Paul booked a suite for us with adjoining rooms in a local motel. When Suzie hesitated about having callers at our family . . . now her . . . house, Paul booked a common meeting room near our suite where we could all get together. My mother had out lived most of her friends and only a handful of relatives would attend the services which were scheduled for Monday. Suzie and I made the funeral plans while my niece Maureen entertained Karen and Timmy. I bowed to Suzie's suggestions on the details in spite of her seeking my opinion. After all, I was the come-lately daughter and she had cared for my mother for twenty years.
Suzie's reaction to our mother's passing was more reserved than mine. While the suddenness shocked her, I suspect she expected death was closer than I. We said all the right things to each other but my sister's kindness and lack of mention of my unfair absence failed to abate my feeling of guilt which covered me like a noxious cloud.
Many of the people who attended the funeral and wake were the same guests at the wedding when I first met Paul though the number was but a fraction. At the earlier affair, I was a virtual unknown, hiding among the festivities. Now that I'd come out of the closet, so to speak and rebuilt burnt bridges, everyone pressed forward to meet this Phoenix-risen-lady, her reputed multi-millionaire husband and his beautiful family. Only appropriate sympathies were expressed but in my mind I heard the unspoken comment, I'm so glad you finally did the right thing, but it's a shame you were so late in doing so. T he three days intensified my growing sense of anguish over my long abandonment of my family ties.
We attended the funeral service as a family, in the same church where I'd spent a thousand Sundays in my early years. Little had changed and memories flooded back in a torrent. At the grave side ceremony Paul and Karen each held my hand as my mother was lowered into her final resting place.
"Now it's over," Paul said. "She's in peace. We have a life to live and you know she'd want you to live it to the fullest. Karen and Timmy were her grandchildren." I nodded. I hoped with all my heart that my mother was at peace. With equal conviction, I knew I was not.
Timmy was excused from the grave side service and remained back at Suzie's house with the other young children and a babysitter. This meant I would return to my childhood home and my old neighborhood, for the first time since fleeing to the arms of my soldier boyfriend, twenty years earlier. While I'd gotten together with Suzie a number of times since returning from Alaska, our meetings were always on neutral ground or in Summerside. I dreaded seeing the old place and its myriad of memories at a time when my past was playing evil games with my mind.