I found myself living under the naïve delusion that during the time my mom was in Washington, our family would be left to recover from the events that had transpired over the past weeks, months and years. You would think by this time, I wouldn’t allow myself to be lulled into this false sense of security about my life. Part of me thinks it was some kind of internal survival instinct; that I had to believe something good was going to come out of all this.

Not much time passed, two or three days maybe, after my mom left for Spokane, and there was still that nagging energy in the air, sort of like those days you have when you wake up and and you’re absolutely positive there’s something wrong. No matter what you do you can never quite put your finger on it? That energy hung around in the air for days. I tried my best to ignore it, but my intuition or whatever you want to call it kicked in and I went to my dad, who had spent most of the last few days in bed, still recuperating from his surgery- something he hadn’t had the opportunity to do much since he was discharged from the hospital. My dad and I spoke for quite awhile about everything that had gone on. After a few minutes, I asked him point blank what was going to happen now. He told me the bishop had met with him, and as a ward service project, a few people were going to come in and help clean our house.

As I mentioned earlier, the house had been neglected for quite some time. It needed to be deep cleaned. To be honest, I was actually looking forward to having a clean house. It had been quite awhile since we’d had that luxury. If I had known what was really about to happen, I would have been down on my knees 24 hours a day with a toothbrush, cleaning the entire house by myself. I would have gladly accepted bruises on my knees and muscles so sore I wouldn’t be able to move, and the cramped hands and the smell of bleach that would never quite come off my skin no matter how many showers I took. I would have even gladly cleaned the house with my tongue.

It began innocently enough. Four or five members of the relief society showed up at our door armed with cleaning products and buckets, and genuinely kind smiles on their faces. These women I truly don’t place any blame on for what happened. The women with the cleaning arsenal were the closest people to friends that my mom had. They began in the kitchen, and really CLEANED. Things were pulled out of the kitchen cupboards and the insides of the cupboards were washed. The kitchen was really getting CLEAN. It started smelling really good, and I actually began to look forward to coming home.

But then, more people started showing up to ‘help’. It had been decided by the bishop that in order to pay the bill for my mom’s rehabilitation, a yard sale needed to be put together with any excess things in the house that would fetch a price. Then the real fun began. The house was swarming with people, everyone from the entire Elders Quorum, and the entire Relief Society. Kids, teenagers, practically the entire ward began to descend on our house.

Rooms began to be torn apart. Every closet was opened and emptied. Every box, every container, every drawer was pillaged. Family heirlooms were taken. Our entire lives, beginning to end, were laid bare for the entire ward to see. These people were quite literally airing our dirty laundry out all over the neighborhood. I remember one day, coming home from being someplace, and found three men from the Elders Quorum in my bedroom, going through my closet and the drawers of my bureau. I. Freaked. Out. I began screaming and yelling at them to get the fuck out of my room. I literally pushed them out the door, then moved my bureau in front of it and barricaded myself in. I had finally reached my boiling point. I felt something in my brain snap and I began tearing apart my bedroom. I had never felt that kind of rage before. I had never let something take over my body that way. All the pain, humiliation, coercion, manipulation all came flooding back, hitting me like a huge wave crashing into a rock on the shore. So this was what it felt like to be crazy.

In reality, I know it’s kind of silly to be so protective of STUFF. Physical things. Possessions. Some of which to this day I have no idea why I would want to keep. But it wasn’t just stuff in my mind at that time. These were things that had been a part of my life. Evidence of the past. Proof that certain events had really taken place.

And it wasn’t just the stuff. It was the feeling of violation, of losing every shred of privacy our family ever had. Of feeling like this was something all these people in our ward had just been waiting on for years, the chance to dig in and get to the fleshy center of our family. To figure out What We Were All About. To uncover every dirty little secret and expose it. Then, they might Finally Understand Us.

The pillaging continued for weeks. More than a few of the ladies from the Relief Society, a majority of the women that had first come in and began to clean, began to be completely disgusted with what was going on. They saw people pocketing things they found that they wanted to keep. They saw people picking and choosing things that would be in the Yard Sale, but deftly hidden away and priced so low so they themselves could get their hands on it.

The aforementioned women stopped coming to the house. They couldn’t take it anymore than I could. Down to the deepest parts of my soul, I know this small group of women genuinely cared for my mom and our entire family, and believed what they were doing was the right thing. For that, I will always hold a special place in my heart for them. Particularly for a woman I’ll call Debbie, who grabbed the jewelry box full of my Tutu’s jewelry, some of which was priceless, and kept it at her house until my mom’s return. She didn’t want The Mob stealing or selling it. Thank you, Debbie.

