When it’s not okay, but then it is…

This tells the story of receiving bad news and how different family members processed the grief. Triggers include parent death, grief, self-harm

Resources linked below.

When I got home from work and pulled into the driveway, I was thinking about how I could dedicate some time after dinner to learning the names of my students and doing seating charts for the school year. I only minimally noticed the police cruiser in front of the house. There was a known drug house in the neighborhood so figured he was watching them from our place. I collected my work accouterments: school bag, lunchbox, keys, and pocketbook to head for the front door barely balancing to get through the two doors to the house. I put my bag next to my seat in the living room where I would spend my evenings after today–the second day of school until June– reading papers and planning lessons for the high school students I taught. 

I said hello to my father who was visiting from Florida and put my dirty lunch dishes in the sink.

After a few moments, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find a white police officer from our city. He was sweaty, broad shouldered, balding, and his voice gruff. Typical.

He started with excuse me ma’am, which put me off right there because at twenty-six I certainly didn’t feel like a ma'am, and he proceeded to ask about my mother and confirm where she lived. I said, “uh, yeah, yeah she does live there.”

And immediately I felt cold despite the heat of summer that still blazed in this late August afternoon. I asked if everything was ok, he asked me to please call this number and that he couldn’t give any more information than that. He implored, “please just call the number” and he wiped his hand on his navy blue slacks then handed me slip of paper with a number on it. 

“Whose  is it?”

“It’s the police department.”

“But you’re the police departme…” My mouth went numb. I could say nothing more. My stomach felt filled with ice water and the chill settled there. 

I’d been here before, waiting for bad news. I knew I’d likely outlive my sister, but I didn’t think it would be so soon. My sister had been tragically close to death for several years by this time, wrapped up and warped in her addiction and assorted mental health diagnoses. I hoped I was wrong.

I went inside, told my dad briefly about the situation, then dialed the number, gave my name, and asked for Sgt. William Cottam, getting him on the line. He said the police were with my mother at her apartment. And asked if I was alone.

“What is it?”

He asked again, “Are you alone?”

“No,” I said, my dad is here with me. My ribcage felt hollow, brittle, somehow. I was crushed that I’d have to tell him his other daughter is dead. My dad stood beside me waiting. He was chewing the side of his thumb nail, though it wasn’t a usual habit. 

“Anyone else there with you?”

“What is it? Just tell me what it is,” I said forcefully, gritting my teeth for emphasis but also to brace myself for the news I knew was surely coming. 

“I’m here with your mom,” he began, then corrected, “I'm at your mother’s apartment.”

“You’re there now?” I asked not understanding that I’d called the police officer and not the police department itself. 

“Yes. Did your mom have any health problems that you know of?”

“Yes, yes, she had asthma, she used oxygen, why is she alright?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but she has passed away.”

My legs gave out, my dad caught me under my arm, and I sunk into the dining room chair. I am sure I said something dumb, like “Oh my god, really?” but I don’t remember. I immediately covered my mouth as if to keep my own life in.

I remember my dad’s face. His eyes immediately filled and one tear slid down his cheek only getting part way down before he wiped it off. My parents had divorced twenty-five years earlier, and I know now that my dad’s sadness was for me, my last sister, and for him all at once.

After listening to me cry and relay the information to my dad verbally, the officer went on, “Looks like she didn’t wake up this morning. Her neighbor called the landlord when she couldn’t reach her for their morning chat. But there are a lot of medicines here.”

“Yeah, she had a lot of things wrong with her.”

“You got that right,” my dad cracked, and nudged me with his elbow.

I cried harder and half-laughed at that because it was true, but also because he was an asshole for saying it at that moment–Somehow not cool to talk ill of the dead, especially so soon after their passing. 

There was another knock at the door which my dad answered. It was the officer from the cruiser checking to see if everything was alright. 

My dad leaned out the screen door and told him everything was alright, but that my mother had died. And I knew everything was not alright.

I walked up and down the driveway smoking my cigarettes as the police asked me questions about her medical history, next of kin–me, other family, and finally what to do with her body. What to do with her body. I still pause at this thought of this even now.

“Like what? What do you mean, do with the body?” 

“Where do you want it sent? Do you want an autopsy?” 

“I don’t know, do I? Where do they normally send people?”

“Well normally, either the medical examiner's office for an unattended death and autopsy or to a funeral parlor.”

“Can’t I decide later, in a bit? I sucked air in, ”when I’ve had a chance to think.”

“Once they are embalmed, the autopsy can’t be done because of what they  do to the body at the funeral parlor to preserve it. My mind immediately went to grave excavation and bodies being exhumed, followed by lab testing, and court hearings, then I came to my senses, shaking the images from books and television from my mind. 

