The Counting-Downers (4 page)

I’m not saying you can’t experience sadness when someone dies. I’d worry about someone’s sociopathic tendencies if they didn’t feel even a hint of sympathy when they heard about the tragic passing of a good person.

But you know the ones I mean; those who had every opportunity to become genuine mourners had they taken the chance to get to know and spend time with the deceased while they were still breathing.

The type who learn more about a person they saw every day at their funeral, knowing them infinitely better dead than alive.

You’d think these people would feel guilty. They would realize the shame and regret in opportunities missed and chances lost to make a friend. But they feel grief, not guilt. Genuine over-the-top, all-consuming grief.

I don’t understand it. I can’t bear the hypocrisy that comes with death. Just be honest, for goodness sake.

Grief for family and friends, sadness for acquaintances, sympathy for strangers, ambivalence and relief for enemies.

As in life, so in death. You can’t befriend the dead, and you can’t rewrite history. But still, they try.

Looking around at all of these people who have come to see the sun set on my father’s life, I wonder about the ratio of false to genuine grievers here today.

The length of time you know someone doesn’t make your grief more valid than somebody else’s. You can meet someone once and leave such a life-changing impact on them that they will never forget you. Or you can work side-by-side with someone every day for years and they’ll struggle to remember your name.

My father was the sort of person you only needed to meet once to be changed for good.

I think, in a way, each of us leave pieces of ourselves with the people we know and love, like we’re all composed of a million-piece jigsaw puzzle and we give one bit or more to everyone we meet.

Some of these people have pieces of my father that I never will. They knew him as the guy who had a dirty sense of humor, the heartbreaking womanizer in his college days, or the naughty little boy next door who smashed their windows with a football.

But I have pieces they don’t. I knew the guy who gave amazing cuddles and made even better pancakes. The one who taught me with patience to read, and ride, and swim, and love, and
live
. I will always hold pieces of the man who comforted me after my first heartbreak, and taught me to
go with the flow.

If we all came together, you’d see the whole picture. But maybe that’s not the point.

All of us are, and mean, different things to different people. We’re one person, but a million people. Fractured, but whole. All giving out puzzle pieces and carrying around a bag full of the ones given to us by everyone we’ve ever met.

I read once that the Japanese believe you have three faces: The first, you show to the world. The second, to your close friends and family. The third, you never show anyone and it’s the truest reflection of yourself.

I think a lot of truth lies in that. For as many puzzle pieces as everyone here today holds of my father, there will always be some missing. Secrets of his self, he’s taken to the grave.

We knew a lot about him, but we never knew all.

I zone back into reality as the minister shouts over the wind about God having a plan for each of us. “Erik Evans was taken too soon,” he says, “but even though we may not understand it, we need to trust that it was God’s plan for him.”

That doesn’t even make sense. He can’t have been taken too soon. If it was ‘God’s Plan,’ it figures that he was taken right on time.

From the moment he was born, his dismayed parents and the hospital staff saw the clock start ticking down from 46 years, 2 months, 18 days, 25 hours, and 2 seconds.

On March 14, 2016, that time ran out without a second to spare.

Say what you want about death, but at least it’s punctual.

Sitting to the right of me, my Norwegian grandmother, or
Farmor
, Ingrid holds my spare hand for dear life. Life is dear indeed.

At sixty-five, my paternal grandmother still has 19 years, 8 months, 12 days, 9 hours, 38 minutes, and 4 seconds left in this lifetime. How terrible it must be to outlive your children.

Whether you know it’s coming or not, whether it’s God’s ‘plan’ or not, I can imagine few things worse than the unfair overthrow of the cosmic order. No parent should have to attend his or her child’s funeral, whether that child is four or forty.

The minister calls up my dad’s best friend, Uncle Dan, to give the eulogy. My mom had asked if I wanted to do it, but I declined.

For once, she understood.

I don’t need to stand up in front of all of these strangers and familiars and convince them why my dad was so special. If they don’t know, they don’t deserve to find out.

