NINETEEN

July 6, 2012

1:00 p.m.

On Friday July 6, 2012, Flore Delacroix was put to rest. The congregation was much older than it had been for Nadia, and Mathieu noticed that the mood wasn’t entirely gloomy, faces weren’t pained with grief, and an air of acceptance and hopefulness reigned.

Mathieu reasoned the elderly were used to death, or at least had come to terms with it, and while he could understand that, it didn’t give him any reasons to pray. God had taken someone else from him, and how long before He took his grandfather?

Soon they were headed for the cemetery where Father Russo said a last prayer and his grandmother’s urn was put into a small shallow grave next to Nadia’s. Mathieu moved to the side and watched his grandfather accept condolences. A lot of friends and acquaintances had come to the cemetery and it took nearly an hour before everyone was gone, except for Lori-Anne, her parents, and Nancy and the kids who stood a few feet away.

“You okay, son?” Grandpa said.

“Yeah.”

“Your grandmother is in a better place. I’m sure she’s quite happy to see Denis again.”

“What if there’s nothing else, Grandpa?”

“What if there is?”

Mathieu had no response to that.

“Son, we’re all here just for a very short time. It’s what we do and who we love that make it all worthwhile. See that young lady over there,” he said and pointed toward Lori-Anne, “she’s the one that matters for you. Let all your anger go and go to her.”

“I can’t.”

“I think you can but you’re choosing not to.”

Mathieu kicked a small stone. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does,” Grandpa said. “Look there.”

Mathieu looked at Nadia’s small headstone. The wording, which Lori-Anne had chosen carefully, was engraved beautifully.

Nadia Bridgette Delacroix

1998 – 2012

Forever Missed

Forever Loved

“You remember the day you brought her home?”

Mathieu felt the eight pounds in his arms as if it were yesterday. He’d stared at her sleeping face it seemed for hours. “I’ll never forget.”

“That little girl was the outcome of your love for Lori-Anne. You can’t tell me that love is gone.”

“I don’t know, Grandpa.” He swatted a mosquito on the back of his neck. “Not everyone is meant to stay with the same person their entire life. You and Grandma were lucky.”

Grandpa tipped his fedora and wiped his forehead. “Luck had nothing to do with it. Like every married couple, we had to work at it. You don’t think I ever got mad at your grandmother? You don’t think she ever got mad at me? Hell, when your dad died and she fell into her own depression, why did I stick around? I could have taken the easy way out and left. But I put my own selfish needs aside and helped her, and you, because I loved you both.”

Mathieu squinted at the sun. The day was too beautiful for a funeral. Then again, it fitted his grandmother’s outlook on life. To him, she’d always been smiling and happy and he had no recollection that she’d been anything else. He wondered if his grandfather was making it up, her depression, to try to coax him into seeing a doctor.

“Maybe some time apart will help,” he said.

Grandpa put his fedora back on. “I hope it does.”

“Me too,” he said and watched Lori-Anne and her family come up and say a few words to his grandfather and then leave.

“Well, guess we should get going,” Grandpa said.

“Just like that?”

“If you know your grandmother, she wouldn’t want us to just hang around here and be miserable. She’ll be with me no matter where I am. Come on, take me home.”

“Sure,” Mathieu said and shot one more look at his daughter’s tombstone.

Forever missed. Forever loved.

Mathieu tried to swallow but his throat, suddenly parched, had shrivelled to the size of a pea.