chapter 15: part 1

continued from chapter 14; part 11

I stepped out of the hospital into a new life.

The parking lot attendant who greeted me so cheerfully earlier that morning took my money and I pulled out into traffic on the way to Mike and Lorrie's apartment. A driver pulled illegally in front of me and must have been startled by the vehemence of my horn honking. I wasn't going to give an inch. Not then.

We gathered at Mike's place and immediately sat down to make the necessary phone calls. Mark and Mike shared the phone list while the rest of us sat there and listened. It isn't real, but you have to listen.

Mike called the funeral home, the one arranged by the memorial society years before and set up a meeting there in early afternoon.

The boys brought back food from a local hamburger house and we devoured double hamburgers and milkshakes. I eat in moments of crisis, which I mentioned before.

I didn't cry. Occasionally my voice would crack, and then I would get control. I couldn’t manage a shuddering, all-encompassing let-it-all-out cry for several weeks.

I'm alone, I kept thinking; my children are here and they are loving and wonderful but I am alone.
And I’m terrified.

I drove us to the funeral home and Mike and Lorrie went inside to arrange for cremation. I couldn't go inside. I find no comfort in what happens in funeral homes and accompanying coffins and I wasn’t having that for my Hal. As I sat outside in the car I hoped with all my heart that his body was there and not in the hospital. I wanted that poor wasted wonderful body to be transformed into particles as soon as possible.

I idly watched the busy traffic on St. Clair Avenue. A dark blue van passed, then slowed down and U-turned into the parking lot. He drive alongside my car.

"Your headlights are on", he said. And he was gone. I read messages into a lot of things and I took this as a good omen.

Back at Mike's place we worked out a funeral notice. I had become a consistent obituary reader over the past months and was very clear about what I wanted to say about Hal. We wrote that he fought his cancer like hell, and apparently that isn't acceptable for funeral notices.

This is the way it read:


TENNANT,HAL. Of cancer, on the 28th of August at age 61. Loved by Pat, Mark and Olga, Scott and Jannett, Steven and Diana, Peter and Meg, Michael and Lorrie, Melissa and David, and seven grandchildren. He left no enemies, he fought his cancer with all he had and his mind didn't give an inch. No funeral. Cremation. Friends are invited to a final party for Hal at 64 Pioneer Pathway, Scarborough on Saturday, September 2nd from 2-5 p.m. A professional to the last; every deadline met, all words in place.

I purposely did not mention that in lieu of flowers people should send money to some charity. I hoped one or two would send flowers and many did. We did leave discreet written messages near the sign-in table at home so that if people wished they could send money to the self- help group that was such a comfort to me. I was irrationally angry when people sent donations in Hal’s name to the Cancer Society. After all, why couldn’t they have found a way to save him?

continued in chapter 15, part 2