management

since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you
--e.e. cummings

I avoided funerals for a very long time. I had a good excuse. Dad took 10 years to die of ALS and before he died Mom had Alzheimer's disease. For a long time I hid from death and its trappings. In my cowardice I avoided funerals in particular. It wasn't the reminder of death that scared me, I think, but the intimation of my own enormous grief, waiting patiently for me to finish my dance, my drink, my long rationalization, waiting to enfold me in its inevitable arms.

When Dad died he was in many ways a stranger in town. He wasn't capable emotionally of maintaining many friends. The emotional strains of intimacy and the ensuing analysis of others motivations made it a painful adventure for him. I assumed his funeral would be a small, almost secret affair. What I failed to understand was that my mother and I had brought many people into his world. Those people came and sat with us, showing up for a ceremony that allowed us to close Dad's book. What I expected to be a lonely exercise was about community and appreciation. Even the old veteran with his bugle, who apologized for muffing a note in Taps, cared for us that day.

While I can write about them, I am not very successful in managing my emotions. This is because, I believe, emotions happen first. If we're centered, we sit with our emotions and learn from them, decide what they mean, and perhaps what we need. I've always been an "emotional optimist." It won't be that bad. I'll be fine. See! I'm fine! This isn't bothering me that much at all. Then, a few days later, something hits me like a baseball bat, an assault in the dark and, surprise! My feelings are what they are and I can't manage them. I'm not the only person who has to learn this lesson over and over again, and thus I make a tidy living.

A 16 year old girl dropped dead this week. She was a classmate of Walker's and we have seen her around since Walker was 5 years old. Katlyn was athletic, smart, and genuinely decent. The autopsy was inconclusive. She just died.

I had really planned to avoid her funeral, and did, but my daughter, another Caitlin, asked me to go with her. "It won't be that bad," I thought. . . .

I must say that this was the most emotionally ravaging viewing I have ever attended. After about an hour of standing in line with the entire community, looking at pictures and mementos of this beautiful, vital young woman, we came to her family. They had learned to intercept the conversation and thank us for coming before we could speak, sparing them more memories when they were trying to hang together. They were almost not in their own bodies. The word "devastated" is overused. The casket was open and I won't describe its contents except to say that the contrast with our memories, with the photos, was stark. Punch in the stomach. Hit by a truck, a mudslide, a tidal wave. We winced and moved as fast as we could toward the door.

Yesterday morning I was gripped with overwhelming anxiety over things that don't amount to much. I felt horrible, guilty, angry at myself for saying something minor the night before, all out of proportion to the "crime," which really didn't exist and was easily remedied. After about two hours of misery, it began to dawn on me that I was familiar with this "trip." The dance of deferred emotion, the contrived incident followed by all out of proportion guilt and self admonishment.

I'm sorry that you died, kid. I'm sorry you had the same name as my daughter and dropped dead for no reason. I'm sorry I felt relieved that it was you and not my child lying there, a husk, a corpse that no amount of make up could remediate. I'm sorry that I shied away from your parents visceral pain and rushed for the door gripping my daughter's hand. I'm sorry I don't know your family well enough to do more than show up, witness their pain and run for the parking lot. It was what I could do. I showed up. I can't get them out of my head.