The car floated down the highway as I struggled to wake up from the horrible dream I was trapped in. My father drove in silence, ignoring the tears slowly sliding off his cheeks and onto the lapels of his suit jacket. My mother sobbed softly, staring out the side window of the car into the September mist falling all around us. I sat in the back seat alone. I wasn't crying because I didn't believe it was true. The phone call must have been some kind of sick joke. Ricky was only six, six year olds don't die. I mean, you read about kids drowning all the time, but it doesn't happen to real people, not to my nephew.
Ricky was the little brother I never had. I was only four years older than him. My sister only lived a few blocks from me, so I spent a lot of time with him. Just a week ago we went to the Somerville Theater Saturday Matinee. At McDonald's, after the movie, he only wanted fries.
"You've got to eat more than that if you want to grow up and be big and strong like me" I told him. A week before at the lake, I took him out in the speedboat, and when we got out of sight of the house, I let him drive. I made sure he had on his life jacket because he had never learned how to swim.
"I'll teach you myself next summer, I promise, O.K.?" He can't be dead, I still have so much to show him.
We pulled up in front of the funeral parlor fifteen minutes late. Why were we here? Inside were all my sisters, my brother, aunts, everyone was looking at me with their lips pursed, shaking their heads, tsk tsking at me. What was wrong with these people? the heavy sweet smell of flowers was suffocating me. Why were my mother and father crying? The crowd parted in slow motion. There was a white box, a little smaller than me, on a table surrounded by hundreds of flowers. Was that a coffin? Why would there be a coffin? I walked toward it. I was almost to it when I could see inside. Oh my God it's true, Ricky's dead. He's in the coffin. Oh my God the carpet feels rough on my face.
Hands pulled me up off the floor, my mother and father calling me. I see their bloodshot eyes and tear swollen faces and turn to look, the coffin is still there I can't wake up. They help me walk to the coffin. I knelt on a little velour pad and look at him lying so still. His little hands were folded together over his chest, one holding the gold chain and crucifix I wore when I was baptized.
The priest at my church had told me once that every baby had to be baptized, because if the baby died with out being baptized it would go to hell. Ricky was never baptized and I gave the cross to my sister to have him hold forever so he didn't have to go to hell. I put my hot sweaty hand over his cold dry one and smiled into his sleeping face.
One of his father's relatives, a woman, came over to me. She knelt down beside me and said, "You are all he ever talked about. He loved you very much." I couldn't see through the tears that burned my eyes. My stomach turned over as I stood up and ran from the room into the cool, damp fresh air. I ran into the middle of the soft, lush lawn in front of the funeral parlor. I fell to my knees. I held the image of his face in my mind as my stomach emptied onto the nicely mowed lawn.
At the funeral the next morning the little coffin sat in front of the altar while the priest tried his best to save Ricky's soul. I helped as best as I could from my seat. I knew Ricky had never been baptized, so God might not know who he was. I was an altar boy, and had sung in my church choir, so I was pretty sure God knew me. I asked God why? Why did he let this happen? Didn't he realize how much we loved Ricky? Didn't he know how much we would miss him, and how hard it would be for us to go on living a normal life? I waited for an answer that never came.
After the priest finished doing his priestly things he stood on the altar and tried to say things to make everybody feel better.
"What can be said at a tragic time like this? God has called him home." What was he talking about? Ricky didn't live with God, he lived with my sister. He had his own room, with all his toys and games and a picture of me on his bureau.
"No one can say why God does what he does. Maybe he needed him in heaven more than we needed him on Earth." Was he crazy? No one needed him more than my sister, even God. How was she supposed to go on living? What sort of God would allow this to happen, or, even worse, actually be responsible for the whole thing?
"He lives in the light of God's love." What was wrong with our love? Didn't we love him enough here on Earth? Was God's love better than ours?
The long line of cars snaked its way through the streets, slithering to the cemetery. We slowly walked over dozens of dead people, following the little coffin. The grave was a brown stain in a carpet of green. We all gathered around the grave. While we waited for the priest to start, I looked into the grave that Ricky was to be buried in. It was then that I realized I would never see him again. God had taken him from me, the priest had said so. Now they were going to put him in this hole in the ground, all alone. It's so cold and dark. Ricky was afraid of the dark, and hated being cold. Now he would be stuck in there forever, thanks to God.
The priest started talking again but this time I wouldn't listen to him. I never heard any one so stupid. No one, not even God, needed Ricky more than we did. As they lowered the coffin into the hole, I looked up at the gray sky and said goodbye. The priest was still talking. "And God will hold him in his embrace for eternity." Idiot, didn't he know that was impossible?
Copyright 1995 Ron Bargoot