The Death

“Hello, this is Mika. You know, T’s sister. She’s there right? I just wanted to tell you our father died. I don’t know what to do. They’re coming to get the body now. I’ve called my Aunt. I haven’t been able to get hold of Mom. I just wanted somebody to know. Don’t tell T yet. But I wanted you to expect Mama’s call.”

With those words, I closed out what had been a beautiful Saturday and began to fear what Sunday would bring. I looked into the kitchen to see my daughter and her best friend, T, huddled together at the computer, messaging their friends. They were having a good time chatting, laughing and poking at each other, with their favorite music blasting way too loud from the boom box. I thought about how much this child who has become a second daughter to me was going to have her life changed tomorrow. She is only 14. I sent up sets of prayers. Prayers for the soul of her daddy, prayers for her, prayers for her momma, prayers for her sister and brother. I asked their angles to hold them all close and followed up that request with a plea to my angels to offer back-up where needed.

I bid the girls goodnight with my usual admonition not to stay up all night and fled to my bedroom and closed the door. I didn’t trust myself in the same room with them. I didn’t trust that I would be able to keep up the pretense that nothing had changed when, in fact, the whole world had changed. I stayed up very late that night. Somehow sleep didn’t seem very important.

I spent the morning hoping that a mistake had been made. He wasn’t really dead. There wasn’t a barrel full of pain teetering over this cherished child’s head. By the time the phone rang, I pretty well believed that whole “Oops, it was a really bad joke” scenario that I had invented. That fantasy was soon blown to dust and scattered in the wind.

I arranged to take T home. Her mother thought it might help her some if my daughter was there when she learned her father was dead. I thought she was probably right, but was very scared for my daughter as well. She’s a tough cookie, that’s for sure. But she’s never been this close to death – never had to comfort a grieving friend. Life is tough as a teenager, and I was about to ask her to do a very grown up thing. I prayed that my beloved daughter would be up to the task.

T had been told that her father was in the hospital, so it raised no suspicions when we got to her house and found no one at home. In a short while her momma came home. Again, this was as expected. What wasn’t expected, was the bevy of relatives that came in with her. T got a glazed look in her eyes and took a few steps backward before her mother could even say anything. Then T got the news – and it hit her hard. She screamed, she cried, she wailed. She tried to run and when family members blocked her way, she threw herself down on the ground.

Older brothers are sometimes the bane of a kid sister’s existence. At that moment though, T’s older brother earned his stripes as a man. He went over to his sister who was flailing and screaming on the ground. He bent down and scooped her up and, hugging her close to his chest, took her swiftly and with a great sense of purpose into the security and closeness of her own bedroom. There he sat with her until the throng of female relatives trooped in and banished him with their cooing and crying.

I sent my daughter in to be with her friend. I was concerned that perhaps the ministrations of so many older female relatives would prove to be overwhelming and I wanted T to know we were still there for her. I stood guard anxiously in the hall. I really don’t know what I was standing guard against, but that is what I did. Soon enough T stumbled out of her room with glassy eyes, my daughter in her wake with tear shiny eyes. T collapsed onto me and I hugged her hard, as if she were the last person on earth.

As soon as T had recovered her wits, she wanted to go outside. She and my daughter went to take a walk, leaving me with a clutch of grief-stricken relatives.

There was great-grandma, the reigning matriarch, settled at one end of the couch. One auntie was at the computer while another auntie wandered absently from room to room. The cousins were huddled together, heads down, writing the obituary. There were two darling toddlers who spent a lot of time looking around at the adults in their life, trying to puzzle out just exactly what was wrong. There was a family friend insistently describing what she was going to make for dinner. Over and over she reviewed the virtues and ingredients of Chicken Divine.

All the while T’s momma answered phone calls, fielded questions about background for the obituary and engaged in small talk with an exaggeratedly calm and collected demeanor. My heart ached for her. What pain was she going to suffer through when we had all gone home and she was left alone with her children and her feelings? I snuck in an extra prayer for Momma.

On the way home, I talked to my daughter. We spoke about T and how she was feeling. We talked about the funeral. My daughter has never been to a funeral. This one will be an experience for her on many levels. Not only will it be her first funeral experience, but also the funeral will be held in a small town south of here that I am totally unfamiliar with and will be held in a fundamentalist type of church. To top that off we will most likely be very much in the minority as white faces in an ebony and caramel sea. The fundamentalist rituals will be unfamiliar, the funeral itself will be alien, and the experience of being in the minority will most certainly be a new one. I know I can do nothing that will adequately prepare my daughter for what may feel like a visit to an alien world to her, but I will try to explain as much as I can, and trust in my daughter’s love for her friend and her resilience for the rest.

I called all my far-flung family tonight. I wanted to make sure they know that I love them. Life can be hard sometimes, you know?