It’s like I told my mother this morning, the best way to honor my father, is by becoming his living legacy. My true tribute to his life is to live mine the way he taught me.

I untangle my hand from my grandmother’s and trace the still-healing tattoo that wraps around my wrist.
Live true. Live deep. Live free.

That’s what he taught me and that’s what I’m going to do.

He wouldn’t want me to live for him. He’d want me to live for
me
. I’m going to do both.

We owe it to the dead to do what they can’t:

Live
.

Truly. Deeply. Freely.

Besides, my dad isn’t dead in the truest sense of the word.

“Don’t you worry about me, I’ll live forever, Tilly girl.” “No you won’t, Daddy.” I squeeze him tighter. “Sarah at school says that when people die they disappear forever and you never see them again.” He lifted my burrowed head so he could look straight into my eyes, olive to emerald. “That’s where you’re wrong, angel. As long as your heart beats, as long as your brother breathes, as long as your mother smiles, I’ll live on. I’ll live on inside of you”—he pats the space above my heart at my confused expression—“every time you remember something we did together and smile, or repeat one of my phrases or jokes and laugh, or tell your children about me and cry, I’m alive. You feel; I live. If you always do that, I’ll live on long after I die.”

Shaking my head back to the present, I realize that the random flashback is a perfect example of how he lives on. He’s the voice inside my head, and the emotions in my heart. And he
lives
.

I smile small for the second time that day, causing my grandmother to shoot me a reprimanding look. “Funerals are not the place for smiles, Matilda,” she whispers, chastising me in Norwegian.

“You’re wrong,
Farmor
,” I whisper back, “they’re the perfect place.”

She tuts and rolls her eyes in dismissal. I smile medium. No wonder she gets on so well with my mother.

I hear an ill-disguised coughing snort behind me, and glance back at the row behind me to find a boy around my age grinning back at me as if he understood the conversation my grandmother and I just had.

I give a tentative, conspiring smile back, which only serves to irritate my formality-loving
Farmor
further. She gives me a sharp slap on the hand, causing me to turn back around and sit forward, away from the mystery man. Maybe he’s some distant Norwegian cousin.

“Tilly, I bored,” Oscar declares in a loud voice from his seat on my lap.

This time I’m giving the ill-disguised coughing snort at the horrified gasps, which reach my ears on both sides, from my mother and grandmother.

I’d wondered how long he’d be able to stay quiet and on his best behavior like Mom had instructed him to be before we left the house in exchange for not wearing the bow tie.

Lesson learned: never enter hostile negotiations with a wily four-year old. You’ll lose. Every time.

Leaning down, I whisper in his ear, hoping he’ll take the hint and lower the volume, “Sssh, Osky. We have to be quiet.”

“Wanna play?” He continues to shout over Uncle Dan’s eulogy, “Me
sooo
bored.”

At this point, I can’t keep the laughter in.

I laugh. Loudly.

For the first time since my father died nine days ago, I laugh. And laugh. And laugh some more.

This sets off the boy behind me, who I can’t bring myself to look at for fear of becoming even more inappropriate than we’re being right now. Even Oscar seems to find my laughter funny and starts giggling, despite not getting the joke at his expense.

At this point, my mother is magenta with mortification. And my grandmother is giving me a look that threatens to turn this into a double funeral, but I just can’t stop. I laugh until my stomach hurts and I’m drinking tears.

It takes me a while to notice that Uncle Dan has paused his poetic words, and the eyes and mouths of everyone gathered are wide with what they consider the wrong kind of tears streaming down my make-up free face.

Tough crowd.

“Matilda,” my mom whisper-shouts in horror. “Control yourself, and take Oscar away. Both of you need to calm down. I cannot believe you right now. Your behavior is appalling. Your father would be so disappointed.”

At the mention of my father’s hypothetical disappointment, I sober. Standing up with a still giggling Oscar in my arms, I kiss him on the head, which he rushes to scrub away, causing me to smile yet again.

I gaze down at my mother and lock eyes with the potential cousin from Norway. He stares back with a strange intensity, still shaking with the after-shocks of laughter, as if wondering what I’m going to do next.