After the dust settled, the house cleared, the Yard Sale went down, and things began to get quiet again, I began to question myself. There are so many things I wish I had said and done. I wished more than anything that I hadn’t contributed to putting my mom into rehab, when I knew from the bottom of my heart that she didn’t belong there. I said that to several people but I was told I was in denial and did nothing my whole life but be codependent. Was there a real way to fight back? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever know.

For the rest of my life, I will never forget the day my mom came home. I was at school the day her flight came in. When I got home and pulled up in front of the house, the next door neighbor’s door opened, and a woman I barely recognized emerged. I hadn’t seen my mom in over three months. Standing there was my mom, sixty pounds lighter, with glowing hair, and a smile on her face. She saw me, and ran toward me. The image of her running toward me will be burned into my memory long after I’m gone from this life. It is one of the moments in my life that made me realize how much I loved this woman. I hadn’t seen my mom run like that since I was a small child and she would play with me on the grass of our backyard, the sun glinting off her hair, and the million dollar smile she used to have before the sickness took its toll on her body.

She ran toward me and scooped me up in her arms and held me for a very long time. All these years later, I can still feel her arms around me.

*********************

Over the next year, I grew a lot, both mentally and emotionally. After all that had happened involving the members of the ward in my neighborhood, I understood that this behavior that I had seen was not divinely inspired. These people were selfish, greedy and only cared about their own agenda. As a result of this, and finally coming to terms with being gay, I realized the Mormon church had absolutely no place in my life. I stopped going to church. I still didn’t have the courage to tell my family about my sexuality.

I was raised pretty liberally. My parents were never the so-called ‘Nazi-Mormons’. Because most of my extended family was very diverse and most of them weren’t active in the Mormon church, my parents taught us to accept people as they were. I have always felt lucky for that. My cousin came out as a lesbian years before I even hit puberty, and there was never any question about the fact that we needed to love her and be a part of her life. My mom was a firm believer in the importance of family, and keeping ties with everyone, no matter what.

Still, even knowing that, there was still so much fear in letting them know the true me. Part of that I think is that despite how much I had learned, I still didn’t know who I was. I was dating, having sex, sowing my oats as it were. But something deep down inside me was screaming to get out.

After my mom came home, her anxiety attacks increased tenfold. Since there was no medication in her system anymore to help regulate her mood, the attacks went unchecked. I think after awhile, everyone, including my aunt and uncle, realized they had made a big mistake sending my mom to rehab. Even while she was in Sundown, the staff and counselors there told her they really had no idea why she was there. She didn’t abuse her medication, she wasn’t a junkie…she was a woman with a disorder as real as cancer, and it wasn’t being treated properly.

More doctors, more treatments. Medicine had advanced somewhat over the years to where more was known about how to treat anxiety disorder. Finally, it appeared that there was a combination of medication that seemed to start working. Things actually began to calm down a bit around the house.

I graduated from high school in June of 1998. I had received a full-tuition scholarship to Southern Utah University for Opera and Vocal Performance. Before my sophomore year in high school, and I was working with my parents to decide which classes to take, my dad literally dared me to take Men’s Choir as one of my arts electives. I had never really thought about singing before. I was a pianist. But, since there wasn’t any piano elective taught at my high school, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try my hand, or my voice, at singing.

I took to singing like the proverbial duck to the proverbial water. I had found another musical escape I could pour my energy and concentration into. Through the years of high school, choir became my life, my sanctuary, something I could use to balance everything else that was going on at home.

I progressed through the more elite choirs in high school and won several vocal competitions. I felt like I had finally found my niche.

In September of 1998, I moved to Cedar City, Utah to attend school. I was on my own for the very first time in my life. What should have been an opportunity for me to spread my wings and figure out more about myself became an opportunity for me to become friends with alcohol. You know that old story about self-medicating. I found that drinking made me forget about the pain of the past ten years. It made me feel confident- something I had never felt before in my life.

I don’t think I was ready for the freedom. I abused it. I didn’t go to class very often. I sat in my room and read a lot of books, none of which had anything to do with my classes. All I wanted to do was rest. I was becoming exhausted for absolutely no reason. God knows I wasn’t exerting myself in any sense of the word.

I was driving home nearly every weekend. I worried about my parents. I missed my own bed. I missed the security of my house. I wanted to spend as much time there as possible. After a few weeks, I noticed I was losing weight, and my health was getting worse.

