Erik Grieve 1973 — 2003, Life is Not About the Dates on Either Side, But the Hyphen in Between

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I walked in slow-motion towards Erik’s closed, mahogany casket.

The old stone chapel was filled with famil­iar faces. There were faces from Sky­walker Ranch and other Lucas par­ties, faces I had pho­tographed in my stu­dio, faces from my bridal shower, my wed­ding, and Tatiana’s birth.

I kept my head down.

As the preg­nant widow, all eyes were on me, but I did not want to be seen. Direct eye con­tact would break me open in a way that I would not be ready to be bro­ken open for years.

Dressed in an ankle-length mater­nity skirt, long-sleeve black shirt, and the com­fort­able three-inch heels that had taken me hours to find just the day before, I sat in the front pew.

My brother, Troy, and his wife, Jen, sat next to me. Only ten feet sep­a­rated us from the blan­ket of red roses that crawled down the sides of Erik’s casket.

The four days since his death had swarmed me. There were so many things to do and I couldn’t believe I was doing any of them.

I had not been pre­pared to spend hours on the phone with Organ Dona­tions while we fig­ured out which organs Erik would want me to give away. Nor had I been pre­pared to think about a law­suit against his cardiologist.

Then there were the ser­vice arrangements.

The trips to the florist, the funeral home. The care­ful selec­tion of the per­fect cas­ket, the stain­less steel urns that Erik would have liked the best.

Going through all of our music. Lis­ten­ing to every lyric. I wanted the songs for the funeral ser­vice to have mean­ing. I wanted the words to make sense. But how could any­thing make sense?

The end­less sort­ing out of pho­tos from our Florida State days. Pho­tographs from our first months in Cal­i­for­nia. The two of us step­ping in dog poop in Paris. Erik’s tear­ful joy while hold­ing Tatiana for the first time. Our days as a fam­ily. At the beach. Tatiana, dressed as a Hal­loween kitty cat, in her lit­tle wagon. Bun­dled up hikes to Ten­nessee Valley.

I wanted the photo col­lages to show us as we were: silly, in love, blessed. And they did.

All of the run­ning around had paid off. Every­one had ral­lied. The gen­eros­ity and sup­port from hun­dreds of peo­ple was overwhelming.

The chapel looked beau­ti­ful. Erik would have been pleased.

My grandfather’s cousin, Stephanie, stood on the chapel’s stage, behind a podium, in a long black robe. A tall pow­er­ful pres­ence, with brown and grey hair, she was a min­is­ter in the Church of the Heal­ing Light. She was a believer in the con­tin­u­a­tion of spirit. A believer that we could talk to spirits.

Was it pos­si­ble that I could talk to Erik? That he was there?

I didn’t know what I believed.

Stephanie fid­dled behind the podium, arrang­ing the tape recorder.

I had asked her to make sure that every­thing was recorded for the girls so that, when they were old enough, I could let them hear each word that was spo­ken about their father.

The chapel hushed as Stephanie cleared her throat.

She began to speak. “Many of us are say­ing how can this be? I was just with him. I just waved to him, down the hall, at the office. Just gave him a hug. Just kissed him good­night … and yet, here we are.”

There were snif­fles all around.

I was thank­ful that my obste­tri­cian had let me take a Xanax, to calm me down. I knew it wasn’t good for the baby if I took med­ica­tion, but that morn­ing, as I brushed my hair and applied my bur­gundy non-smudge lip­stick, I knew I would not be able to make it through the ser­vice with­out something.

“Death is a tragedy,” Stephanie con­tin­ued. “This death is a great tragedy. But we can­not say that Erik’s life was a tragedy. It was a joy. It was beau­ti­ful. It was love. And you all, who are here today, are the liv­ing proof of that.”

Our “first dance” wed­ding song played softly on the over­head sys­tem. Mariah Carey’s voice sang up to the chapel’s red and orange stained glass:

“I will never be too far away to feel you. I won’t hes­i­tate at all, when­ever you call.”

She leaned into the podium, her hair sway­ing from side to side. “The thing about Erik was the inten­sity in which he lived his life. His intense love for his fam­ily. For his friends. For his wife. For his child … and his child to come.”

I felt a hand squeeze my shoul­der from the pew behind mine and I turned to see my grandmother’s 81 year-old face flushed with redness.

Erik, Tatiana and I had just been to visit her in Tuc­son two weeks before. We had just been in my grand­par­ents’ swim­ming pool, splash­ing around. Erik had just bought her that exquis­ite pur­ple orchid and writ­ten them a thank you note for being the grand­par­ents that he’d never had.

I cried, quietly.

Stephanie went on. “There are so many things to say about Erik, so many won­der­ful things, and we’d love to hear now, from those of you who would like to speak.”

There was silence all around.

“Come on up,” Stephanie said. “Don’t be shy.”

Jen stood up first. She walked up the steps, her small frame cov­eted by a black dress. She held the podium with both hands.

“I’m Jen. Erik’s sis­ter– in-law. The minute I first met Erik, we hit it off. It didn’t take long for him to become a brother to me. He was, is, and always will be … a beau­ti­ful man, inside and out … and I am hon­ored to have spent so much time with him.”

She shifted her weight back and forth, try­ing to keep her com­po­sure. “At the hos­pi­tal, I could feel him all around us … and I could feel him look­ing into my eyes … and say­ing ‘you have to take care of my fam­ily now.’”

Jen’s voice shook. She looked right at me. “And I will, Hyla. You know I will.”

I gripped my belly and sobbed.

I thought of Tatiana, how she looked that morn­ing when I dropped her off at day­care. She pressed her­self against the metal gate, clenched her lit­tle hands around the bars, and screamed, “Ma-ma, Ma-ma, Ma-ma,” through the two inch openings.

I did not want her to be at the funeral, to have to see Erik made-up and stiff when we opened the casket.

I hadn’t been able to tell her about her daddy’s death yet. What could I say?

The night before, I had rocked her, in the dark, while I cried on the shoul­der of her soft pur­ple paja­mas. She knew I was sad. She knew the house was full of peo­ple and chaos. But I had to tell her some­thing. I wanted to pre­tend that Erik was away, on a trip. That he’d be back any time.

And Keira, our unborn child, how would I tell her that I felt too over­whelmed to take care of her? That I had thoughts of not want­ing her?

This was the begin­ning of a guilt that would hover over my life. The guilt from not being able to han­dle my own chil­dren. Guilt from not being able to han­dle myself.