The Walk Of A Pallbearer

I look at my mother and exhale loudly, hoping to find some sort of relief before I open the door.  I pull the handle and step into the chilly Ohio day.  The frosty grass crunches beneath my shoes.  It's a dreary day.  Gray and gusty, the kind of days I normally like.  Not today.

***

It's slightly warmer than usual in St. Louis.  The sun is up and it's a picture-perfect day  I decide to go for a run around the city.  I run up Washington Avenue, head toward Busch Stadium and then loop through the Expansion Park and under the Arch.  I'm feeling pretty good, so I decide to do a few repeats on the stairs by the Mississippi.  I always like doing stairs because people watch me and look flabergasted that someone would willingly run up and down several flights of stairs.  I enjoy the attention.  I'm a narcissist.

I head back toward my apartment.  I enter the lobby and get on the elevator, drenched in sweat.  I go up 29 floors and head to 2902.  I take a drink of water and walk to my room to get ready for a shower.  My phone rings.  It's my dad.  A slight pang of terror surges through my body.  "This is it" I say to myself.  I hesitate to answer the call.  "Hello?  Dad?"

***

The smell of winter weaves its way up my nostrils as I walk toward the hearse with my brother and my dad.  It's not quite spring in the north east.  Cold air bites at my lungs which had adjusted to the warm air of the car.  The pallbearers gather behind the hearse and listen to the funeral director's instructions.  I couldn't tell you who else was there besides my uncle, my brother, my father and me.  The whole scene is like a distant, faded memory.  It's an old photo that you find in a shoebox from a different lifetime.  It's not that it was long ago, it's that I'm struggling to get through the moment.  Fighting for every second.  As a natural defense mechanism, I remove myself from the reality of the day and watch the event as if I'm a bird flying over head, unaware of the situation unfolding below.

The funeral director opens the back of the hearse and rolls out the casket.  We each take our places on either side.  I grab the pall, lock eyes with my dad, and grit my teeth.  I can see my breath while I exhale the remaining courage out of my body.

***

I hang up the phone.  The only thing I can summon the strength to do is stare out of my bedroom window.  Staring at the trees, the bricks and mortar, the grass, the steel, the river, the Arch, gravity strikes me.  Taking a few steps backward, I find my bed and sit on the corner.  My eyes are still locked on some distant object outside my window.  My hands find there way on to my face and my palms sink in to my eye sockets.  I can't imagine the pain that my father is experiencing.  The conversation replays in my mind, echoing endlessly.

"Bopaw passed away last night."  Looking for something to hold on to, something to grasp, I focus on the strength in my dad's voice.  Amazingly, he still has some.  Thankfully, I find it and latch on to it.  I need it.  The conversation continues.  He explains how it happened, where he was, what he was doing.  He can describe it down to every painful detail.  This is his personal Kennedy assassination.  His own September eleventh.  Cancer.  It's a mother fucker.

I try to be strong.  He can see through my facade.  He calls me out as he passes the phone to my grandmother.  "He's crying, mom."

***

We begin walking. carrying the weight of an entire lifetime in the casket.  It's lighter than I expected, but the duty of our jobs is infinitely heavy.  It weighs down on our arms and bones.  We march on.

***

Travel arrangements are made.  My mom picks me up on her way from Omaha.  We talk gossip, girls, headlines, love, love lost, and family.  The farther east we drive, the deeper the temperature drops.  The climate changes.  I stare through my reflection and watch the fields and trees go by my window.  Hours later, we arrive at the hotel and meet up with my brother and my dad.  We head over to my grandmother's house.  She's doing better than I thought she would.  We catch up and share stories.  Before we head back to the hotel we stop at a grocery store and buy some vodka, rum and various mixers.  We all watch TV and have a few drinks before bed.  

The next day, we go to the wake.  We show up a little early.  I struggle with approaching the casket.  I do it anyway.  We all walk up as a family to see my grandfather.  My grandmother brushes his hair with her hand and holds his face.  "He never did look right with his teeth in," she manages.  Normally, that would garner a laugh out of me.  In this context, it is heart breaking.                             

***

During the walk from the hearse to the service, my uncle accidentally catches the back of my foot with his shoe.  I stumble a little.  A sudden terror of tripping waves over me.  The feeling subsides as my next step finds the ground.  I focus on not falling for the remainder of the walk on the uneven ground.  It seems like we traveled the distance of a marathon.  In reality, it was more like 40 feet.  During the trip, I realize what I'm doing.  I'm carrying my grandfather, Bopaw, to his final resting place.  We have been entrusted with a precious duty.  Carrying my father's father to the location he will be for the rest of time.  The unbearable finality of the act places its weight firmly on my shoulders.        

***

People started arriving at the funeral home for the service.  I roamed the room, examining the pictures and keepsakes.  A strange thing happened that day.  My dad would introduce me to other people there, "this is my son, Robert, he's named after dad."  I knew I was named after him, but it wasn't of much consequence until then.  I felt like I had a responsibility now.  A name to protect.  Expectations to live up to.  A memory to carry on.  People continued filing in to the room and we took our seats.  There was a small service and then we left.  We went to my grandmother's house and ate, shared more stories, and talked about Bopaw.  We head back to our hotel. The funeral is tomorrow.

My alarm woke me up abrasively.  We went to Nana's house where we met my uncle and then we drove to the cemetery.  The car slowly rolled to a stop.  This was the day no one was looking forward to.  I kept thinking that I don't know how to be a pallbearer.  It seems too big of a responsibility for some one who's in their 20s.  I take in a deep breath, filling my lungs with warm air before I step out of the car.  I lift my head and look out the windshield.  It's a dreary day.  Gray and gusty, the kind of day I normally like.