed him back with a fastball. His whole body trembled as the name echoed through the room. “Bobby!” his mother screamed again. Brad didn’t know what to do. He grabbed for his mother’s skirt once more, but she pulled away, running to the casket and throwing herself on the kneeler. She screamed Bobby’s name several more times before burying her head in her arms and sobbing uncontrollably. Brad was shaking, his eyes searching. He needed someone to assure his six-year-old mind that the world wasn’t coming to an end at that moment. But everyone had their eyes on the body in the casket. His father looked stunned. Grandma put her arm around Mildred and cried too. All the wailing coursed through Brad’s body in waves, and he edged away, looking for something, anything, to hold onto. He saw only flowers. His feet were stuck in plush carpeting, and his hands could only find a home in his pant pockets. Although Mildred’s screaming had stopped, the echo reverberated inside his head. Then other people began arriving, lots and lots of other people. That was when Brad first heard the litany that wouldn’t end for the rest of his mother’s life. How sweet Bobby was. How clever. Smart. Pretty, absolutely beautiful. So much potential. So buoyant. Vivacious. Outgoing. The litany was as tedious as the ones the priests chanted during Lent, except that it wasn’t limited to any season. It continued during the wake, during the funeral, and during the weekly visits to the cemetery. Eventually, Mildred would fill a scrapbook and hang a colorized portrait on the living-room wall as an altar to Bobby. She would drag Brad to one Mass after another in his sister’s memory, so that he was constantly reminded of how wonderful Bobby had been. The perfect child. Now she was gone. He couldn’t comprehend the pain and sorrow his parents were feeling, but they were just as oblivious to the way their grief was harming the son they had left. No one ever said it, but to Brad the message was as clear as a sunrise. Too bad it was Bobby, not Bradley, who had died. Several hours later, when no one was looking, Brad slowly approached the casket by himself. By now he knew the procedure. Kneel down, make the sign of the cross, and look at the body. Everybody was right; Bobby did look the best he had ever seen her. She sported a pink silk outfit even more impressive than his two-pant, vested suit. She appeared to be dreaming of the flowers that surrounded her body. Her lips were curled into an angelic smile which proved, his mother had said, that she was in heaven. A silver cross decorated the far side of the casket. That cross, along with the colorized picture, would have a prominent place at the living room altar. Still more people came. Women cried, and men looked as if they had gotten speeding tickets on the way there. Brad felt as miserable as they looked, although he didn’t know why. Mr. Ryan noticed, though, and gave him a small plastic jack-in-the-box. He gave a cousin one too, and they found an alcove where they could amuse themselves. No one paid any attention to them as long as they didn’t make any noise. Brad played with the toy for a while, but he got bored and went back to center stage where one of his uncles was escorting a visitor to the casket. The uncle knelt with the visitor, then presented her to Mildred. Brad decided that this escorting business would help kill time, so he joined in, taking a small corner of the kneeler that no one else wanted, as each new visitor knelt with his uncle. No one noticed that he was along, but he didn’t care whether they did or not. He was an escort too, just like his uncle. After ushering one shirttail relative from Joliet to the casket, he lingered and listened to his mother talk to a third cousin, several times removed. “She went so fast.” Mildred clutched a fistful of tear-soaked tissue and dabbed her reddened eyes. “One day she was as healthy as can be, and the next day she was gone.” Cousin nodded in sympathy. Mildred appreciated the nod and pulled the cousin closer. “I hate to say this and maybe I shouldn’t, but they were very rude at St. Luke’s.” Her eyes hardened with every word. Brad noticed a look in her face that he had never seen before. He would later label it as hate. Doctors would give it a more technical name. “I came back from getting something to eat, and the nurse said everything would be all right. I thought Bobby had recovered, but then the nurse said that a priest was giving Bobby extreme unction. ‘What!’ I said. Can you believe how cruel some people can be? Here Bobby was dying, and that nurse was telling me that she’d be okay. Those hospital people just don’t care. Not one bit.” Mildred’s eyes stayed cold and distant. The far-removed cousin kept nodding agreement. Brad would hear that story fifty times during the next few days, and each time his mother’s expression hardened as she told it. Then it would soften again as she reminded everyone of how great and beautiful his sister had been. Finally, the day ended. What was left of the family climbed back into the Plymouth for the short trip back to Grandma’s. Two more days. If his mother screamed again tomorrow, Brad didn’t know what he was going to do. He dreamt about the scream that night. It drilled into his sleeping eardrums over and over and over.