I was, like so many times before it, smashed amongst four people on the front bench of the white pickup. I don't recall now if we had seat belts, but I don't know how we could have been buckled, crammed in the way we were. To my right was my childhood best friend and her little brother, to my left their father. He drove us south on 135 and as we passed German American Park on the left, he rested his big hand on my left knee and said, "You okay, kid?"I felt the late May heat on his palm through the yellow flowered fabric of my dress.
I don't recall what I said. It was probably the first of many lies I told to make other people feel comfortable around me. I may have offered a much too enthusiastic "Yeah!" or "Sure!" if I remember my six year old self at all. But I was not okay. Maybe an hour before he asked, I had learned that my father had died. Whisked away by family friends so my mother could "make arrangements," it was my first realization that my life made other people very nervous.
Growing up, most kids ignored the fact of my dead father with purpose. No one wants to talk about that, and no one wants to face the reality that parents can die. If my dad could die, so could their dad. I remember one day in the first or second grade when a boy in my class said a family had to consist of a mother and a father. "Mine doesn't," I said, indignant that he wouldn't classify my mom and I as a family. But then I felt badly for not recognizing my deceased father as a part of my family, and amended with, "Your dad could die, I mean." The kid cried, and I got in trouble.
In high school, I lost another important man. My mom's best friend, whom she had chosen as my god father, died from complications with diabetes. I had a show that night, and had to be ready to dance and sing just a few hours after hearing of his death. When I came in, it was obvious to one of the cast members that I had been crying. I told him what happened and he repeated an old theatre mantra: "Leave you shit at the door." While he did hug me, he added on, "No one wants to hear about that. This is a Christmas show. Don't tell the cast. It'll bring the show down."
In the midst of my divorce, I was describing the reasons I had left to a friend I'd had for literally ten years. He looked pained, and replied with, "Well is that reason enough to leave? That sounds a lot like my partner and I." I said, "Well, then maybe you should leave too." Again, I reminded people of what could be. I didn't hear from him much after that.
A year ago this week, my mother died. I can't tell you how many times since then I have heard my peers say, "I can't imagine" or "I can't even think about my mom dying." I silently respond with, "You should try. You're going to have to do this one day." When I thank my husband for sticking with me, for being eternally supportive, for listening to me cry and scream, I stop short of saying, "You know I'll do this for you one day, right?"
And in April of this year, I lost my adoptive father. With him, I also lost one of the only people I have ever met who had a realistic understanding of loss. He was actually the director of the musical that opened the night my god father died. When he found out a week later what had happened, he was furious. "Why didn't you tell us?!" he asked. I reminded him of the old adage: Leave your shit at the door. "That's for people who can't deal with shit," he spat out. We spent the next hour sitting outside the stage door, talking about our losses in life. We talked about the people we missed desperately, and we laughed about awkward funerals. I had never been able to speak openly with anyone about these things. When I'd tried, I'd been cast as macabre, inconsiderate. That time I got in trouble for speaking the truth about my dead father, and the nature of the world, in school. Et cetera.
But not with that man. That conversation changed our relationship. And twelve years after having it, I was counted among the immediate family, the primary bereaved, when he died. And there is one less person who gets it.
A year ago this evening, I stood in a funeral home and vacillated between bereaved and comforter, hosting and then being catered to. As I stood with my mother's body laying in the background, my former in-laws walked in. Seeing them, my breath caught in my chest. When I had married their son, I had really been marrying them. So many times I was comforted knowing that when my last relative died, my mother, at least I would have them. And here I was, standing in a room with my dead mother lying in the front, and I didn't know if it was okay to hug them. It was one of the loneliest moments of my life.
They walked up to me, and my former mother-in-law gave me an awkward hug, and said she was sorry. But my father-in-law, true to his sweet, giving, loving nature, embraced me, but really embraced me. In my ear, he asked, "You okay, kid?"Suddenly I was back in that white truck, sandwiched between my friend and her father, his hand on the hem of my favorite yellow sun dress. To bring myself back to the present, I shot my eyes down to remind myself that I was not wearing that little yellow flowered thing. I was wearing my current favorite dress, a black sun dress. Had the years of loss and suppressing them for other people changed me from someone who had a favorite dress in yellow to someone who had a favorite dress in black? Does that happen to other people as they make their way through life, or did all of this really fuck me up along the way?
I pulled away from this man who had been my family and said "No. But I will be." It was one of the first times I was openly honest about my grief. I would not lie this time. I would tell people that I was not okay. I was a black dress wearer now. In a surge of pain, I figured I would embrace it.
"I like your sweater," he said. "It was always one of my favorites when you wore it." He winked at me and they left. I looked at my arms, crossed tightly in front of me, and realized that I had shielded the chill of the funeral home with a pale yellow cardigan.
