Chapter 43.

Dear Alex, 

Coffin sizes can be no wider than 76cm; can be made of chipboard with approved veneers and plastics for cremation purposes. Did you know that? 

Ferrous screws are acceptable in small numbers and wood braces will give extra strength but must only  be placed in the inside of the coffin.

The coffin must have the full name of the deceased on the lid. Wouldn’t want to get anyone mixed up I suppose. The thing that I really wished I hadn’t learned was that the coffin should be lined with a substance known as “Cremfilm,” or use absorbent cloth or cotton padding because apparently fluid can leak from a body. 

I didn’t know any of this. 

There were forms. Lots and lots of forms. Form A, B, C, F, and all the medical forms. No one mentioned anything about D and E. I didn’t know you needed so much proof to show you were dead, I thought the fact you’ve stopped living and breathing was a huge giveaway. Apparently not. 

I suppose it’s like going away to live in another country. Dad just had to get his papers ready, get dressed in his Sunday best, arrange his mode of transport, and off he went to his final destination, wherever that may be. Oh, how much Mum would have loved to have gone on this particular trip with him, but she knows she can’t. 

She just kept repeating to everyone at the funeral, “He just didn’t wake up, I called him and called him, but he wouldn’t wake up.” She hasn’t stopped shaking since it’s happened and she looks like she’s aged twenty years. Although she looks older, she seems younger. Like a lost little child who looks around her and doesn’t know where to go, like suddenly she’s in a whole new place and she doesn’t know the way. 

I suppose she is. I suppose we all are. 

I’ve never been here before. I’m thirty-six years old and I’ve never lost anyone close to me. I’ve been to ten funerals in my life and they were of distant relatives, friends of friends and family of friends whom my life is none the worse off without. 

But Dad going? God, that’s a big one. 

He was only sixty-six years old. Not old at all. And he was healthy. 

What causes a healthy sixty-six-year-old man to fall asleep and never wake up? I can only comfort myself with thoughts that he saw something so beautiful that he just had to go. That’s the kind of thing Dad would do. 

There’s something completely unnerving about seeing your parents upset. I suppose it’s because they’re supposed to be the strong ones, but that’s not just it. Ever since people are kids they use their parents as some sort of measurement for how bad a situation is. When you fall on the ground really hard and you can’t figure out whether it hurts or not you look to your parents. If they look worried and rush toward you, you cry. If they laugh and smack the ground saying “Bold ground,” then you pick yourself up and get on with it. 

When you find out you’re pregnant and feel numb of all emotions you look at their expressions. When both your mum and dad hug you and tell you it’s going to be OK and that they’ll support you, you know it’s not the end of the world. But depending on the parents, it could have been pretty damn close. 

Parents are the barometers of emotions for children and it has a domino effect. I had never seen my mum cry so much in all of my life which scared me and made me cry which scared Katie and made her cry. We all cried together. 

As for Dad, he was supposed to live forever. The one who could open all the jar lids nobody else could, who fixed whatever was broken, was supposed to do that forever. The man who let me sit on his shoulders, climb on his back, chase me around while making monster noises, throw me in the air and catch me, spin me around so much until I felt dizzy and fell over laughing. 

And in the end without being able to say thank you and a proper goodbye, my final memories of him turn into coffin sizes and medical forms. 

I’m still over in Galway with Mum. In the wild, wild West. But it’s a beautiful summer and it doesn’t feel quite right. The atmosphere doesn’t suit the mood, there’s the sound of children’s laughter floating up from the beach down below, there are birds singing and dancing around the sky, swooping low and catching their fresh meals from the sea. It doesn’t feel right to love the world and see such brightness when something so awful has happened. 

It’s like hearing gurgling babies echoing in the church at the funeral. 

There’s nothing more uplifting than to hear the sound of an innocent child being so happy in a place that people are sad. It reminds you that life goes on and on and on, just not for the one you’re saying good-bye to. People come and people go and we know this happens, yet we get such a shock when it does. To use that old cliché, the only certainty in life is death. It’s a certainty, it’s the one condition of living that we’re given but we often let it tear us apart. 

I don’t know what to do or say to Mum to make her feel better; I don’t suppose there really is anything that would accomplish that but watching her crying to herself all day tears me apart. I can hear her pain in her tears. 

 Maybe she’ll just run out of tears. 

Alex you’re a heart doctor. You know the heart literally inside and out, what is there you can do when someone’s heart has broken? Have you any cures for that? 

Thanks for coming over to the funeral, it was so good to see you. It was just a shame that it was under these circumstances. It was good of your parents to come too, Mum really did appreciate it. Thanks for getting rid of what’s-his-name too; I really wasn’t in the mood to have any discussions with him at the church. It was good of him to come but if Dad had seen him he would have leaped out of that coffin and thrown what’s-his-name in his place instead. 

Stephanie and Kevin headed home a few days ago but I’m going to stay on for a little while longer. I just can’t leave Mum alone. The neighbors are being so good to her I know she will be in good hands when I do finally leave. I’ve missed all my exams and by the sounds of things I’ll have to repeat the entire final year if I do want to complete the course. I don’t think I could be bothered doing it all over again. 

Anyway I’ll have to go home in a few days as no doubt the bills have been piling up in my post box since the day I left. I really need to get back before they cut everything off and evict me. 

Thanks for being there for me once again Alex, but it’s so typical of us for a tragedy to finally get us together.  

Love, 

Rosie

                                                                                                   (c) Cecelia Ahern  "Where Rainbows End".