One weekend, I came home and became violently sick. I had a raging fever, a cough that felt like it had originated in the balls of my feet, and my body was wracked with pain. I was vomiting anything I tried to eat. When I began throwing up blood, my parents rushed me to the emergency room.

I was put on IV liquids, and heavy doses of acetaminophen to bring my fever down. Vials of blood were taken. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I couldn’t sleep. There were a whole slew of tests run, and I came up positive for mono.

I had never been so sick in my entire life. It took me nearly twenty minutes to get from my bedroom to the bathroom and back because I had to stop and rest so often.

So, I had to forego my scholarship and move home. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t all that sad about it. I think in my heart that’s what I wanted to do all along. I was sick for about two months, but then began to return to normal.

As my health improved, my attitude started worsening. My parents and I fought constantly about everything. I was so on edge and angry all the time. Any little thing would set me off. I was spending my weekends at Club Bricks in downtown Salt Lake City, looking for men. I found a few, had a few one night stands, but I still hadn’t found anything permanent. I had to keep up living this double life and it was killing me.

At the beginning of 2001, I lost my best friend.

My twentieth year was an interesting one. As the fights between my parents and me began escalating, I knew I needed to be on my own again. A good friend of mine from Wyoming was looking to move to Salt Lake, so I suggested she and I get an apartment together. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to move out of my parents’ house.

We found an apartment in Murray, Utah, about ten miles from downtown Salt Lake. Well, instead of changing the pattern of my life, I continued my love affair with alcohol. Every night was a party. And I never had trouble finding sex either. The job I had at the time gave me plenty of people to choose from, and boy did I ever.

I still wanted to find a steady relationship. Eventually, I met Dan through a friend of mine. Dan was everything I was looking for. He was heart-meltingly handsome, funny, had a good job and his own apartment…and he was smitten with me. We began spending nearly every night together. He worked a swing shift, so we generally spent the entire night drinking, watching movies and talking. Things were so easy with Dan. I fell hard and fast for him. He treated me like a king.

Toward the end of 2000, my mom’s health went into a tailspin. Her asthma had gotten so bad, she was on oxygen 24 hours a day. Walking was almost out of the question. She spent most of her time sleeping on the couch in the family room. My dad was faithfully by her side.

On the afternoon of January 20, I received a phone call from my dad. My mom was in the hospital. She had been watching TV with my dad and my little brother and had abruptly stopped breathing. She fell over on her side, but somehow they were able to get her breathing again. They called 911 and they tool my mom to the hospital. Everyone assumed she had accidentally overdosed (there they went with the drugs again). She was having her stomach pumped and was given a charcoal solution to absorb what was in her stomach.

I got in my car and drove to the hospital. When I arrived in the trauma unit, I could see through the window of the room she was in and she was hysterical. She was sobbing and the nurse kept forcing the charcoal solution down her throat.

I went into the room, and sat by her bed. She held my hand and she just kept saying over and over that she didn’t try to commit suicide, she didn’t try to commit suicide, she didn’t try to commit suicide. I believed her.

They wanted to keep her in the hospital, but she insisted on going home. They released her after one day.

The next two days, she was in and out of consciousness. She would wake up periodically, look at the clock and just say, “it’s been 5:00 three times today already…. what’s going on?” She had stopped making much sense.

Periodically, I would get together with a good friend of mine and just spend the evening singing. It was a good way to blow off steam, and usually we sang at my parents’ house. My mom loved hearing us sing. Sometimes she would come into the room we were singing in, and sit with her eyes closed and just listen. Her favorite song we would sing was “The Rose” by Bette Midler. The lyrics really touched her. I remember each time we would sing it tears would roll down her cheeks.

It had been a very long time since Christine and I had gotten together to sing. Out of the blue after months, she called me and asked if I wanted to get together and sing for old time’s sake. She asked if we could go to my parents’ house. I agreed to meet her there that evening.

We sang for a long time that night. My mom was sleeping on the other side of the wall, but I knew she heard everything. The last song we sang that night was “The Rose”. I had made plans to meet Dan at his apartment after he was off work. As the time rolled around where I needed to leave, I went in and kissed my mom goodnight. She held me for a moment and told me she loved me with all her heart.

I arrived at Dan’s house around midnight. It was the same routine. We drank whiskey and Coke, watched movies, made love and went to sleep.

Early the next morning, there was a fierce banging at Dan’s front door. This wasn’t unusual. Dan frequently had friends drop by unannounced. I got up, put on Dan’s bathrobe and went to answer the door.

