October of 2006. The funeral. I close my eyes and remember being in the middle of the St. Cecilia’s parking lot all …
alone. There are cars all around me, parked neatly in their spots. A lot of SUVs, I notice.
Kate has given me an iPod as her goodbye gift and a letter. I am supposed to listen to “Dancing Queen” and dance all by myself. I don’t want to do it, but what choice do I have, and really, when I hear the words you can dance, for a brief, wondrous moment, the music takes me away from here.
And then it is over.
I see her family coming toward me. Johnny; Kate’s parents, Margie and Bud; her kids; her brother, Sean. They look like prisoners of war freed at the end of a long death march—broken-spirited and surprised to be alive. We gather together and someone says something—what, I don’t know. I answer. We pretend to be okay for each other. Johnny is angry—how could it be any other way?
“People are coming to the house,” he says.
“It’s what she wanted,” Margie says. (How can she be standing? Her grief outweighs her by a hundred pounds.)
The thought of it—a so-called celebration of Kate’s life—makes me feel sick.
I was not good at the whole making-death-a-positive-transition thing. How could I? I wanted her to fight to the last breath. It was a mistake. I should have listened to her fear, comforted her. Instead I’d promised her that everything would be okay, that she would heal.
But I’d made another promise, too. At the end. I’d sworn to take care of her family, to be there for her children, and I would not let her down again.
I follow Margie and Bud to their Volvo. Inside, the car smells like my childhood at the Mularkeys’—menthol cigarettes, Jean Nate perfume, and hair spray.
I imagine Katie beside me again, in the backseat of the car, with her dad driving, and her mom blowing smoke out the open window. I can almost hear John Denver singing about his Rocky Mountain high.
The four miles that stretch between the Catholic church and the Ryan house seem to take forever. Everywhere I look, I see Kate’s life. The drive-through coffee stand she frequented, the ice-cream shop that made her favorite dulce de leche, the bookstore that was always her first stop at Christmastime.
And then we are there.
The yard has a wild, untended look to it. Overgrown. Katie had always been “going to” learn to garden.
We park and I get out. Kate’s brother, Sean, comes up beside me. He is five years younger than Kate and me … or than me, I guess … but he is so slight and nerdy and hunched that he looks older. His hair is thinning and his glasses are out of date, but behind the lenses his green eyes are so like Katie’s that I hug him.
Afterward, I step back, waiting for him to speak. He doesn’t, and neither do I. We have never had much to say to each other and today is obviously not a day to begin a conversation. Tomorrow he will return to his tech job in the Silicon Valley, where I imagine him living alone, playing video games at night, and eating sandwiches for every meal. I don’t know if this is even close to his life, but it’s how I see it.
He steps away and I am left alone at the car, staring up at a house that has always felt like my home, too.
I can’t go in.
I can’t.
But I have to.
I draw in a deep breath. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s go on. I have perfected the art of denial, haven’t I? I have always been able to ignore my pain, smile, and go on. That’s what I have to do now.
For Kate.
I go inside and join Margie in the kitchen. Together, we go about the business of setting up for a party. I move fast, becoming one of those bustling women who flit like a hummingbird. It is the only way I can keep going. Don’t think about her. Don’t remember. Margie and I become a work crew, wordlessly readying this house for a party neither of us wants to attend. I set up easels throughout the house and place photographs on them, the pictures Kate had chosen to reflect her life. I can’t look at any of them.
I am hanging on to my composure one indrawn breath at a time when I hear the doorbell ring. Behind me, footsteps thud on hardwood.
It is time.
I turn and do my best to smile, but it is uneven and impossible to maintain. I move through the crowd carefully, pouring wine and taking plates away. Every minute seems like a triumph of will. As I move, I hear snippets of conversation. People are talking about Kate, sharing memories. I don’t listen—it hurts too much and I am close to losing it now—but the stories are everywhere. As I hear her bid at the Rotary auction, I realize that the people in this room are talking about a Kate I didn’t know, and at that, sadness darts deep. And more. Jealousy.
A woman in an ill-fitting and outdated black dress comes up to me and says, “She talked about you a lot.”
I smile at that, grateful. “We were best friends for more than thirty years.”
“She was so brave during her chemo, wasn’t she?”
I can’t answer that. I wasn’t there for her, not then. In the three decades of our friendship, there was a two-year blip when a fight escalated. I had known how depressed Kate was and I’d tried to help, but as is usual for me, I went about it all wrong. In the end, I hurt Kate deeply and I didn’t apologize.
In my absence, my best friend battled cancer and had a double mastectomy. I was not there for her when her hair fell out or when her test results turned bad or when she decided to stop treatment. I will regret it for as long as I breathe.
“That second round was brutal,” says another woman, who looks like she has just come from yoga, in black leggings, ballet flats, and an oversized black cardigan.
“I was there when she shaved her head,” another woman says. “She was laughing, calling herself GI Kate. I never saw her cry.”