Bring the Rain Clouds, Mr. Weatherman

When he filled me in with the news of what had happened, it was like reality had been infiltrated with some other version of reality. Harsher, grittier, like blood in your mouth. You try not to think about it but when you face it, you taste the wrought iron against your white teeth.

I had this helpless feeling of trying to do something that I had no experience doing. It was foreign to me which made me feel like I was doing everything so so so wrong. But what can one do in this situation? What can one say? This is what everyone told me when I told them of my short comings. I hated it because I wanted to do so much more. Grabbing at rain clouds.

Holding him in the darkness and feeling the trembling. Realizing it was my own body crying, not his.

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The funeral was on a hot day in July. The weatherman that morning reported that July was the #1 month for heat related deaths. Is that right, Mr. Weatherman?

All were not in black. All were not, not in black. The rosary was said and the pallbearers cracked their knuckles.

The tears of the widow washed over us all like an opera singer's solo. Mournful, painful. It twisted your insides to see someone in such a state...a state of something words cannot express.

The big dinosaur forklift lowered the wooden case into the ground, so far down. THen the bulldozer came to lay the blanket of gravel and dirt over the rest. It was a bit shocking to see these machines, forcing us to face what was happening. But there was a softness to it. The bulldozer scooping the dirt, smoothing it over like a baby at the beach building a sand castle, trying to create perfection before the tides pull it away.

I stood there afar in the background. Checking to see if he was ok. Trying so hard to not crumble. I wanted to hold him, hug his body, touch his hand. But all was not possible. But my insides were fighting and there were times when I felt like I couldn't breathe.

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