Seriously?
I need to have a few words with Dr. Z because this is just asinine.
I can remember sitting in the back of someone's car going to pick out the flowers for the service. It had suddenly hit me that Cory's artwork should be at the visitation and service - that people should know all she had been and done. Tim got ahold of someone at the funeral home- not Mark, who was out- who told him we could bring two or three pieces; that was all they could accommodate. He covered the phone with his hand and relayed this message to me with a frightened expression on his already miserable face.
I threw both hands up in the air, and just started screaming, "You know what? You know what? Tell them just forget it! If I can't even do this the way it's supposed to be, then I'm just not gonna do it at all! I'm done!"
Tim looked at me, knowing full well that I was referring to the funeral as a whole and not the inclusion of Cory's artwork. Instead of trying to explain to a completely traumatized and irrational individual that the funeral must take place- one way or another- he turned back to his call.
"I'm gonna need to talk to Mark." he said firmly into the phone.
Back at the house, I stomped into the house, and began going through her canvases. I was head and elbows into the wooden crate her loose paper paintings were in when I stumbled upon a piece I'd never seen before. I pulled it out and looked closer. It was a painting of a figure facing a casket with writing underneath that said, "I had a horrible vision of me dead and my mother crying over my casket at the funeral." It was dated 2010. I held it and watched as the paper began first shaking and then whipping wildly about as my wrist jittered helplessly. I opened my mouth and uttered a blood curdling scream that brought all the family members in the house at the time on the run.
Tim took the painting from me and hid it on a high shelf of a closet. It was too late; it was one of those things that once seen can never be unseen. Mom came on the run with a pill. I'd refused to take anything up until then, but this time I grabbed it greedily with one shaky hand and gobbled it down.
Tim took me by one arm and led me away from the toy room where canvases were now spread out from one end to the other. "C'mon, honey, how about if you just lay down?"
When I opened my eyes groggily a couple hours later, Tim came in to tell me he had talked to Mark and we were welcome to bring all the pieces we had- they would make room. Tim searched my face for some sign of recognition- this tiny victory. I stared blankly. Did it really matter? Did it?
She was still dead.
That's how it feels now. The last year has been the most unimaginable sort of hell. I have crawled through the majority of it. I made it through one calendar year, only to discover there is no major victory to be had for those who survive.
She's still dead.
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