Page 62 of Torn
“Hey, hey. What’s wrong?”
“It’s my grandma. She had a heart attack this morning.”
“Oh no, Tom! Is she gonna be okay?” I pictured his grandmother, who looked like she weighed little more than eighty pounds.
“She died.” And he broke into tears.
“Oh, what can I do?” I knew how much Tom loved the two principle women in his life.
“Can you come over?” His question was so pathetic, so sad, so needy, that I immediately let go of my thoughts of hours and hours of sleep. I looked with longing at my turned-down bed. “Sure. Just let me grab a shower and I’ll be right there, okay?”
“Promise me you’ll stay all night. I don’t want to be alone.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
I hung up the phone, undressing as I headed to the shower.
Chapter 18
THE NEXTfew days passed in a blur. My memory of them is a montage of glimpses, filtered through tear-stained lenses. And, perhaps, filtered through how you can be totally in love with a person and still find him completely exasperating.
Tom desperately needed me. He and his mother hadn’t planned for the eventuality of the loss of Tom’s grandmother and were at a complete loss as to how to go about planning a wake and a funeral.
I had no such knowledge either, but what I did have was right-mindedness. Once I got Tom and his mom, Linda, to identify a funeral home in Bridgeport, I went about calling and seeing what I could get done over the phone. There wasn’t, it turned out, a lot.
Decisions needed to be made. Burial? Cremation? What kind of casket? Budget? Would the deceased be wearing something special of her own or would they like the funeral home to provide attire?
“Sir, you and the family really need to come in so we can make all the right choices for your loved one.”
I explained this in Linda’s living room. She and Tom huddled in each other’s arms on the couch while I, as calmly as I could, laid out what we needed to do, according to the person I’d spoken to at Dawson’s Funeral Home.
Tom stared at me as though he didn’t recognize me. His eyes were red-rimmed, his mouth half-open. The only thing that stopped him from wiping away snot with the back of his hand was me handing him a paper towel off the kitchen counter. It was like he’d been struck speechless by his grandmother’s death. I really felt for him, but dammit, I felt like the burden of planning this funeral was suddenly on my shoulders—and I’d only met the poor woman once.
Linda wasn’t much better. She was devastated over losing her mother, which, of course, I could understand and sympathize with. Although I only saw my mom a couple of times a year, we talked at least once a week, usually on Sunday, and I couldn’t imagine what the world would be like without her in it. Whenever anything, good or bad, happened to me, my first thought was to call Mom so I could share it with her. I could tear up simply thinking about her being gone.
“I never had to plan anything like this before. I don’t think I can do it, Ricky,” Tom said. Linda nodded.
I wanted to ask if there wasn’t someone else who could help, another family member or a long-term family friend. But I quickly surmised that if there was such a person, he or she would have come forward, would in fact be sitting here with Tom and his mom right now. In addition to or instead of me.
I wanted to cry myself when I realized how utterly alone Tom and his mom were. He hadn’t been kidding when he said that when he was growing up, he and Linda were a kind of “you-and-me-against-the-world” unit.
I had to help them, so I asked a few questions to get an idea of their budget (which wasn’t much), what Grandma might wear (she had a navy-blue dress she’d worn to weddings and funerals for years), and if they wanted her buried or cremated. Since they had no idea or plan of where to bury Grandma, I gently convinced them to consider cremation. “And the best part is, once it’s done, you’ll have her ashes, so a part of her can be with you always.”
This sentiment sent both Tom and Linda into renewed sobs.
But at least I now had enough to go on so that I could go to the funeral home and make some arrangement for them.
I felt good about doing that—like I was suddenly a part of this small, wrecked family.
THE NIGHTbefore his grandma’s combined wake and funeral, Tom lay next to me, sweating and spent, on a horribly uncomfortable sofa bed in Linda’s living room. As devastating as his loss was, it hadn’t dampened his ardor. We’d just finished round number two.
The room was relatively quiet, other than the steady hum of late-night traffic outside, the occasional roar of a city bus. We’d closed the blinds, but streetlamp light still seeped into the room, throwing orange-yellow slats across the sheet covering us.
In this darkness, Tom whispered, “Grandma was everything to me. Every Saturday when I was a kid, she’d take me downtown on the L. We’d go to Carson Pirie Scott and Marshall Field’s. They were both too rich for our blood, or “dear” as she used to say, but she loved to browse, and she usually couldn’t help herself and she’d buy me something.” I could see his eyes sparkling with tears in the dim light. He swallowed hard.
“There was this one Christmas when I was eight….” His voice trailed off, stopped by his grief. He could barely catch his breath, but I knew he wanted to tell me this story, that it was important that I know. I stroked the hair on his chest and stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue.
“There was this one Christmas I needed a sport coat for our school holiday program. The girls were supposed to wear red dresses and the boys blue sport coats and gray pants. Mom couldn’t afford to buy me a sport coat, not even a cheap one at Kmart. She went down to Goodwill and got me this ratty-looking thing. It wasn’t even blue. It was black, and the sleeves were like six inches too long. She said I could just roll them up.
