Seven hundred thirty days and one hour ago is the last time I saw my son Aaron alive. When I went to bed that night, I knew exactly how Aaron looked. Tonight I will fall asleep with a clouded memory of his face. The pictures we have are mostly of months and years earlier. For whatever reason, we took almost no pictures of the boys in April and those few days in May. Aaron's face was more full than in the photos six months earlier; he had begun to gain weight and his face was scruffy with whiskers most days.
"Would you like his face shaved?" What???!! "Aaron's face. He has a few days growth of whiskers. Would you like us to shave his face?" That was a question at the funeral home. Several weeks later I looked at Aaron's shaver and wondered if he had shaved that morning. Later the question from the funeral home surfaced from the depths of my clouded memory and I lost my composure. He had not shaved that morning.
As the sun was going down tonight I found myself driving past St. Albert The Great Church in Sun Prairie. The last time I ever saw Aaron was at the church. I don't care to remember that night. We should never see our children in a casket. Passing the back side of the church I saw the door from where Aaron's friends carried him to the hearse. The same door we entered and exited so many times for mass. Aaron walked nervously throught that door to serve mass as a new alter boy, and lazily through going to attend mass as an older boy.
I recall the great rush of the funeral home person to get the casket loaded and drive off. The event was probably more compassionate than I recall, but it seemed there was an urgency to loading up and leaving. Maybe the hearse, like the casket, was a rental.
It's hard to cry every day, and every day it's hard not to cry.
Grateful to have emotions,
Tom
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