Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [62]
All it took was this one phone call to knock me back down and crush my confidence. All of the positivity I had been building instantly evaporated, and I wondered if I had made any progress at all. My face remained buried in Steve’s chest for what seemed like hours. When I finally pulled myself together, I called Liz’s dad. Before he even had a chance to say hello, I launched into my proposition.
“Tom, I just got off the phone with United Airlines. Liz and I were supposed to go to Hawaii in May, and I just can’t do it alone. Can we take a trip together? You know, you, Candee, Deb, Maddy, and me? Maybe we can go in a few months for our wedding anniversary or something? I don’t want to be alone, and I can’t be in Minnesota, Los Angeles, or Greece on August thirteenth.” I didn’t take a breath until I’d said it all—it must have been a lot for Tom to take in without warning.
“Yes,” he responded calmly. “We can do whatever you want, Matt. Let’s talk about this tonight with Candee and we can plan something.”
That was all I really needed to hear. Later on, we agreed that we would take a trip together on what would have been my third wedding anniversary. I informed Tom and Candee of my self-imposed travel parameters: somewhere outside of the United States, and somewhere none of us had ever visited before. By the next night, we had a flight and a condo booked for a week in Banff. I felt sure that Liz would have been thrilled to know that I planned to spend time with her family. I was just relieved to know that I wouldn’t have to be alone on our anniversary come August.
Chapter 16
she’s a little
too little
to fly.
but,
she won’t be
alone in her
bassinet with one of
those hamster feeders.
Many of our friends and family had been unable to attend Liz’s funeral in Pasadena and so had been unable to get any sort of closure about her death. What’s more, my decision to have Liz cremated and her remains stored until I decided what to do with them also left people without a permanent place to go to mourn her. Everyone I was now spending time with in Los Angeles—all of Liz’s college and work friends whom I’d rarely spent time with previously—was still devastated. Everyone was still buried in grief. Tom, Candee, and I decided that we should have a second funeral for Liz.
We would have the service in our home state of Minnesota so that those who hadn’t been able to travel previously would have a chance to say good-bye. The funeral home in Pasadena had sent Liz’s ashes to a funeral home in Milaca, Minnesota, a town that held my family’s roots. It was where my mom was born, and where my grandfather’s hardware store had been.
Initially, I thought having a second funeral was insane. I understood providing an opportunity for more people to mourn, but I wasn’t ready to stand up and give another fucking eulogy for my wife. The first time I had done it was pure hell, and it would never get easier, even if I did it a thousand times. Besides, who the hell has two funerals? Then my thoughts went to Madeline. Though nothing would bring about closure in her situation—and even if it could, she wouldn’t have any clue what was going on—I couldn’t help thinking that she needed to be at her mother’s funeral.
I called Dr. Hartstein.
“I’m flying to Minnesota so we can have another funeral for my wife. I want to bring Madeline with me.”
“Matt. It’s not a good idea.”
I knew that was going to be her answer. Maddy wasn’t even supposed to be out of the womb yet, so the notion of taking her on an airplane was kind of absurd. But I kept wondering how I’d someday explain to my daughter that she missed not one but two funerals for her mother. Of everyone whose life Liz had ever touched, the one who would endure her death the longest and hardest would be the child she never held.