Chapter Four
I got the news on Monday night.
I was at Ashley’s house to meet my
parents because the Fraternity House isn’t always the best place for parents. My
folks were late, but my mom loved to stop for every historical monument, every
tourist trap, every wide spot in the road on the way. This time they were the
reason people stopped. The road was curvy. She loved roads that curved and
rolled, my dad hated them. He liked them straight and fast. According to the
Highway Police my dad tried the worst of both; he was driving fast on a curvy
road.
The damage to their vehicle didn’t
look like it hit a big animal like a deer. Maybe my dad dodged to miss
something. At any rate, he sideswiped some sort of sign and that led him into a
large tree. They were dead before the fire caused by the accident engulfed the
scene.
They were an hour past due when
the Highway Police found us. An hour was not too late for my folks, so I had
only begun to worry about them, still. The doorbell rang and I went from slightly
worried to numb in the time it took to open the door. I let out a cry that made
God himself shudder.
Ashley and her parents came with
me to the hospital, the morgue actually. The good Reverend drove. I cried. The
wailing had passed for the moment, but I was a mess. Everything was all
planned, everything was all laid out. We were going to finish school. We would
get married. We would find a place to live. We’d start classes. Med School
This week was supposed to be about
joy and celebration. It was going to be a time for families to come together
and gel. It was a time for two families to come together to become one. In
love, in marriage, in joy; one and one make one! With my parents gone though,
what I was planning faded. It all took a back seat to grief. I planned to
propose over dinner Friday night, now that’s when the gathering begins. They
were burned so badly there will be no viewing.
Of course we couldn’t leave for a
couple of days. The Coroner’s Inquest took a day to make its preliminary
findings. Nothing could be fully signed off until all of the toxicology reports
were done and that would take a couple of weeks to get the results, but
everything looked decent and in order. There was enough paperwork to choke a
small horse. Thank God for the ladies of the church, there was always more than
enough food and drink. Considering the fire, cremation was the only way to go
with their remains.
I spent the rest of Spring Break
on the phone with my parent’s friends, loved ones, and distant family. Some
called checking on arrangements. Some called to see how I was doing. Some
called to offer condolences. Some called to say “how awful it was when their
Uncle Phil or Auntie Em or Sister Sue, or whoever it was died” and “I’ll get
over it just like they did.” Those were the worse of all. The best were the
folks who came by with a beer or a bottle of scotch and told funny stories
about the folks. Ashley would sit by my side and rub my shoulder or my thigh
and moments would be passable.
On Friday we took the cremains to
my parent’s place and scattered them in the hills. I just thought they were
called ashes, but no, cremated remains are called cremains. I never knew that.
Who did? There was a brief hillside service. There’s a plaque with their names
and dates of birth and death in the columbarium at the church. Columbarium, I
didn’t know a wall of cremains had a name too. I don’t know why it bugged me, a
“grave,” a “hole in the wall” with nothing in it. It did though.
I could put gloves in there, maybe
a spare set of keys. At least then it would serve a purpose greater than an
empty hole. In its own way, it spoke to how I felt by the end of the week. All
that’s left of my parents is scattered to the winds and there’s a hole in a
marble wall that matches the hole in my heart.
My parents will never hear about
our engagement, or seminary, or Ashley becoming an MD, or me becoming a Youth
Pastor, or grandchildren or kindergarten or… and that’s when I broke down. I
don’t even know where we were. I think we were on the road, returning after the
funeral, but I’m not sure about that. I hope I didn’t make a scene, but if I
did there would be pictures and that would be… nice? When I regained my
faculties I was in the backseat of the Reverend’s big vehicle, my head in Ash’s
lap, sobbing.
I have class on Monday? No, I feel
a trip to Student Health coming.
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