O, Death!

Sorry about the melodrama inherent in this post. And for how long it is. And how unedited most of it is. And for how long it took me to write it. Sorry all around.

...

I was procrastinating Friday.

I was throwing a party the next night and my place was a hole. I wanted to clean up before people came over, but I'd been putting it off all week, and still didn't have the energy or desire to do it. I called Becca instead.

Now, I hate the phone. I really do. Conversation is more difficult when you can't see someone, because you can't read context as well. On top of that, I'm one of those suckahs who decided that they didn't need a real phone, so I'm stuck with a cell phone I can barely hear on. Because of all those things, I don’t tend to talk on the phone for very long.

But she picked up the phone and we were off. Conversations with her tend to become enveloping, and we talked that night for two, three hours. Her thoughts are graceful and freewheeling and we bounced around, relaxed. We hit on a little bit of everything: the glory of sweatbands, the relative merits of showers vs. baths, ugly people, writing, politics, Scandinavia, a certain tragic drunk dialing incident.

It was…nice. One of those sessions that make you forget whatever irksome quirks or idiosyncrasies another person may have, like loud eating or the occasionally dysfunctional gastrointestinal track.

When we wound down, I hung up, stretched my arms over my head, and, without having cleaned so much as a crusty sink, headed upstairs. I went to sleep maybe not happy, considering I had so much to do the next day, but certainly content, and the sleep of the content is a damn sight better than the restlessness of the bored or depressed.

One town over and a little earlier, sometime during the middle third of our conversation, a 17-year-old was stabbed in the chest by another 17-year-old.

I didn't know him -- I'd never met him, never seen him, never heard his name -- and I don't know many of the details surrounding what happened. I guess a car full of guys started screwing with him and some of his friends, and, some point later, they started fighting. This kid got stabbed in the chest, and another got stabbed in the leg, both by the same guy. The kid was dead on arrival at Albany Memorial.

I didn't hear anything about it until Monday morning. I had the TV on after I got out of the shower, and the news people were all over the story, given its shock value and the fact that it was the first killing in that town, Rensselaer, in 12 years. I was only half-listening, though, because I was having a hard time finding a pair of matching socks, so it pretty quickly flew out of my mind.

I got to work late, but my boss got there even later. Along with my coworker, who was at my little party, we gave him shit for bagging on us on Saturday. After a few minutes, he said, "Oh, Jesus, I can't believe I forgot this. We had some bad news over the weekend."

'We had some bad news' was the way my Dad always prefaced conversations when he had to tell us about someone falling ill or one of our dogs dying. It’s just one of those phrases that catch in your mind.

“Don’t know if you guys heard.” My boss told us that the son of this guy who works with us "was killed on Friday. He got stabbed in the chest on some street in Rensselaer."

(Incidentally, you're gonna have to forgive me for all the "this guy"s and "that kid"s in this. I don't want to say their names because, well, I just don't want to, and fake names sound stupid.)

I didn't really know the dad at all. He was well known, and better liked, but we'd never really said much more than "Hi" or "How's it going" to one another in passing. Our paths just didn't cross all that often.

Tuesday, my boss told me that the funeral would be the following day. I didn't know whether or not I should go. I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable and wasn’t sure if he wanted strangers there. But when it came time and I saw everyone from the office going, I decided to go, too.

We all walked to the bus stop together under a gunmetal grey sky and through light drizzle, the weather stereotypically fitting for a funeral. We got on the bus together and a stop or two later, at the Armory, a man in an unwieldy looking motorized wheelchair got on.

He was wearing a puffed out grey camouflage jacket and a pair of old black pants, which he wore baggy in an effort, it seemed, to hide his atrophied legs. All he wanted to do was talk. "Goddamn," he said to my boss. "This weather! Y'know we're supposed to get another, like, six inches of snow tonight? Not easy to drive one of these babies around in that," he said as he stroked the black metal wheelchair.

"Yeah," my boss said, trying to pivot out of the conversation. "Sure does suck. Sounds like it's gonna get nasty."

The guy in the wheelchair nodded and looked us up and down. We were the only ones dressed in shirts and ties on the bus and he asked my boss what he does.

"I'm a writer."

"Oh yeah? What sort of stuff do you write?"

"Nothing all that exciting -- releases, talking points, stuff like that."

"Huh. Must be good money in that, though."

"It's not too bad," my boss said, the inflection in his voice suggesting it wasn’t too bad at all.

"Must be nice. Seems like there’re some decent opportunities up here. I moved up here a few years ago. I grew up in this little town upstate. Nothing to do there but hang out at bars."

He looked lovingly up and down the bus aisle. His teeth, hanging from his gums at 30 degree angles to one another, showed through his satisfied, wistful grin. "Man, no opportunity there. We had one bus this size for the entire county." He looked like he was genuinely pleased with his newish lot in life.

At that point, the bus pulled up in front of the church, and we got off. The church, Mt. Pleasant Baptist, looked slightly dilapidated, but intensely loved. There was fresh white siding in some places and rotting siding in others, as if they only had so much money, but wanted to do what they could. The stained glass windows weren't really stained glass so much as they were ordinary windows covered in orange, red, yellow and blue latex paint. The strangest feature was a brass Jewish star perched over the building, a remnant, I suppose, of when it's owners were likely something other than Baptist.

There were people everywhere in front, representing every demographic in the city. Some, like us, came from work wearing suits and ties; some came from school, wearing sweaters or homemade T-shirts saying "RIP" in a gothic font, with a picture of the kid, his date of birth, and date of death. Some obviously came from home, where they’d spent three-and-a-half days crying.

Their expressions and looks ran the gamut. One man looked like a poker player trying to conceal a hand. Another looked like a husband trying to save his marriage while struggling to keep from saying what he really feels. A lot simply had the contorted look of out and out grief.

I stood there for five, ten minutes, for the most part by myself, about five feet from the cop assigned to the church to keep traffic moving. Eventually, I walked past the church cornerstone, which said simply, “1902,” up the six or seven stairs, and into the church itself.

It was an hour before the service was due to start. Underneath the high tin ceiling, with its detailed engravings too fine to be seen in detail from the ground, were a few hundred people and one coffin, surrounded by a thousand flowers.

Some 20 or 30 people waited in the center aisle to pay their respects, and the line stretched halfway down the length of the church. I found my coworker and asked if she’d been up there. She said no, and we went together.

We waited in line for a minute and a half and didn’t say a word to one another. The whole time I was thinking in my head what I would say to the body in the coffin. This wasn’t meant to be moralizing or creative or preachy or anything like that. I don’t know. I think it’s natural.

At the same time, in retrospect, what went through my head sounds harsh and judgmental. “You fucked up,” my mind said to him. “Man, you fucked up bad.” And it kept repeating.

It wasn’t said mockingly; it was more out of awe at the whole thing. I mean, this whole thing was completely out of my realm of experience. I grew up in what is officially the safest place in America. If one of my friends had a knife, the rest of us would all kinda chuckle and point. There was no reason for it. I can’t figure out how you’d get stabbed.

Regardless, all thoughts I had evaporated when I got to the head of the line. As near as I can recall, I’d only seen two dead bodies in my life: my step-grandfather, who died in a hospice bed peacefully; and, from a distance, the body of a man, clad in turquoise sweatpants, who’d hung himself from a basketball net.

This was far worse. Up close, this boy looked more like a wax figure than something that had once breathed and ran and thought. Pumped up with chemicals, his body looked like it was rapidly losing its color, like it was still dying. His hair, laying perfectly on top his head, would never grow again.

But the worst things were his eyes. Man, those eyes. There were thick gobs of black where his eyelids met. They weren’t just closed; I think they were sewn shut. In all honesty, though, I’m not sure. It could’ve just been carelessly applied eye makeup. Whatever it was, sutures or mascara, I was disturbed and quickly walked away.

I don’t think I’d been to a funeral since Jenny Miller’s mom died back in high school, so all of it seemed new to me, bizarre and visceral. There were half a dozen women in starched, white nurses uniforms, complete with white stockings and paper hats. The only thing that signaled that they were church employees and not actual nurses were the crucifixes engraved in their nametags and the white cotton gloves they wore instead of the cold, inhuman rubber gloves you usually see.

One of the nurses waited at the end of the aisle to give comfort to those who’d just seen the body. She stood there, empathy showing on her face, holding nothing but a brown plastic tray with a box of tissues on it.

