Chapter Seven: Leavetaking. The funeral guest should keep in mind that mourners have just put in a full eight-hour day of public grieving. Lingering is inappropriate. Suggestions for future lunch dates are best kept to another time. One to two sets of hugging, cheek-kissing, and I’m-so-sorry-ing is the standard culturally observed norm; more than that is excess. Take heed when the funeral home stops playing sad, sad organ music. This is generally a leavetaking cue.
I wander around the funeral home waiting for the last stragglers to leave so I can go home and get Austin settled. I extract my phone and send Royce a message. “I’ve missed your Buddha belly.” He sends one back. “The lucky Buddha’s missed you.” I write, “Thanks for the flowers. I used to only get them after sex.” Royce responds, “I could bring you roses in the morning.” I put my phone away and go over to the coffin. The Grief Bubble, which had gotten less sticky as I messaged Royce, circles back over me like a veil. I stand over Aunt May and wonder who selected the pink satin coffin liner. At least they didn’t put her in a pink satin dress. Aunt May wears a nice pantsuit which is neither pastel nor polyester. Then I study her body. The caved-in jaw from cancer surgery. The gnarled hands. The short legs beneath the half-open coffin. She looks doughy, too soft, which is strange since she’s probably in rigor mortis. I think again that this isn’t my aunt. This isn’t May.
“She was my family,” my dad says, putting his arm around me. “She raised me.” He pats my hair like I’m a kid and it feels nice.
“I know,” I say. “I know, Daddy.”
Mom comes over and stands beside Dad. They hold hands. Charlotte and Austin walk up. Nate ushers the last straggler out then takes the empty spot in front of the coffin. He picks up Austin. “Do you want to say goodbye to Aunt May?” Nate asks.
Austin doesn’t answer. I don’t think he wants to. I don’t think any of us do.
Walter leaves three turds on my bedroom floor. “Thanks for that,” I tell him. I flush the turds, wash my hands, and go back to my room. I’ve just gotten Austin to bed and Walter’s asleep on my pillow. He lifts his head then settles it back down on his front paws. I’m trying to decide what to wear to Royce’s. Black panties—morbid or sexy? Charlotte knocks and sticks her head in my bedroom.
“I brought you some tea,” she says. She sets a mug on my dresser.
I sit down and pet Walter. He opens one eye then goes back to sleep. Charlotte sits beside me. “Can you listen for Austin tonight?” I ask. This shouldn’t be too much of an imposition since Charlotte’s sleeping in his top bunk bed.
“Of course,” she says.
I lift Walter, pillow and all, to the other side of me in case he wakes up and decides to get cranky. “I think I might have inherited a dog,” I say.
“Maybe you could get on that dog whispering show.” Charlotte stretches her legs out on the bed and leans back on her elbows. She opens her mouth to say something else, but just then a scream from Austin’s room rips through the air. We both jump up and run in.
Austin sits with a rigid spine and screams and screams. It sounds like he’s just been stabbed. “Baby, what’s wrong?” I climb in bed and pull him into my arms. Charlotte sits and massages Austin’s feet.
Austin stops screaming. He sobs instead. I don’t know which is worse. “It’s Skeletor,” he says. His body shakes.
“How do you know about Skeletor?” I don’t let him watch that crap.
“Dad and I watched it.” Austin’s face is red. His lip trembles and his hair sticks on his forehead in sweaty strips. He clutches his Batman comforter in both hands. “Skeletor’s coming to take me. He said so.”
I smooth his hair, kiss the top of his head. I rub his back and straighten his blue pajamas.
“Skeletor’s just pretend,” Charlotte says. “He’s a drawing. He can’t hurt you.”
Austin shakes his head. “He’s coming.”
I rock him back and forth, back and forth. His small body collapses my Grief Bubble and I’m flooded with the sharp pain of today until my chest literally hurts. Or maybe the Grief Bubble doesn’t collapse. Maybe my Grief Bubble and Austin’s merge.
Epilogue: It is the bereaved’s ultimate challenge and responsibility to comfort fellow bereaved persons. Especially if the fellow bereave-ee is your son.
“Don’t let him take me,” Austin says. He clings to my waist.
I hold Austin’s face in my hands. “No one’s taking you. I promise.” I hug him and cry into his hair. His small body shakes against mine; mine against his. We fit tightly together, me and this body that was once part of my own.
Charlotte and I stay with Austin until everyone calms down. We put him in pajamas with Transformers on them since Transformers can beat up Skeletor any day of the week. We sing songs and read an old picture book that’s too easy and drink warm milk and finally Austin falls asleep. I smooth his hair one last time and Charlotte and I slip back to my room.
I close the door, softly, and lean against it. “Thanks for helping,” I say. I’m shaken. My phone’s blinking on the dresser and I sit down on the bed to read a message from Royce. “This little Buddha’s ready to be enlightened.”
Charlotte picks up the now-cold mug of tea. “That’s why I’m here,” she says. Then she sets the tea down. “If you need to go see Royce, I can take care of Austin if he wakes up.”
Part of me wants to run out the door. To be anywhere but here, thinking of anything but death and burials and Skeletor. I stand up. “How does anyone ever figure this out?” I ask.
Charlotte shakes her head. “There are no rules,” she says.
I pick up my tea and we pass Austin’s room, walking down the hall to the microwave in the kitchen. There are no rules, except that sometimes there are.