The Funeral Where My Water Broke

The memorial gathering was held two weeks later at the Fairhaven Grange hall, the same hall where half the town’s weddings and funerals and county fair banquets had happened for sixty years, long folding tables set with white cloths, a framed photograph of Josh at twenty eight laughing on the loading dock set up near the podium. Nearly two hundred people came. Hank Dolan came in his good jacket, sitting near the back with his wife. Denise Whitmore came on her day off. Carol Jennings helped me carry the twins in their double stroller through the side door, and Pastor Earl Shaw met me there with a hand on my shoulder and a quiet promise that he would keep an eye on the room.

Sharon arrived in a cream colored dress, Glen beside her in a gray suit, and she worked that room the way she had worked every room in Fairhaven for thirty years, touching an elbow here, pressing a hand there, telling anyone who would listen how grateful she was that the family could finally come together to celebrate her son’s life properly. When she reached me, she reached, without asking, for the stroller, already turning toward the nearest cluster of guests with a smile arranged for a photograph that had not yet been taken.

“There they are,” she said, loud enough to carry, bright enough to be heard by the dozen or so people standing closest. “My grandbabies. Aren’t they beautiful.”

It was Glen who stopped her, and it was the single thing I will remember most clearly out of that whole long, terrible, finally healing season of my life.

He put his hand on his wife’s arm, gently, the way he had put his hand on so many things over thirty years of standing a step behind her, and this time he did not let go.

“Sharon,” he said, and his voice, though quiet, had a steadiness in it that silenced the nearby chatter almost on its own. “Not like this. Not in front of everyone, and not after what we did.”

Sharon turned to him with a look I imagine few people in Fairhaven had ever seen directed at Glen Carrow, somewhere between fury and disbelief, as though the furniture had spoken.

“Glen,” she said, through her teeth, still smiling for the room.

“No,” Glen said, and he said it to her, but he was looking at the room full of people who had known his family for generations, people who had trusted the Carrow name with their business and their friendship for thirty years. “Amanda’s water broke at Josh’s grave. She begged us for help. I looked at my watch and told her to call someone else, because I had a meeting with the accountants that I was afraid to be late for. Her water broke, and we let a groundskeeper drive her to the hospital, and we did not call her for twelve days. I have been ashamed of that every single hour since, and I am done pretending otherwise so this family can look good at a party.”

The room had gone very quiet, the kind of quiet that has its own weight. Somewhere near the back I saw Hank Dolan lower his coffee cup, his wife’s hand finding his.