My wife’s cousin Od’ed on heroin a few days ago, only two days out a thirty day detox program.
The father called and left jokes on our answering machine. My wife’s mother flew in and said he’s acting far too happy.
People say “It just hasn’t hit him yet.”
I know better.
His reaction is entirely consistent with my asessment of his behavior. He loves the attention.
Tonight was the wake.
I went early after work, and met my wife. The father wasn’t there yet.
It’s an open casket.
They haven’t done a very good job on this kid. His eyes look like there is nothing behind them. The lids are sunken in. The makeup makes him look plastic. The tie doesn’t match the suit. He looks skinny, cramped and uncomfortable in the casket. Kinda looks like Christopher Walken on a bad day. He would be 19 years old if he was still alive.
I look down on him literally and metaphorically, cross myself. “You got off easy,” I think. “Better you than me.”
My wife is near tears and I’m holding her hand.
We move off to a side, and this nasty preacher from the Church of God (which I always think of as “Children of Corn,”) grabs my wife’s shoulders tightly. His name is Brother Gregory or something.
“And how are you folks holding up?” he asks. He is as sleazy and slimy as an eel, and I don’t like the placement of his hands, his closeness. I don’t like the assumed air of familiarity.
“We’re fine.”
“He moves in mysterious ways,” he actually says.
I look at him, and use a small talent of mine for making people extremely uncomfortable.
“Lifts my days, light up my nights!” I say cheerily, quoting Bono. I fix my eyes on his forehead. He leaves us alone giving my wife one last squeeze.
We move off to a side.
The father comes in, acting medicated. He has his small breakdown in front of the coffin, and then moves into receiving line mode. He acts broken down, and lost. I know for a fact he spent the day at the mall, buying his ex-wife a new dress (she owns nothing acceptable for a funeral, and little useful outside of a bar.) He was cheerful and normal all day, and I cannot reconcile his behavior now to that of earlier today, or yesterday, or the day before.
He is a man who is the center of attention, and loving it.
The ex-wife strolls in, and she is the picture of the white trash barfly slut. She has lank hair. Her breasts are showing, she is overweight and bloated looking. She smiles and laughs, and alternately she moves with the what I call “the white trash roll,” and “the junkie shuffle.” She can’t stand still she moves and her head rolls around moving to her shoulders and her arms, like some boozy breakdancer.
Fortunately, we’ve come early, and don’t face them.
There are good people in my wife’s family.
Many of them are there mourning.
The father though invited all his son’s friends. Some are there in cutoff jeans, and tshirts, or slutttly casual outfits. Their faces are insolent and surly. Wary at the moment.
“God just wanted him,” I hear the father saying. “God decided to take my Jamie, and now nothing can hurt him anymore.”
There are not many things that I am absolutely sure of in this world. Here’s one of them though:
When you die a heroin addict, it is most certainly not God who is wanting to take you.
We go to see my wife’s grandmother. She is an old, dour, and somewhat ugly woman. I never though much of her, never credited her with any positive qualities.
She hugs my wife.
“I don’t feel the way I should. I thought I had myself together, but I don’t think I have the right Christian thoughts about this. This is so wrong. I don’t feel charitable or loving. I don’t feel sad. God help me I am so angry. I feel like marching over there and asking those young people some questions.”
This comes with such venom force and strength from this woman who is so diminutive and docile, that I am taken aback.
In that moment she doesn’t seem like a little old woman. She seems like one of those gnarled and stunted trees that grows in the most surprising of places, between two rocks, or the side of a cliff. She is rubbing her arthritic hands together and they look like stained hardwood. The idea of her putting these juvenile delinquents to the question doesn’t seem silly at all. She seems quite capable of it.
“I think you’re feeling exactly right. I think that’s the sanest reaction I’ve seen. I agree with you,” I say.
“I know I’m supposed to be at peace, and full of his love and forgiveness. But I am so angry.”
I am thinking of righteous wrath and the smiting of sinners myself at the moment.