I think everyone has their preferred communication style, most likely based on their learning style. I am a visual person; it's just the way my brain takes in information best. If my son is asking me to spell all but the easiest of words, such as “cabbage”, I must have a space to jot down my idea of how it is spelled before I can help him. If required to spit it out based on what I see in my mind, I’d have no better idea than he did. I’ve often thought I would’ve flunked school back in the Little House on the Prairie days when they had to do all that long division in their heads. I would’ve have to lay it out to Ma & Pa…look guys, I’m sorry, but my brain just won’t do that. Then I’d hang my head in shame and go clean the barn.
Friends and family could confirm if they stopped to think about that I start each conversation, whether serious or just dishing the latest with, “So, look…” Look- as if I unconsciously expect everyone else’s brain to be programmed to receive information the same way I do. All those audio folks need to just come over to my side, and the world would be a lot easier to navigate.
So my point for explaining all this to you? I thought you might be interested to know I’ve been carrying the bid proposal for Cory’s monument around in my work bag for the last week or so. Then I thought you might want to know why. So here we go.
My brain doesn’t accept a lot of things until they are seen in written form. Ask my husband, who will tell you that in the worst of our disagreements, we’ve had to resort to written communication to make any sort of resolution. We once got into a heated argument on the plane back from our first family vacation taken around our first wedding anniversary. His symptoms of a mood disorder, at that time undiagnosed, had already begun to take their toll on our relationship, and his relationship with Cory. We passed furiously scribbled notes, riddled with exclaimation points back and forth the entire flight, as my certainty grew that my first steps back on land would be in the direction of a divorce attorney.
So picture my immediate family and I getting out of our vehicles in the funeral home parking lot to see Cory for the first time since the accident. I had to be pulled inside. As much as I yearned to see her, my waking thoughts went something like this: TERROR, TERROR, TERROR…I just need to kiss her face…TERROR, TERROR, TERROR…I just need to kiss her face. I was horribly frightened that when I got the chance to see her, she would be like so many deceased folk, looking absolutely nothing like herself. God bless my friend Angie’s heart for at least telling me not to be startled to find her flesh freezing cold when I touched her, if I touched her.
If I touched her, are you kidding me? I think I had some vague plans to climb right in with her and lay holding her as if she were simply sleeping in a hospital bed. My mind changed on that note in a hurry because once we had all made it inside - my parents, my sisters, their families, and myself- the infinitely compassionate funeral director, Mark, talked to us about what we were about to see. He said that considering the shape she’d been in when brought in, she looked quite, quite good. My stomach plummeted to depths unknown. As I swooned, roadside again within seconds, he explained that while she could be gently touched, she was not to be jostled or handled roughly in any manner.
I took this to mean she could fall apart at the slightest movement, and died inside just a little more, if that was even possible. As my mom and sisters gave over the outfit I’d chosen for Cory to be buried in (tears are streaming down my face as I type this passage in my favorite coffeeshop), I wandered in the large foyer, waiting. As I turned around, my eyes focused on one of those black announcement boards that are used to direct visitors to the correct viewing room. I scanned it, my eyes bulging as I took in the discreet little white letters that spelled out my daughter’s name. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. My heart began hammering furiously and began climbing right into my throat. I looked again. It was still there. My daughter’s name was on an announcement board so people could come view her dead body. CLICK. Somehow that was the final piece that needed to fall into place, cutting through my shock, and telling me this was really and truly happening. Up until then I think I had been clinging desperately to the idea that this whole thing was an incredibly long, incredibly detailed nightmare. As I read her name for about the third time, those little white letters reached out and just shoved me to the floor. Dimly, I could hear my sister, Tammy, saying, “Oh no, she’s passing out!”
I wasn’t unconscious, just unable to stand and read Cory’s name in such a place for such a reason. She was nineteen, for pete’s sake. Nineteen. Didn’t people know that? Had God forgotten? As Uncle Bud and Tim helped me to my feet, I weakly demanded those letters be taken down, and wouldn’t stop saying it until the kind older woman accepting Cory’s burial outfit moved to do it.
--TO BE CONTINUED
(sorry guys, there is more to the story, but I am just too upset right now)
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