I walked past her and found my seat. I just wanted the damn thing to be over with, and there were still another 20 minutes or so before the funeral even officially started. To my right, another nurse was handing out programs, and I spent that time studying one.

The program was a Xerox of a Xerox, giving it a far-away, forgotten quality, like this had all happened long before. It was titled, “A Going Home Celebration.” Right in the middle was a photo of the boy. It looked to be a school photo. Head slightly cocked, shoulders pointing at the camera, the picture stared back at me with those same eyes, now wide-open and sharp as a slap. He looked like he had something to say.

For the life of me, I don’t know what it was, and the program, with its optimism-in-the-face-of-disaster mentality, didn’t offer any clues. His date of birth was listed as his “sunrise,” and his date of death was his “sunset”. The inside gave a brief synopsis of his life – noting that he enjoyed baseball and basketball – offered a brief poem, and then expressed how grateful the family was at all the kind thoughts and food that people had sent their way.

As I finished staring at the program, and as I began to crease it and play with it and run it through my sweaty hands, a line of people entered the door. One of the preachers led the way, and as they began to walk in, he yelled, “All rise for the family procession.”

He started chanting, something about Jesus and rebirth and trees. To be totally honest, I remember next to nothing about anything said during the ceremony, and this is no exception. One thing I do remember, though, is the kid’s mother, who followed shortly after the preacher.

She was wearing a blue dress, something she could’ve gone out to a party in, and dark sunglasses. But her knees were bent awkwardly like each step was a squat thrust, like she had an Olympian’s barbell over head. There was a person on either side of her, simultaneously giving support and dragging her down the aisle. No words came out of her mouth; just long, painful syllables.

Some 30 people followed her in. Some scrambled for seats while the rest took the opportunity to view the body. By that point, though, most seats were gone and people were left to stand in the aisles.

Tears were the only demographic constant. The more people who filed in, the more there were. Big tears, little tears, stoic tears, and tears that escaped despite efforts to keep them at bay.

At one point, I could’ve sworn that this huge woman was using a Chrysanthemum, wilted and as sad as she was, to wipe them away, but it was just another Kleenex from one of the nurses.

A few minutes later, another procession of male family members filed in, this time from the back, and led by the boy’s father. As pained as the mother was, he was aggressive, stalking up the aisle like a boxer entering the ring.

This was the most incongruous part of the ceremony. Once the family settled in as best they could, the gospel choir fired up.

It seemed so totally out of place, like they’d been misbooked. They sang a couple songs throughout the service – all relentlessly upbeat, all giving thanks to Jesus, all accompanied by an organist and drummer.

I just couldn’t see it – what there was to celebrate at a funeral, what there was to be thankful for. All I could see was devastation. I looked over at the pew across from me and saw two teenage boys. One wore one of the RIP t-shirts. A miniature silver hand grenade hung like a period from a necklace around his neck as he cried through angry eyes. His neighbor, wearing a black t-shirt clapped and sang with the music.

Like I mentioned, I remember next to nothing about what was said during the ceremony. The speakers touched on the tragedy of the situation, and emphasized how none of us can afford to be trapped in cyclical retribution. The occasional “Amen!” or “That’s right!” or “Praise Jesus!” from the congregants punctuated their words.

And, within an hour or so, it was over. Everyone stood up, and the pallbearers marched to the front to pick up their cargo. I couldn’t see them through all the people, but I could tell when they’d left because people started filing out.

Since none of us had a car there, we decided to not go to the burial, and instead walked back to work. The one word that everyone through about, as if it had any meaning, was “senseless.” It was a much shorter walk than I would’ve guessed, but it seemed to take much longer than it should have.

Under the sleeting sky, with chunks of rain and snow smothering all color, every thought that wasn’t directly related to death or dying was pushed from my head. I thought an entire universe in those 20 minutes – life, death, birth, destruction, my grandparents, my parents.

But I kept coming back to the eyes. Kid’s eyes. Sewn shut to keep out the sunlight and the dirt forever. They seemed to fit so perfectly in his face, which you could tell was in transit from the cherubic face of a young teen to the hardened face of a man. I still see them now, a week later, as clear as my mother’s face.

Our roads split like a highway junction the previous Friday night. With a phone call, I realized what there was to love about life: the people in it. With a knife wound to the chest, this boy lost his.

Posted by albanydan at February 04, 2002 04:21 PM