Sadie approached the casket in earnest, briskly undertaking this grief thing. She gazed in at her grandfather, who looked like her grandfather with a little bit missing, still more than he did at the ICU over the last 10 days. She took him in and then headed for the bathroom, punching me in the leg as she passed.
Sadie grieves in a funny and unpredictable way. She peeked out as people, swarms of people came to pay their respects to Gary, to me and to Molly who stood next to me weeping the entire four hours.
Sadie appears once, maybe twice.
The next morning as we waited in our black outfits and our swollen eyes Sadie was the first to speak, "Are we rich? Look at the size of that car!" and she was gone, out the door letting the chauffeur open the door for her, chatting the whole way to the funeral.
At the funeral there was not a dry eye as she and Gary and our friend Chris sang "May the Circle be Unbroken". She held the bread and wine with grace and patted Grampy's casket on the walk out.
She says that he is still here and I must admit I felt him all around us in the Needham house but now we are back here in Gloucester and he is nowhere to be found.
On Saturday after all the commotion and people had returned to their lives I went for a long run. I ran and ran and ran and when I couldn't run anymore I walked around town. I couldn't believe that it was Saturday night and people were still getting on with life. The world goes on no matter who dies. I couldn't find him anywhere on the streets of Needham.
On Sunday my mother in law and Gary and the kids and I just seemed to walk around each other. We decided to get Chinese food for dinner and although the temperature was 50 on her thermometer there was snow falling everywhere all around her yard. Big huge flakes fell magically from his sky. My mother in law hates snow, my father in law loves snow and Gary and he always talked about the snow together. More than anything my father in law loved to piss my mother in law off and there he was doing it again. She grumbled and then burst out in tears. Sadie waltzed by and said, "Yep, there's Grampa." and that was that.
That night Jonah and I cuddled and Nora and Gary cuddled and we all intermittently cried. Jonah kissed me and whispered, "You can keep me forever if you want to."
I wish I could.