Standing there was one of my brother’s best friends. A million thoughts flooded my head. First, no one close to my family knew about Dan, let alone knew where he lived. Second, I thought, oh shit, they’ve found out I’m gay. It’s amazing in hindsight how quickly the brain can move. About a hundred of these similar thoughts passed through in the space of about a second and a half.

Brandon looked grim and serious. He said, “Michael, you need to come home, there’s been a family emergency. Your mom’s dead.”

And there they were. Out in the open. The words I had feared hearing since I was a child. My darkest nightmare was coming true. I began to crumble. As I headed toward the ground, my roommate and good friend Shawntelle rushed in the door. She pushed Brandon aside and crossed the room just in time to catch me.

So many times I have tried to articulate how I felt at that moment. Being that I’m now nearly twenty thousand words into this epistle, I figure it won’t hurt to try one more time.

Time seemed to move in slow motion, but at the same time rushed past me in triple time. Ice and fire swirled around in my brain simultaneously. My veins filled with concrete, and my muscles had turned to liquid. The world stopped moving completely, and I was stuck in that one moment interminably.

The details get a bit fuzzy, but I remember going back into Dan’s bedroom and telling him what had happened. I vaguely remember getting dressed and getting in the car with Shawntelle.

The only thing I remember about the ride from Dan’s apartment to my parents’ house was the song that was playing. In the tape player was the single of the old eighties song, “Electric Blue.” Since it was the only song on the tape, it kept looping and looping, playing and playing. I haven’t listened to that song since that day.

As we turned into the neighborhood where my parents lived, all I remember thinking was, please, God, please don’t let her body still be there, please, please, please, please. As we pulled up to the house, two police cars, a fire engine and an ambulance were parked on the curb in front of the house. I knew her body was still inside.

I still had been unable to cry. I couldn’t feel much of anything. When I walked in the front door, my family was all sitting in the living room right off the foyer. I saw my dad sitting there. When he saw me, he stood up and I ran into his arms. The moment, I mean the fraction of a second it took for my dad’s arms to envelop me, everything snapped back into focus, and my world was color again. It was like dropping an ice cube into a pan of boiling water. I began to sob. My heart broke down to levels of grief I never thought I could feel. My dad just kept saying in my ear, “it’s over. It’s over.”

I held my family and we cried together. The finality of all this came rushing in with the sun through the windows.

The paramedics were still in the other room examining my mom’s body. Any time there is a death at home; the room is automatically labeled a crime scene until law enforcement clears it. Evidently, by the time I got there, they had already been in there with her for nearly an hour.

My dad was making phone calls to friends and family, letting them know what had happened.

Shawntelle and I went outside to have a cigarette. For some reason I can’t explain, I was terrified to go outside. The sky literally felt heavy. I was afraid to look up for fear of what I might see. I expected it to come raining down on my head like Chicken Little. I remember finally mustering up the courage to look up, and just like a child, I imagined I could see teeny tiny people walking around in the clouds. Silly, but I remember doing that. Shawntelle and I sat on the back porch, smoking and not really talking. I looked up and she had tears streaming down her face. She looked helpless. We didn’t talk the entire time we were outside.

We went back inside, and what I saw made my blood boil. The neighbor, Robyn (who many of you are familiar with from the letter I wrote to her that I posted here a couple times) had rushed down the street to see what all the hubbub was about. That woman, who was one of the worst offenders in the Yard Sale Debacle, the woman who had done nothing but spread acidic gossip about my family all over the ward for years, was standing in the foyer and hugging my little brother. I wish to Christ I had said something. But, being my typical non-confrontational self, all I could do was grit my teeth and bite my tongue. My dad eventually asked her to leave.

The day wore on. More phone calls, more visits. The casseroles and cold cuts started rolling in. The last thing I could do was eat. It was all I could do to keep my empty, acidic stomach from dancing the conga inside my body.

That evening the cavalcade of family began coming in from out of town, beginning with my favorite aunt, my mom’s closest sister, Suzanne. Suzanne had been a rock for our family as long as I could remember. She supported my mom unconditionally through everything that had happened. She was like a second mother to me and my brother and sister.

I went to the airport with my sister and brother to pick her up. She came off the plane and when she saw us, broke into tears. She hugged us all and just said, “we’ll get through this together.” And I knew she meant it.