At the time I knew the name of exactly one funeral home, the one where we waked my brother decades earlier. Under the stress, I couldn’t recall the name of where my other sister’s wake had been. I shrugged, and said, “maybe Mason’s in town?”

The line muffled as the officer spoke to someone in my mother’s apartment repeating, “no, no autopsy.”

After that call, we got busy with the calls and other preparations. This included telling my remaining sister–one who struggled with her own mental and medical health issues and had an irrational dependence on relationships–that her mother was dead. 

I got busy calling the extended family, choosing a coffin, selecting readers for the funeral, and writing the various materials for the upcoming events.

Everything in the funeral parlor felt high end—lots of rich textures, shades of taupe, gold and maroon intermingled on the walls, furniture—and looked like it would feel like crushed velvet if you touched it. Giant flower arrangements in pinks and white stood in the lobby and at each doorway. I wore a gray zip sweatshirt in the air conditioning which was quiet but blasting cold air to keep the heat out and the smell of death down. 

We descended the stairs and I felt the air still. I wondered how many dead bodies were currently in the building. Where were they? Were they stored like at the morgue on trays in vault-style refrigerators? 

The funeral director showed us various plans for burial. He used the same techniques, so transparently marketing and sales pitchy, as salespeople on a car lot or in the furniture store. He showed us the glossy mahogany coffin with the shiny brass decoration with cream-colored, satin interior, then he showed us something in our price range which made choosing the lesser of the two seem disrespectful because it was so lackluster. Who would want to be shown off in a coffin outfitted like that? We went with a more expensive one, shiny too, with resin angels at the corners. He offhandedly remarked that the angels are detachable and can be taken off to keep in my mother’s memory. 

I tell him I don’t want to ever remember any of this as he passed me the box of tissues he’d been slowly distributing to me. I ask if I can make the decision about the casket now and the angels later. He says yes and asks if we want her jewelry removed. 

I stammer, “It’s her stuff she wore all the time.” I told him I’d consider that too. He said the attendants could do it discreetly, and he reassured me it was very common for people to do it. 

In the car, I complained to my spouse how furious I was about being finessed at my most vulnerable and feeling helpless to fight it. I was mad I was left to make these decisions, mad that my mother’s family was all of a sudden friendly to us and loving toward my mother, mad that my sister was literally mad. It felt like it was all for show. The whole lot.

At this time, my sister was in the grips of alcoholism and addiction, living with her teen daughter in a friend’s home

My sister knew as soon as we arrived–we’d been here before when I arrived to give the news of my sister’s death six years prior. Not in this place, but in this situation, in this event, in this loss. To say she didn’t handle it well is an understatement. She yelled, and cried, ran into the street, and threatened to kill herself. She kicked and flailed. We went with it until the fight was out of her. My husband bear hugging her until her legs calmed and eventually crouched on the floor.

We struggled through the wake and funeral. My grandmother from three blended families came and hugged me, saying she always loved my mother even though they had a falling out years before. I said, sure. And let it go at that. My mother’s sister offered–and really wanted us to let her do this for my mother–to host the repast following the service. 

I used the nondenominational church where my parents got married, where we were all baptized, where my brother’s funeral and later his celebration of life was held.

The weather was gloriously hot and sunny that September, and I wished for rain to match my mood, my sorrow. Bright sunshine, smiling faces, and loud music felt like betrayal. I was mad that I had to be the responsible one.

My sister’s mental health collapsed in the days following the services. In a fit of desperate rage, she took a kitchen knife to her limbs and torso, leaving long slices down her arms and puncturing her stomach and intestine, landing in ICU for several days on a ventilator. Healing and rehab for her physical wounds was a challenge as she didn’t want to recover or live through the grief. Then came the even harder part of beginning to recover from the loss. 

We had only a few days to empty my mother’s apartment as she passed at the of a month, so my husband and his friends moved ninety percent of her belongings to the local women’s shelter. I hoped it was put to good use.

My daughter’s birthday a few weeks after this was low-key. At three, she really didn’t understand what she would be missing. Our other daughter mourned extra deeply for knowing what she lost. 

The fall was long, arduous, and sad. 

I limped along emotionally for six months reading literary works and watching television every moment my mind and body wasn’t occupied, and I cried in my car driving home from work when Guns and Roses’ “November Rain” came on during a dreary near-winter day.

But, slowly, I began to thaw. After that I felt like my face wouldn’t crumble if I smiled. It was feeling less disrespectful of her memory to laugh, to eat ice cream, to be intimate with my husband. 

After the first year anniversary passed, long ago now, I felt like I’d get back to myself. I’m me now, though missing the part of me that left with her those years ago.