Foreshadowing

Over the years I’ve thought often about this moment:

SCENE: 

I am sixteen years old. I feel stricken and deeply uneasy. I had only been in a funeral home two other times. This my third time. My best friend at my side. I feel her unease, the way that she keeps shifting her weight and moving her feet. We both are taking it all in, looking around at the grave scene. 

We didn't want to be there, but we were asked to be. We had to be, there for Lee. 

I feel prickles in my gut as I approach the head of the line, about to be the guests that were received.  an As we approach Lee, I finally find the courage to look at him. Lee--who normally looked so stoic, so  calm and reserved. Though he didn't smile often, he always looked composed.

But now, his face is scrunched up. He looks physically anguished. His countenance looks like he is about to keel over. At sixteen, I had never seen someone who looked like they were experiencing deep bodily pain from an emotional wound. His body posture crumples; it looks like it is hard for him to keep his body upright. 

He recognizes us. We make eye contact. He crumples further inward, trying to contain his pain. His face and eyes red, bursting into tears. He dives toward us, wraps us in hugs, his body wreaks with sobs. 

I don't know what to say. I don't know how to comfort him. We are not close. I wouldn't call us friends, but mere acquaintances. 

And yet, here I am witnessing such an intensely intimate and personal moment. I didn't want to be there. But I feel glued, paralyzed, because I have never seen a person in such pain and desperately trying to contain his grief. I let him hug me, to sob. My silence, my holding space for him, it’s what I could do. It’s all I can do. Because there was nothing to say. I do not understand.

What can anyone say when your father has killed himself? 

I ask myself this often and I will revisit this moment many more times in the years to come. Especially when, 16 years later, I will be the one at the head of this line, receiving visitors who are there, honoring my father, who also will have taken his own life.