Since there was still so much financial turmoil swirling around, my dad was feeling pretty scared about how he was going to pay for my mom’s funeral services. Because both he and my mom had had so many significant medical problems in the last few years, my dad had a lot of trouble finding an insurance company that would give them coverage they could afford. The housing market was still in a pretty big slump, so there still wasn’t much money coming in. To supplement his income, and to be able to have insurance, my dad took a part-time job working customer service for Discover Card. He worked an early morning shift, then came home and did drafting out of the home office. At the time my mom died, he had only been working for Discover Card about three weeks. He hadn’t even had a chance to elect his medical benefits.

Now, whether or not you believe in God, or fate, the Universe, or some other divine presence that has the ability to intervene in your life, one of the many phone calls that came in the day my mom died made me very aware that the news that was delivered on that call could in no way be coincidence. We were all sitting in the living room. People were coming and going, offering their condolences. The phone was ringing off the hook most of the day. About two hours after I arrived at the house, the phone rang again. My dad answered it and within about 30 seconds, his eyes widened and he burst into tears. We were all watching him intently, and when he hung up the phone, he was just looking around in bewilderment.

The phone call my dad received was from the Human Resources coordinator at Discover Card. Despite the fact that he hadn’t yet elected company benefits, Discover Card was issuing a retro life insurance policy for my mom in the amount of $50,000. On top of that, they were cutting my dad a check for $5000 in addition to the life insurance policy to pay for funeral expenses. Keep in mind this was the morning of my mom’s death. Only a handful of hours had gone by since the paramedics had arrived. We were all in shock over the phone call. To this day, I refuse to believe that this insurance money was a coincidence. As I said, my dad had taken this job only three weeks earlier.

As difficult as the day had already been, I could see a lot of relief flood over my dad’s face…over all of us, really. Having to deal with trying to figure out where thousands of dollars for funeral expenses were going to come from, on top of everything else, was a burden I don’t think my dad was really equipped to handle. I’m sure it would have worked itself out somehow, but the fact that no one had to worry about the cost of all this was something of a miracle.

As the day wore on, more information transpired about the circumstances of that morning. My dad had left for work around five that morning. He came downstairs and kissed my mom goodbye. She held him for longer than she normally did, and whispered to him how much she loved him. When it was time for my brother, who was 17 years old at the time, to get up for school, he came downstairs to say good morning to my mom and noticed she wasn’t moving or breathing. He rushed over to her and shook her, trying to wake her up, to no avail. Not knowing what else to do, he attempted to perform CPR. He rushed to the phone and called 911. He kept asking the 911 operator what was going on or what he should do, but all she would say is that the police and the paramedics were on their way. Frustrated, he ran across the street to get help from the woman who through all of the hell of the past few years had unconditionally been there for my mom. If there is a heaven, Marcia will be seated at the highest echelon. She was Mormon, yes, but had a mouth like a truck driver, and was the feistiest little spitfire of a woman I’ve ever met, and at the same time had the biggest heart. She would come over and help my mom when my mom’s anxiety attacks were at their peak. She helped my mom get out of the house and go for short walks. She had helped contain the damage of Operation Deployment of Relief Society and Elders Quorum to Come Ransack Our House.

Marcia came rushing over with my little brother and waited with him while the paramedics arrived. She contacted my dad at work, and his boss drove him home.

As long as I live, I will hold my brother in the highest respect for being able to do the things he did to try and revive my mom; for having the presence of mind to call the paramedics, and go get Marcia. A seventeen-year-old kid all alone in the house discovers his mother dead…I’m not sure what my reaction would have been. I have grappled with guilt over this for so long. I have always felt like if I had just stayed living at home and been there to help my little brother so he wouldn’t have had to go through that alone. But, it’s something I can’t change.

The next day, we went to the funeral home to make arrangements. It was the strangest experience. I hadn’t set foot in a funeral home since I was four years old. The mortuary we chose to take care of the arrangements is a small, independent funeral home just down the street from where we were living. The owner of the home was very kind, very professional, and didn’t attempt to upsell. He presented choices for us, helped us write the obituary, but for the most part left us to decide the specifics. We selected a beautiful mahogany casket with a light blue interior, my mom’s favorite color. A wood etching of the Salt Lake Temple was to be placed inside the casket lid.

The next task on the list was by far the most bizarre and disconcerting one of the entire day. We had to go to the shop at the Jordan River Temple and select the clothing my mom would be buried in. This was also something that was completely foreign to me. I had no idea it was standard for worthy members of the LDS church to be buried in special temple burial clothing.

