The Viewing Part 2

I’m going to go ahead and skip to the official visitation, but not in great detail.

First of all … they were late.  Because my mom had to get all primped up and waited until the last second to start getting ready.

There were -so- many people there.  People that Stefan worked with.  Friends.  Regular customers.  My parents’ friends and co-workers.  Melanie had Cat.  I had Mike E and Brett and Denise.

I can’t help but think that my mom wanted to be the center of attention.  She pulled her chair up next to the casket and sat there the entire night.  When someone goes up to the casket, it’s a private moment.  A chance for them to say goodbye or whatever they need to do.  That’s hard to do with someone sitting right next to where you’re standing.  At times, she was talking across the way to her friends sitting in some other chairs, so (polite) people had to wait for her to stop talking to get to the casket.  Who does that?  No one fucking does that.

Melanie started to greet people as they came in.  After a while, I joined her.  I stepped away after a while to get some water and began talking with some of my parents’ bowling buddies (and folks I bowled with for a while as well).  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mike K walk into the hallway.  I excused myself and hurried over to him.  I hugged him and cried.  I didn’t think he’d be there.  I hadn’t contacted him because I didn’t know his new number.  We hadn’t talked in a long while.  But he heard through a mutual friend and he came.  And I was so, so grateful.  His brother, Sean, came, too.  It was so good to see both of them.

Later, some of Stefan’s friends from high school showed up.  I was sooo surprised.  They heard about the death through Facebook.  I looked over at the guest book and there were Keisha and Tasha.  I hadn’t seem either of them in at least 10 years.  I didn’t even realize they were still in touch with Stefan.

Moving along…

There was this woman named Lisa that Stefan knew from work.  I guess they were pretty close – friendly, not romantic.  Anyway, when everyone was ready to leave, Lisa was still sitting there.  My mom and dad had gone outside along with everyone else except Melanie, Brett, Mike E, Cat and me.  We’d intended to transport some of the flowers back home (turns out, the funeral home did it for us, so yay).  We wanted family to be the last people in there.  But it took Lisa forEVER to get up and walk out.  Once everyone was out, Melanie and I went up to the casket one last time.  I told Melanie that I just wanted to call Stefan a son of a bitch.  Not because I hated him or anything.  But because I hurt so fucking much.  We said goodbye and we left.  The body wouldn’t be at the memorial service, so it was the last time we saw it.

I tried to go to sleep that night and every time I closed my eyes, I saw my brother’s corpse.  The face that just didn’t look right.  I took a sleeping pill.  I took a lot of sleeping pills that week.