“HE’S DEAD,” I scream, “but he’s not forgotten!”

Then I run out my cousin’s front door, leaving behind a house full of family trying to celebrate my mother’s seventy-fifth birthday. However, since there’s a snowstorm on this particular evening in early December, I have to stop at the front door, after my embarrassing outburst, to put on my jacket, mittens and boots. Only then do I charge down the icy front walkway, stomping as angrily as possible in my new ridiculously high-heeled boots. I climb into my car, slam the door and slowly inch my way home on icy roads.

“They didn’t toast Sam!” I blubber into the phone from my living room.

“Adri?” says Dawson, on the other end of the line. “What’s wrong?”

“I was (sob) at my mom’s birthday and my family didn’t even include him (sob) in the toast before dinner. I just can’t believe them!”

“Do you want me to come over?”

“Could you?”

A few minutes later the doorbell rings. But it’s not Dawson; it’s Dale’s wife.

“They sent you, huh?” I say.

“Yup.”

“I’m pretty pissed off.”

“Oh, we gathered that.”

“I can’t believe my own family. Not one person mentioned Sam the whole night—not even at a goddamn toast to my mother.”

My sister-in-law winces. “Everybody feels just terrible about that, but I think we all figured we’d try and give you a break from the hurt.”

“Hah!” I give a shrill laugh. “Well that certainly didn’t work.”

“You’re right. We screwed up and I’m sorry.”

“Mentioning Sam’s name and talking about him is really important to me because if we don’t, he’ll be forgotten.”

“You do know, Adri, that at that dinner table tonight, Sam was on every single one of our minds?”

I shrug. “If no one says anything, how would I?”

The doorbell rings. I let Dawson in.

“Well,” she says to him. “We messed up.”

“It happens,” he replies. “It’s hard to know what to say sometimes.”

“Here’s a tip then,” I say. “Not mentioning Sam is gonna bury him a hell of a lot faster than the dirt they threw on his grave.”

I get the double-goldfish. Is the nice-widow facade finally crumbling?

RECOGNIZING THAT a change of scenery might be wise, I plan a farewell tour to Vancouver to visit our friends and old stomping grounds, then on to Kingston to see my grandpa. It seems wisest to keep moving; stopping means vulnerability.

An hour before I’m leaving for the airport, I get a call from the Hope chaplain’s wife. “I have some bad news,” she says.

“Oh?” I sit down in my chair.

“Another officer died today. He was in a head-on collision on his way to work.”

“Shit,” is my first response. “Who?” is my second.

She tells me the name of the city police officer, adding: “He was a recruit classmate of the officer who was killed by the drunk driver last June.”

I process this as I process everything else these days.

“Adri?”

“Let me get this straight,” I say. “One cop was killed driving home from work. Three months later, Sam died at work. Three months after that, a recruit classmate of the first officer dies on his way to work.”

“Yes.”

It would appear God is plucking cops like daisies. “When’s the funeral?”

“You’ll be out of town for it,” she replies. “Which I think is a blessing.”

Since the blessings being handed out these days are few and far between, I shall take this one and run.

STAN PICKS me up at the Vancouver airport.

“You look great!” he lies, giving me a bear hug.

Although dangerous on slippery surfaces and uncomfortable to walk in, my new boots do give me an extra three inches of height, an attempt to draw attention away from the twenty pounds I’ve put on from all the damn cookies and comfort food.

“We haven’t planned much for your visit,” he says, “because you need a break.”

The problem, however, is that I don’t know how to take a break. Nor do I deserve one. Sam’s death was wrong and it’s my job to figure out how to make everything right again. If I’m not thinking about Sam, the circumstances surrounding his death, societal issues or higher spiritual questions, then I’m not being a responsible widow.

I borrow their car and head to Abbotsford the next day. Sitting outside the apartment where Sam and I lived four years ago, I stare up at our old balcony, bawling. Then I hook up with Sam’s college buddies for a beer. Several of them work at a prison so I ask one girl how that’s going.

“Very frustrating,” is her reply.

“How so?”

“Well, most of the inmates are repeat offenders and the main reason they re-offend is because life in prison is easier than working for a living.”

“That’s absurd!” I cry.

“It’s easier to get their drugs in prison than on the street,” another girl explains.

“Let me get this straight,” I say, “once a bad guy gets released from jail, he goes out and promptly commits another crime…say a break and enter, just so he can go back to prison again and buy drugs?”

And yet another room goes quiet.

THE FOLLOWING morning, I continue on to Chilliwack to visit a friend.

“I think I’m going to die violently,” I confess to her over tea. I don’t add “in the spring.” No sense in alarming anyone.

She puts down her teacup. “Most of us are going to die violently.”

“Huh?”

“Think about it. How many people actually pass away peacefully in their sleep, simply of old age?”

I shrug.

“Not many. Car crashes, cancer, heart attacks…that’s the usual stuff and it all seems pretty violent to me.”

“I guess.”

“So where are you at these days—in terms of accepting Sam’s death?” she asks.

“That’s the million dollar question.”

“It just seems that you’re pretty OK with everything. Am I right?”

I sigh. “Yes and no.”

She gets up from the couch, leaves the room and returns with a book, The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav. “You might find this interesting,” she says, handing it to me.

I quickly flip through it as if looking for something. A line about love being the energy of the soul catches my eye.

“Thanks,” I say, “I seem to be on quite the spiritual journey.”

“We all are, Adri.”