My sister, my aunt Suzanne, my little brother and myself had been sent on this errand. The woman working behind the counter showed us where the burial clothing was. My sister selected the gown my mom would wear. A new apron and veil were selected. My sister had requested that she be the one to dress my mom for burial, and handle the makeup and hair as well, as she is a licensed cosmetologist. This is something I have always held my sister in the highest regard for. If it came down to it, I really don’t think I could have gathered the strength to dress my mom. In fact, I had already made up my mind that I wasn’t going to attend the viewing, because the thought of seeing my mom in a casket was more than my poor little brain could deal with. The funeral director had cautioned my sister, my cousin and my aunt, who were going to assist in the dressing, that because there had been an autopsy performed, that there would be a large Y-incision down her torso. That is also something I couldn’t have dealt with seeing. My mom had always said that when she had dressed her own mother for burial, it was one of the most intimate and rewarding experiences she’d ever had. I’m strong, but not that strong.

As more preparations were made, the idea was broached that I would sing a song at the service. Considering I hadn’t been able to stop the flow of tears yet so far, I opted instead to play the piano. Trying to choke out a song through sobs and tears is nearly impossible. Even speaking in that condition is a challenge. But the piano was home to me. There was nothing to fear from the piano. It had always been my sanctuary, my rock…the place I could go to when I wanted to block the rest of the world out. My good friend Christine graciously accepted the task of singing my mom’s favorite song, “The Rose” at the funeral.

As I said, I was going to be damned before I set foot at the viewing. I knew if I saw my mother dead, lying in the beautiful casket, the whole thing would become far too real, and I wasn’t ready for that at all. All I wanted to do was stay home and drink myself into a coma.

The evening of the viewing arrived, and my thoughts were troubled. I thought I had resolved not to go to the viewing, but something in the back of my head was nagging me. I hated viewings. I had been to two viewings in the past two years, and both of them had mentally screwed me. In fact, seeing anyone dead was something I had a hard time stomaching. I remember when the paramedics were wheeling my mom’s body out of the family room on a gurney; they asked us if we wanted to see her. I didn’t. As I was rolling all this back and forth in my head, I couldn’t figure out whether it would be worse seeing my mom in a body bag, or a casket. Both seemed equally horrific. But, in the end, as everyone was getting ready to leave the house, I took a deep breath, walked out the door with them, and got into the car with my family. I tried not to think too much about what I was doing. Instead, I managed to put my brain on autopilot.

We arrived at the funeral home, and Mikey’s Cranial Autopilot blew a fuse and failed. The gravity of what was happening to me hit me like a grand piano falling from the top of a twelve-story building. I didn’t even have time to try and move my heart out of the way. This was it. I was about to see my best friend, my kindred spirit, a woman who had given me more unconditional love than anyone else in the world, lying in a casket, stiff and cold like a mannequin. Despite the vise around my heart and stomach, I managed to pick up both my feet and walk inside.

The funeral director met us at the door, shook our hands, and led us to the room where we would be receiving friends and family. I’ll never forget walking into the doorway of that room, eyes down. Like a person about to jump out of a plane and skydive for the first time, I raised my eyes and looked across the room. There she was, my beautiful mother. I could only make out the silhouette of her face, but just seeing it made all my fears, pain, uncertainty and denial dissolve. Resolutely, I moved toward the casket, and looked inside.

What I saw absolutely shocked me. Lying there was a woman who looked more peaceful and at rest than I had seen her in ten years. All the worry, pain, fear, discomfort were gone from her face. For this, the old cliché was true: she really did look like she was sleeping.

They had only had to use a very light coating of foundation, a touch of lip gloss, and the slightest hint of blush on her. There was no waxy pancake makeup, or flaky lipstick. Her hair was loose and swirled around her face in loose, flowing curls. Whether I imagined this or not I still don’t know, but her face seemed to be giving off a faint iridescent glow. She looked like an angel.

I felt more at peace in that moment than I had in days. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. My heart was filled with so much love and sheer, beautiful calm, I didn’t think I could contain it. The closest thing I can compare it to is that feeling you have just before you’re about to drift off into the most perfect night of sleep you’ve ever had in your life. It was almost euphoric.

For a moment I found myself feeling very protective of her. I didn’t want to move away from the casket, or let anyone else see her. I wanted to stay there by her side all night long and just gaze down into her peaceful face, which, in death had maintained her signature half smile/smirk- the playful, mischievous curling up of the sides of her mouth that I had seen so many times. It was almost a look of triumph. Part of me thinks that’s exactly what it was.

For so long, she had longed for a moment’s peace, for just a short season of calm amid the raging storm of her own brain, and a body that had rejected her. In this state, she finally was able to find that moment, and goddamned if she wasn’t going to show the world she was gloating about it just a bit.

I’ve always found it odd when people take pictures of their dead relatives in caskets. That kind of thing has always seemed so morbid to me, but right then, I understood why people want to do it. I wish I had. What I have though, is a very bright picture of that face burned into my brain.

Before long, there was an epically long line forming that snaked across the room, outside the door and down the hall. There were people in that line I hadn’t seen in years; people I knew really loved and cared about my mom. It wasn’t all good, though. People came through that line who had put my family through hell for years, the Relief Society Harpies who had ripped apart our home, and in the process, broken my mom’s already fragile heart. People who had reveled in uncovering the Deep Dark Secrets of our family, and laid waste everything that should be kept only within a family.

It was like twanging an exposed nerve. The calm I felt was sliced through with anger. How DARE these people show their faces here? How could they possibly have the balls to come here and put on the show of fake sympathy and grief, when I had seen how cold they really were inside? I wanted to leap into the line and shake these people, and demand they go back to the holes they crawled out of. But I didn’t. I kept my composure and continued concentrating on my mom’s face.

At some point, when there was a small lull in the crowd, I walked back up to the casket. I wanted to touch her hand. Gingerly, I reached out and placed my hand on hers. I immediately recoiled as if bitten by a poisonous snake. The serenity I felt popped like a balloon. I was horrified and literally jumped back. Her hands were ice cold, and completely stiff. I knew she would be cold, but I had no idea exactly how cold. Her hands felt like the frozen turkey that’s left in the freezer until a day before Thanksgiving when you take it out to thaw.

The hot stone in the pit of my stomach came back. I walked across the room and sat down, my eyes once again downcast. I regretted so badly that I had touched her. It had completely shattered the cloud I had been enveloped in all evening. I sat on one of the floral patterned sofas for what seemed like hours. Eventually, the feeling of disgust and revolt subsided.

I’m so glad I fought against my brain and actually went to that viewing. Had I not gone, I know I would have regretted it for the rest of my life. There would have always been that sense of not knowing. Whatever your ideas about spirits, and life after death and all that, I know as sure as I know anything else that the calm and almost euphoric feeling I experienced all night was my mother’s soul, spirit, essence, energy or whatever you want to call it, enveloping me like a down blanket on the coldest evening of the year. I have to have faith in that.

After the viewing was done, and the quiet of the night settled in, my poor, exhausted brain and heart that felt like they had been through a war, collapsed in on themselves again. I sat with my dad’s arms wrapped around me and sobbed. I cried like I had never cried before in my life. My heart felt like it was imploding. There was quite literally physical pain happening in my chest. As cheesy as it may seem, I knew this is what it felt like to have your heart break.

My dad stayed up with me until well after three in the morning, but since we had to be at the church for the funeral at 9 a.m., he eventually retired for the evening. I was left with nothing but silence. There wasn’t a sound coming from anywhere. The world felt like it had come to a halt on its axis, as if it had taken a deep breath and gone underwater.

I went in the living room and lay on the couch. There was no way the temporary relief of sleep was going to give me respite. My eyes were burning and raw, and the Hot Stone was bouncing around in my stomach ceaselessly. I closed my eyes and tried to invoke the peace I had felt earlier. After an hour of intermittent crying, and ceaseless pain, I felt the soft tendrils of The Calm creeping into me again. My eyes were closed, and the peace drifted over me. As I finally drifted toward sleep, I felt fingers lightly stroking my forehead. I opened my eyes for just a moment, and for the briefest fraction of a second, was able to faintly see my mom sitting there beside me.

The morning came too soon. The fallout from the night before had done a lot of damage. My body, my brain, my soul, even my hair seemed to be sore and defeated. With the fuse still blown on Mikey’s Magic Autopilot, I once again had to dig deep and find what little momentum I had left, and get dressed for my mom’s funeral. I hadn’t really looked at myself in the mirror in days. It was the Help The Sky Is Falling fear I had experienced going outside for a cigarette the morning my mom died. I think I was more afraid of seeing my own face than I was seeing my mom in her casket. As I was attempting to tie the standard Elizabethan knot in my necktie, I looked, REALLY looked at myself in the mirror. The reflection I saw was that of a stranger, someone who had been severely beaten within an inch of his life and left for dead. But when all was said and done, wasn’t that precisely what had happened to me? My eyes were nearly swollen shut, and the skin around them raw and burning. What little I could actually see of my eyes themselves had taken on the glassy, far-away look of the glass eyes in one of my mom’s many porcelain dolls. I could barely recognize myself. I had aged ten years. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking and the more I tried to finish the knot on my necktie, the more it refused to cooperate with me. Evidently, it didn’t find the idea of the funeral appealing, either. As I had done when I was a young kid, I asked my dad to tie my tie for me, which he gladly did. That simple moment between father and son was filled with a lot of significance for me. My dad and I had always had a pretty good relationship, but the mere act of him standing behind me, helping me with my tie brought us so much closer.

As is customary with most Mormon funerals, there was to be an additional one hour viewing just prior to the funeral itself, which was held in the Relief Society room of the LDS church down the street from the house. As we were waiting for the funeral director to arrive with the body, I sat in one of the back pews in the chapel and listened to my dear friend Christine beautifully rehearse my mom’s favorite song from the pulpit. The song itself had caused a bit of a tiff with the bishop, who incidentally was NOT the bishop that had masterminded Project Rehab. Bishop Smith was a very kind man, who had lived next door to us for over a decade, and whose family had always been very close with ours. I hold no ill will against him whatsoever. Having said that, he didn’t think a secular song like “The Rose” would be appropriate to sing in the chapel. The song, which my dad had always found to be really cheesy and overly sappy, took on a large significance for him. When put in perspective, the song’s lyrics captured everything my mom had been longing for so many years. My dad could not be moved. That song would be sung during the service come hell or high water. The bishop reluctantly relented.

Sitting in the back of the empty chapel listening to Christine singing that song, tears rolling down my face is another very significant time for me during all this, and I honestly can’t say why. Even through the viewing and all the preparation for the funeral, the reality didn’t truly sink in until that moment. My mom was gone, and nothing I could do would bring her back. I became a little angry, because it felt like all the years she had fought, all the fear, the worry, the panic, the declining health, had culminated in this; in vain. As more tears rolled down my face, and the burning in and around my eyes became almost unbearable, the funeral director arrived, which gave me an excuse to leave the chapel and the haunting song.

The second viewing was a bit of a different experience. I don’t know whether it was the light, or the change of venue, or the lack of sleep, or what, but the feeling was much more subdued. I was in a place of numbness, but at the same time the numbness was ringed in searing pain. The feeling that my heart was being squeezed returned with a vengeance. Once again, the line was forming at the door of the Relief Society room, and before long began to stretch down the hall.

Most of the people that came to the second viewing had not been present during the first. My piano teacher came, which meant a lot to me. Friends of mine from high school were there- people I hadn’t seen since I graduated. The fact that these people came to support me brought me a lot of solace.

Because my mom had such a quirky, fun personality when she wasn’t in the midst of the crippling anxiety and depression, several fun things were put into her casket: Mint M&M’s (her favorite), a Big Hunk candy bar (another huge favorite), little trinkets she had loved, and a small wooden box with a print of Michelangelo’s Cherubs framed under glass on the lid. In this box were placed some of the most meaningful keepsakes from my brother, my sister and me.

As the second viewing was winding down, it was coming time to clear the room of everyone but family, and say a final prayer and close the casket for the last time. I had been dreading this moment all morning. The finality, the Last Time, the End had come. My dad’s brother, Brent, had been asked to say the prayer. I stood close to my aunt Suzanne, my brother and my sister. We held each other during the prayer and cried.

When the prayer was over, the funeral director asked if we would like the veil placed over her, or in a halo position framing her face. We opted for the latter. After the veil was positioned, my dad leaned over and kissed my mom on the cheek and whispered something to her. I’ve never known and never asked what he said.

I had once again reached a crossroads. Kiss my mom for the last time, or say a silent goodbye from a distance. I swallowed my fear and kissed my mom gently on the forehead, leaving two tears resting on her face. After tributes were paid a final time, one of the funeral directors swiftly, and without lingering, closed the casket for the last time. As cliché as this is, it was like pulling off a Band-Aid. Before I knew it, it was over.

We as a family followed the casket into the chapel. The room was packed to the hilt with people. The doors to the adjacent gymnasium had been opened up to accommodate all the people who had come. I didn’t really take note of who came; I was concentrating so hard on making my feet move, I couldn’t really think of anything else.

The casket was positioned just below the pulpit in front of the first row of pews. An absolutely beautiful casket flower arrangement had been placed on top. As a package, it was quite something to behold. When the family was seated, the organist concluded the prelude music, and the funeral began.