Good question. What
am
I going to do next? I don’t know, but I do know that I’ve felt more connected to my father, more
alive
, in the last two minutes than two days.

Not bothering to whisper anymore, I face my mother. “You’re wrong,” I tell her and anybody who agrees with her. “You’re so wrong. Daddy wouldn’t be disappointed; he’d be
proud
. If he was here, which I believe he is, he’d be laughing along with us.”

With that, I turn around, still carrying my brother, and walk down to the beach without a backward glance.

“Where we go, Tilly?” he asks after a few minutes, resting his platinum blond head on my shoulder.

“You want to do something fun?”

“Yeah!” He straightens and squeals in that contagious, excited and trusting way that only four-year-olds can.

“How about we go for a swim?”

“Yeah! I love swinnin’. Daddy showeded me how and now I don’t need no arm bands!” He brags.

“Really, buddy?” I do my best to look the suitable amount of impressed even though I know he still needs armbands. My chest aches for a moment that my dad won’t be the one to teach him how to swim without them, but I don’t dwell. I decide I’ll take on that job.

“That’s amazing. You’ll have to show me some time. But how about we just stay on the beach and have a water fight today?”

“Yeah! Water fight!” he shrieks, wriggling with impatience to be set down.

Placing him on the soft sand, I take off his tiny dress shoes, black socks, baby blazer, and unbutton his white shirt to reveal the t-shirt underneath. Rolling up his toddler tuxedo trousers, I roll my eyes at my mom’s funeral outfit for him, before toeing off my boots and taking off my jacket.

Grasping his hand, we take the few steps toward the shore. “You ready?” I ask him.

“Yeah!” he shouts his favorite word making me laugh before I reach down and flick water at him. He yells in delight before cupping his baby hands and launching a tidal wave of salt water straight at my face.

And once again, we’re laughing.

And smiling. And loving. And living.

Most and best of all, we’re
living
, my baby brother and I.

For today, for ourselves, for each other, for my
dad
.

We laugh, and we splash, and we shout, and we scream.

Then we do it some more.

We’re in full view of everyone at the funeral, but I don’t care. And neither does he.

Once we’re drenched from head to toe and all laughed out, I scoop him up so he sits on my sea-soaked shoulders.

We’re quiet as we stare out at the watered horizon for a moment.

Out of nowhere, Oscar stretches his arms up skyward, causing me to wobble backward before regaining my balance.

“What are you doing, Osky?”

“Trying to reach Daddy,” he informs me, making my already shattered heart break into even smaller fragments than I thought possible.

I don’t know what to do or say, but I know this is his way of trying to open up to me so I can help him make sense of his grief.

So I clear my throat and try my best.

“I miss him very much, do you?”

“Yeah, I mist him a lot, Tilly.” My heart clutches at the heavy melancholy in his voice.

“That’s understandable, bub. And it’s okay to be sad and miss him. But you have Mommy. And me. And you can come to us whenever you’re upset about Daddy, and we can talk about him and cuddle as much as you want, okay?”

“Okay.”

“We can help each other whenever we’re sad. Daddy loved us both very much, you know that, right?”

“I know. He said I was his pwince and you was the pwincess.”

“He did, huh?”

“Yep! And he said that when the king went away, the pwince was in charge and had to give the queen and pwincess lots of cuddles and giggles so they wasn’t sad no more.”

Swallowing past the lump in my throat at the words my father used to prepare him for his death, I bring my brother down off my shoulders, and tickle him, making him chuckle.

“That sounds like a fantastic plan, Prince Oscar, but it works both ways. The queen and princess also have to give the prince as many cuddles and giggles as he needs whenever he misses the king, okay?”

“Okay, Pwincess Tilly,” he says, kissing my cheek before wrapping his chubby arms around my neck and tucking his head under my chin.

I guess this is one of those times.

This time the benevolent prince permits me to kiss him on his head before squeezing him close to me.

Lost, we both silently look out to the sea, drowning in quiet grief and contemplation.