Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [64]
And the last tide disappear
All darkness near.
I kept quiet so you’d think my heart was tough
I never showed you if I loved you enough
The dreams I had, yeah, I kept but I wouldn’t dare
Share with you for fear of things still living in me.
Will you be next to me, my love
When the cold moon vanishes
And the last cries no yells
For it to hear?
It was one of Liz’s favorite songs, and it would be echoing through the chapel at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis in fewer than twenty-four hours.
“What the fuck is up with this weather?” I said with exasperation.
“It’s Minnesota,” A.J. replied. “Have you forgotten?”
He was right. Spring snow at the end of April was not unprecedented, but it seemed unreasonable and more than a little cruel. I guess after six years of living in Los Angeles, I’d officially become a weather snob—I couldn’t stand any temperature below seventy degrees. I tentatively shuffled my feet through the icy snow, hoping to avoid falling on my ass in front of the large group of people already lined up outside of the chapel.
I gave depressed looks of acknowledgment to the couples clutching each other as they walked in, and I was sure that after seeing me they’d look into each other’s eyes and squeeze each other a little tighter. I knew what they were thinking: I’m glad this isn’t us. No person with even one ounce of compassion would say those words in front of a grieving widower, but the way they gripped each other’s arms, the looks—that said it all.
I wished so badly that I were in this line with Liz, waiting to walk into someone else’s funeral. I wished that she were holding tight to my side, her teary blue eyes looking up at me, saying, “Those poor motherfuckers. I love you.” I wished that it wasn’t us.
More than anything, that’s what I wished.
But it was.
An hour later I was standing at a podium, microphone just below my mouth, staring out at a sea of people. This was an exceedingly shitty feeling, waiting to give my wife’s eulogy again. Before I’d walked in here, I thought it might be easier to do this a second time, but as I strained to hear Liz’s funeral soundtrack, the same one we’d played in Pasadena, I realized just how wrong I was. I wanted so badly to hear a familiar song, no matter what it was, something other than the depressing-ass one in my head at that moment. “If I Needed You” by Townes Van Zandt was playing over and over again, and the line “If I needed you, would you come to me?” was making me think about how impossible it was for her to come to me now, when I needed her most. But the sounds of people shuffling in drowned out the music we had playing, leaving me stuck with that one. When all the pews were taken, people filed into the side aisles, and when those spaces filled up, too, they sat on the floor behind me and in the aisle running up the middle of the chapel. The place was packed like the Animal Collective concert I had seen at the El Rey.
I could just picture the look Liz would have given me if I had sat down on that floor, ruining my only suit. A mess of melting snow, dirt, and salt had been tracked into the chapel and was now being ground into the funeral clothes of everyone who had come out for Liz. I looked down at my suit and tie, and thought, I really need to retire these things. After wearing the ensemble to my wife’s funeral—twice—I knew I could never put it on again.
Standing there, I thought about the conversation I’d had with the funeral director in Pasadena. With the emotionless tone expected of an undertaker, he’d said to me, “You know, you’re the first person to use the word fuck in my chapel.” I don’t think he was admonishing me as much as he was trying to tell me he was proud…but then again, I might have been projecting. “Well,” I’d replied, “it was the most accurate way to describe my feelings.”
The shuffling stopped before I could replay any more of the conversation, and I knew it was time for me to speak. I felt the same way I had the first time around, so I began with the same words: