This Side of Heaven (13 page)

TWELVE

I
t was a perfect day for a wedding, a beautiful fall Saturday bathed in cool blue sunshine and framed in green leaves with a hint of orange and yellow. That was the only thing Annie could think as she slipped into her dress and applied a second coat of mascara. Thoughts like that helped her stay sane, made it possible for her to get through the day without breaking down and never getting up again.

She repositioned a few loose strands of hair and lifted her gaze to the bathroom window and the blue skies far beyond. Back when Josh and Becky were serious, they had sometimes talked about wanting an early fall wedding. Annie could hear her son now, the timbre of his voice, the sparkle in his eyes when Becky was near.

“October,” they used to say. “That’s the perfect time for a wedding.”

Annie had to agree. The dry heat was behind them and snow was still a month or more away. Resorts and cruises gave great deals in October and beaches were warm and empty, with schoolkids back in class. Annie spritzed hair spray on her long bangs. Becky Wheaton had arrived yesterday, still single and lovely, and she was staying in their downstairs guest room. Family had flown in from Maine and San Diego and Atlanta, and everyone was meeting at the church in an hour. Only this wasn’t the wedding Josh had looked forward to.

It was his funeral.

Annie had survived the last week on God’s strength alone, she had no doubt. But she did her part by keeping busy. Josh was her baby, her only son. She wasn’t going to tell him good-bye without creating a movie of his life and a printed program that people could take home to remember him by. The program was first, and Annie got it off to the printer on Tuesday. The movie took longer.

Annie used the iMovie program on her Mac and mixed short video clips of Josh’s life with still photos and occasional titles or bits of text until she had a seamless production nearly an hour long. Then she dubbed in music where it applied, using songs that spoke of a life gone too soon and the sadness of saying good-bye.

Late last night, Annie and Nate had previewed the movie through teary eyes and Annie found herself thinking of Babette and the others who had the nerve to look down on Josh. Whatever his situation at the time of his death, the movie had enough highlights to leave a stunning, poignant picture of Josh’s life. His blue medal in the fifth-grade all-area track meet, the trophy for his Pinewood Derby car the year he was a Boy Scout, the time he emceed the talent show for the eighth-grade graduation party.

One memory after another combined to tell a story other people might’ve forgotten: that Josh had been a success at one time. Never mind the fact that there were only a few photos and no video after he began working as a tow truck driver. This was how Annie wanted to remember him, and it was how she hoped everyone at the funeral today remembered him. The way he was before he lost sight of his dreams.

Nate found her in the bathroom still messing with her hair. “You ready?”

She took a last look at herself in the mirror. Wasn’t this how it felt when Lindsay got married, everyone in town for the occasion and the rush of getting ready for a meeting at the church? She swallowed back her tears. “I don’t want to do this.”

“Me, either.” He put his arms around her. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

It was the sort of thing they’d been saying all week, even as they met with the funeral director and purchased a casket and made plans to bury Josh in a cemetery at the base of his favorite mountain. How could he be gone? What was this crazy chain of events they were caught up in, and why did it still feel like they could pick up the phone and call him or hear a knock at the door and find him standing there, looking for time with his family?

The walk to the car, the trip to the church—all of it passed in a blur. The service was set to start at eleven o’clock, and in the minutes before, Annie looked around and felt pierced with disappointment. The church was barely a quarter full, forty-five, maybe fifty people in attendance. Mostly family and a few of Josh’s friends—Becky, Keith and his wife, and a handful of people Annie vaguely recognized from the horrific minutes spent in Josh’s parking lot a week ago. Two more were signing the guest book at the back of the church.

Keith was a pallbearer as were Nate and Annie’s two nephews, Josh’s cousins from Maine. Again there was that uncanny similarity. The flowers marking the front of the church, the candles, the guest book. The dark suits for the pallbearers and the boutonnieres for the lapels of the men’s jackets. It was the party Josh always hoped to have one day, with everything but the bride and groom.

Annie glanced over her shoulder again. There should have been more people than this, more lives touched by her only son. Where were the people they entertained? The ones whose kids had gone to school with Josh? Were they too busy to come, or had time created that much of a chasm between their lives and Josh’s?

Tears stung Annie’s eyes and she leaned closer to Nate.
I loved you, son. Your father and I loved you. Lindsay, too. That’s all that matters. And God, You loved him, too, right? You loved Josh?
Annie suppressed a wave of panic, because what if Josh didn’t love the Lord? He’d loved Him as a child and even as a high schooler. But lately? Annie wasn’t so sure.

She dismissed the picture of Josh missing church and seeming distant from God in recent years. That wasn’t the Josh she remembered, and now she had to believe with every breath that he wasn’t the Josh God remembered, either.
Please, God. . . . Remember him the way he was. No one can snatch Your people from Your hand, right? Let that be true for Josh, please. . . .

Her eyes fell on the casket at the front of the church. It was covered with a spray of red carnations and next to it, propped up on an easel, was a framed photo of Josh in hiking shorts and a white T-shirt, a picture taken by Lind-say when the two of them climbed lower Pikes Peak a year before the accident.

The sound of quiet sobbing came from Lindsay, who was sitting on Annie’s other side. Lindsay had her head on her husband’s shoulder, and next to him, Ben and Bella sat quietly, with their eyes downcast. Lindsay tried to talk to her a few times this past week, something about a music video and Wynonna Judd, but the distraction of phone calls and the movie Annie had been making and the details of the service always stopped them from finishing the conversation.

Annie made a point to get the details later. For now she could only stare at her daughter. Her brother had been her best friend all her life. She would never be the same without him.

Music started, the haunting refrains of a pipe organ playing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” and Annie tried to believe it. With everything inside her, she tried. But all she could think was if God was faithful, if there was no shadow of turning with Him, then how come Josh was in the wooden box and not in the pew with the rest of the family?

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine new mercies every morning, when every day for the rest of her life she would wake up and experience the same realization. Her only son was dead.
God . . . I can’t do this. I can’t live without him. Please, take me home so I can hug him one more time.

The service was over quickly. A pastor from the college ministry shared a brief message because he was the last person Josh ever connected with at the church, back when it looked like he might finish college and become an educator and go the path of his parents.

“It’s never easy when someone leaves us in the prime of their life,” the pastor was saying. “At times like this we must lean on God more than ever before.”

Annie leaned harder into Nate. She couldn’t remember the pastor’s name. Aaron or Andy . . . She opened the program and scanned the list of names at the front. The survived-by list and the pallbearers and there it was, Pastor Allen Reynolds. Of course. Pastor Allen had met with Josh several times the fall after he graduated from high school, trying to convince him to give higher education a chance and get more involved with the college group. But even during his two years of junior college, Josh had followed through on very little of what Pastor Allen suggested.

“God’s ways are not our own.” The pastor hesitated as he looked out over the congregation. “If they were, then what sort of God would we be serving?”

Annie blinked and two tears slid down her cheeks.
Good question,
she told herself.
What sort of God would take my only son before his life even had a chance to begin?
And why hadn’t things worked out with Becky? The girl had spent all of high school in love with Josh, and the two of them talked about going to college together. So why didn’t they? How come, like everything else about Josh’s life, those plans had fallen apart?

One of her brothers read a section of Scripture from 1 Corinthians, but Annie wasn’t really listening. She locked eyes on the casket and all she could think was that her baby was trapped inside that box. The newborn she had held in her arms in the hospital twenty-eight years ago, the one who at three months old smiled at her and captured her heart all in the same breath. The boy who toddled across the room in his daddy’s shoes and who caught her a toad for her birthday the year he was four.

The child she had adored and dreamed about and planned a future for was in the casket and he wasn’t ever coming out. Her body made a sudden move to stand, to cross the front of the church and close the distance between her and the wooden box. She might not be able to open it, but she could at least put her hand on it so Josh would know she was close by. But even as her legs tightened and she tried to stand, she ordered herself to stay seated. Pastor Allen was still talking. People didn’t stand up in the middle of a funeral service, even if their only boy was trapped in a casket ten yards away.

After the Scripture reading there was another song. Finally, the pastor explained that people were welcome to follow the hearse to the cemetery and then back to the Warren house. His voice and the voices around her as the pastor dismissed the congregation sounded distant and small, like someone had turned down the volume on a distorted pair of speakers.

Somehow, she and Nate found their way back to the car, and Lindsay hugged her before she climbed inside. “It isn’t fair.” Lindsay was still crying just as hard as earlier. “I miss him so much.”

Annie could hear the music coming from the church, another round of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” She blocked it out and kissed her daughter on her cheek. “I miss him, too.”

Nate hugged Lindsay. Then, they got into their separate cars and lined up behind the hearse. Again Annie was struck by the strangest, saddest thought. Since Josh stopped running track his junior year of high school, he hadn’t been first at anything he did. Someone was always a little faster, a little stronger, a little more equipped for the right job or right break or right opportunity. But not here. Here he was in first place once again, the hearse leading the way in a procession that would cross town and end up at the cemetery.

When they arrived, Nate said a few words to the family and friends who followed them there. “We grieve the loss of our youngest child, our son, Josh. But we know we will see him again in heaven.” The sincerity in Nate’s expression was matched only by that in his voice. “Thank you for coming. We hope you’ll come to the house when we’re finished here.”

There was little conversation as people quietly paid their respects and then made their way back to their cars parked along the private road that ran through the center of the cemetery. Becky was one of the last to leave. She walked up to the casket and touched her fingers to the wood. For what seemed like a long time, she stood there, her eyes closed, cheeks wet from her tears.

Maybe if you had stayed with him
, Annie thought. . . . But she couldn’t harbor bad feelings, not toward the girl who had been the love of her son’s life. Instead, all she felt was a great ocean of loss and sorrow. Because if they’d stayed together, this day could’ve been so very different.

After Becky left for their house, a finality settled over the moment because they were alone—just Annie, Nate, Lindsay, and her family. One at a time they took a few moments beside Josh’s casket, until it was Annie’s turn. She barely moved her feet through the fresh-cut grass until she was at his side. There she was struck by a sudden and profound thought. So many times when Josh was growing up, he’d brought her flowers. Her son was quick with a hug or a kind word, but often when he wanted to show his love he’d give her flowers. She could see him running through the door during the spring of his fourth-grade year, a handful of dandelions clutched in his fist. “Here, Mom. I picked these for you.”

And she could remember holding them and smelling them and smiling at him and thinking,
I hope no one ever tells him they’re weeds.

There were flowers for her birthday each year and on the last few Mother’s Days, a wild bouquet picked from a field not far from his apartment. She stared at the spray of carnations on top of the casket. Carefully, she eased three from the display and brought them close to her nose. They smelled of late summer and sweet sunshine, and Annie thought about where she’d dry them and how she’d save them forever.

Because these were the last flowers she would ever get from him.

Only twenty people showed up back at the house for the late lunch spread Annie put together. The conversation was peppered with happy stories from Josh’s childhood and wistful projections of what might have been if he hadn’t had the accident. Becky stayed until the end, not saying much and keeping to herself. Before she left, she pulled Annie aside and hugged her, really held on to her.

“I never stopped loving him.” She whispered the words in a voice thick with tears. After another quick hug she was gone.

Annie still wasn’t clear about what happened to end things between Josh and Becky years ago, but this wasn’t the time to talk about it. Besides, it was too late to matter now. Josh had missed out on a life with Becky, and he’d missed out on the settlement he so badly deserved. He’d missed out on being a dad and having the life he dreamed about. His entire life seemed like one big missed opportunity.