But the Dove found no rest
for the sole of her foot, and
she returned unto him into the arc...
Genesis 8: 9
As many times as I have attended families
torn by unexpected senseless tragedy and sorrow I never thought it would happen to my
family. We all have a built in
denial. A sense of somehow being
protected. I had just left my home with
a friend on my way to dinner. It was a
quiet sun drenched afternoon on the 22 day April of 1985, with the lilacs in
full scented glory.
I was one week past receiving
my chip for two years of sobriety from AA and my life was starting to turn
around.
From the sidewalk I heard the
telephone give that slightly louder and clearer ring that
in retrospect was somewhat ominous. Uncharacteristically, I
doubled back and answered it just as the answering machine recorder kicked in
saving the moment for history. My son’s
strained voice telling me the unthinkable.
I should meet him at Porter
Hospital. That my daughter had hurt herself. I did not know then that he had just cut his
sister down. When I asked how badly, the
answer was “Dad, I think she’s dead.”
At that nanosecond in time
several things happened. A part of me
was ripped away. My entire family was
irrevocably shattered and my life was forever changed. My world tilted left, then right, became
opaque and stayed that way.
From there it was a surreal
slideshow of slow motion stills.
The silent ride to the hospital where I
instinctively entered through the ambulance entrance while Julie parked. There was an ambulance parked inside the
covered ramp with the rear door open.
There was an ambulance cot sitting alone and unattended on the
driveway. I saw my daughter’s uncovered
face and I knew then what I already had known.
My beautiful violet eyed daughter had taken her own life at 54 days
into her 14th year.
I do not understand
this. I do not know why. Only that it was a selfish act.
I entered the ER and was waylaid
by the Chaplain where we were placed in a small barren windowless room in the hospital
where it was suggested “we would be more comfortable”. I suggested that perhaps it was he who would
be more comfortable with us out of sight.
I interpreted the move as “We cannot, nor do not, want to try to deal
with you”. Medical personal are helpless
in the face of death. I believe they
take it as a personal failure. That is
one of the reasons we have undertakers.
I left the room and walked
outside. I cut a sprig from a Colorado blue
spruce and when I returned I placed it in my daughter’s hand. Somehow it was a totem of eternal life.
The reason for the wait was
for Keri’s mother to arrive, apparently so they could confirm her death to
everyone at once instead of having to go trough it twice. Her mother finally arrived and the ritual was
consummated. I cannot remember much of
that except that I was unable to go to her mother’s side and comfort her. I wanted to but I just couldn’t.
We left the hospital. What had just happened was enough to make
anyone drink, alcoholic or not. I knew
that my sponsor would be attending a certain AA meeting that evening. I got there just as it was starting. The usual format of a meeting was
suspended. I talked. In retrospect that must have been one of the
most unusual meetings in the history of AA.
I still occasionally meet people who were there and remark of it.
The calling at the Funeral
Home in Littleton
was marked by me being largely ignored and my wonderment that such a brainless,
insensitive clod could have apparently been “assigned” to be the undertaker.
I was pretty much left out of
the loop during the entire ordeal. My
sister and cousin flew out from Chicago. I had about five personal friends and my sponsor in AA at my side,
all of them Jews. Throughout my life it
has been the Jews who have been there when I needed help.
The funeral was held at night
in a large church in Littleton,
CO. It was filled to capacity with four to five
hundred people in attendance. The services
proceeded during a violent electrical storm, with lightening and thunder,
pelting rain and hail. There were
literally streams of water running down the outside of the huge stained glass
windows. I remember turning around and
seeing my friend, Ira a towering, black bearded Orthodox Jew, standing in the
back possibly as bewildered at being there as I was at seeing him there. But he was there. That is a friend. I made it all right until someone started
playing Amazing Grace on a piano. I kept it together but it was a lot rougher.
I had asked one thing of the
preacher, that he recite the Serenity Prayer.
This well fed, pompous, self serving excuse for a man did not honor Keri’s
father’s only request. He had his own
agenda. He had an audience and he was
going to make the most of it, including a visible personal insult. When I confronted him at the cemetery he
wussed out, saying that while Keri and her sister and her mother had attended
his church, I had not. How
Christian. It was only because of a
sense of resignation, that I did not slug him.
Keri rests now in the Littleton Cemetery
at the top of a gentle sloping hill overlooking the Burlington Northern
Railroad Tracks and the white topped peaks of the Rocky
Mountains.
Next to Keri is buried her
best friend Patricia, killed by a drunken driver at the age of 21. The irony does not escape me.
THE SHADOW
WEEPS
