The Day After

I have written a couple of times about the day Max died.  Tonight I was meditating on the first day AFTER he died.  He died on Friday morning.  Saturday morning I woke up after just a few brief hours of sleep and I had an indescribable weight and pain throughout my entire body.  I received a message on FB from a dear friend who had lost an adult son to suicide that said she was thinking about me ... and that there was nothing quite like that first morning when you wake up without your child in the world.  I will never forget that email. 

We had to go to the funeral home that day.  Seemed impossibly early in the process to have to deal with that!!  I couldn't believe that just a few days before my life was so normal and routine, and that day we were headed to a funeral home to arrange the details of where my 18 year old son would be cared for after death.  Unreal. 

Trinity slept in Max's room, and she helped me pick out the clothing to take to the funeral home.  We picked Max's favorite pair of jeans - they had a big hole ripped in the knee.  His black "Class of 2010" t-shirt, and a dressier long sleeve shirt to wear "jacket style" over the t-shirt.  The funeral home had warned us he had to have a long sleeved shirt because we chose to donate his tissues and organs, which included the bones in his forearms (for bone marrow).  (A horrible detail I never wanted to know...) 

We got to the parking lot of the funeral home, just Trinity, Todd, & I (Wesley didn't want to go).  As Todd turned off the car, I freaked out.  I started crying and shaking my head "NO".  I said if I didn't go in to that mortuary, this wasn't real, this wouldn't be happening if I just didn't get out of the car.  Poor Trinity & Todd, they were both quiet and just let me freak out and cry.  Finally, reluctantly, I opened the door and in we went.  The smell was overwhelming.  You know the smell... it's like cleaning solution and death ... no other way to describe it.


We were taken to a conference room where we were offered bottled water.  I was drinking LOTS of liquid at that point because I was constantly crying out way more than I was taking in and dehydration was already setting in.  I asked when we could see Max ... the funeral director said it would be a couple of days before they would have him.  Then he added that I shouldn't worry because they were keeping him in a fridge at the morgue.  REALLY, THAT IS WHAT YOU THOUGHT I WAS WORRYING ABOUT????  Good God, that was a detail I NEVER NEEDED TO KNOW, thank you Mr. funeral director!!!  He died on the turnpike, so they took him to the morgue in Topeka, which is two hours north of Wichita. 


Of course we had never even discussed details about what Max wanted or we wanted for him - he was 18, why on EARTH would we have ever talked about that?!?  So we had to start from scratch.  (Any time any of Max's friends asked me what they could do for me, I told them to go home and have a conversation with their parents about their wishes because it was so very awful to have to make all the decisions without knowing Max's wishes.)  Everything from a casket to a guest book to cremation option to renting a casket so he could lay in it until he was cremated, to asking them to rinse the black out of his hair because he didn't want black hair forever and I was going to make sure that wish was honored, to embalming details, and figuring out the ridiculous COST of each thing.  It's a horrible feeling to feel like you need to watch your pennies because you feel like this is the LAST thing you are doing for that person, and in the emotional state you are in, it is so very hard to be objective.  Between the three of us, I think we managed to get everything we wanted and needed for Max, all the way down to the "manly" urn his remains would be in - almost like a leather wine flask. 

By then my house was full of people and food and I was grateful to go home to them and be comforted by them.  Truthfully, the evening is blurred in with the rest of the week.  Mark & Mandi got there Saturday night late.  Was that the night Haley came over?  I just cannot be sure, I am still working on all my calls and putting the time line together. 

That first day after was horrendous.  I felt like we went from one awful thing to the next ... the seemingly never ending flow of information about the wreck and the decisions that had to be made.   I hope to never have another day like it in my life.