I stopped thinking.

I don't know if there's a protocol.  I don't know if there's an order to things--the stages of grief.  Is that where I am?  Is that what I'm doing, grieving?  Not yet.  This can't be that.  

I realized that when my wife blurted out "but he has a baseball game Saturday" that these men who work in the funeral home, the fat one, so clean and beautifully dressed in the blue shirt and dark tie (I hate this suit I'm wearing but my God why do I care?  I hate that I care!) and the one with the scraggly hair and bad mustache, and yet so clean too, how do they stay so clean?  But somehow it's nice that they're clean.  It's comforting.  I trust them.  Anyway, I realized that there isn't an order to things.  Not here.  And not when his coffin is so small.  They know that, these men.  When she said that and they didn't blink an eye.  The fat one just said "yes" and then asked her about some pictures of him she had in her purse from one of his games.  Before you knew it she was telling him about how good he was and not thinking about Saturday's game and the fat one would listen forever it seemed.

And so I know that anything goes.  They have suggestions, and I've gone along and it has been good, I have to admit that.  He looks so beautiful in his suit, his communion suit.  I don't know what I was thinking, thinking he should wear his Jeter shirt.  The shirt with the #2 and no name.  He said "everyone knows it's Jeter, Daddy.  It doesn't have to have a name."  That wouldn't have been right, I see that now of course.

But they've all gone now and I stayed behind which is somehow fine too.  Just me and him.  And they're standing waiting.  They want me to leave before they close the lid.  Somehow my wife wanted that and that's become the plan but I don't want to leave and I told them that.  And so they're waiting.  Quietly.

I've already touched him for that last time.  That's done.  I see him now.  I'm looking at my son and it's already just the memory of him, this shell has so little to do with who he was, but I know too that the memory will at least grow and have a life even if he doesn't.  So I nod and they just know what that means.  That it means I'm ready.  These people are amazing.  Slowly it closes and I duck my head down so I can see in until the last moment and breathe into the space so he'll have at least that from me, even if I failed him in so many other ways.  They step away.  I'm ready to go and they know I won't make a scene and they know I'm ready.  How horrible that they've seen this all before.  Me in this suit I hate breathing into that closed space.

I whisper "I wanted so much more for you than this..."