Authors: Day Rusk
I remember, I went to high school with a girl whose brother had committed suicide. Hung himself from the football uprights late one night. Nobody had seen it, it all happened late at night, but it did cause quite a buzz at school the next day. It was hard for us to imagine anyone taking their life, especially at that age, when we all thought we were indestructible. That really was my closest brush with suicide, and even then that friend was more of an acquaintance, a friend of a friend, so it wasn’t like I ever talked to her about it, or found out why he supposedly had done it.
As I sat there in my car, I began imagining ways I would kill myself; I wanted to join Safia in
the undiscovered country
. Do you hang yourself; that never looked appetizing? Pills? It might be the easiest way. I didn’t own a gun, so that was out; and let’s face it, if you attempted that and blew it; you could spend the rest of your days in a wheelchair, trapped in a useless body and mind. I thought about it, but I wasn’t serious. It was a romanticized idea of following the woman I loved into the afterlife, but I knew if I’d told Safia that, she would have told me I was an idiot. I knew you could never honor someone’s memory or celebrate their life by taking your own. In many ways that would disrespect them; it was your duty to march on and cherish their memory; by remembering them, you were keeping a part of them alive here on earth.
I tortured myself for more than an hour staring at the grocery store. I had nowhere else to be.
It was on the way home that Kareena called me. The police had released the body and Safia’s parents were making arrangements for her funeral; Kareena, God bless her, told me where.
Traditionally, at least in my world, when someone dies, there are a couple of days of viewings at the funeral home. The family and friends get together and mingle, reminiscing and sharing their grief at the loss. This is usually followed by a funeral. A religious service and a journey to the cemetery, our loved one’s last resting place.
The viewings and the funeral are for the living. I discovered that with my parent’s deaths. When my mother got sick and knew she wasn’t going to make it, she insisted that when she passed we had no viewing for her, and no official funeral. She just wanted to be cremated. She explained to us that sometime later that year, when the shock of her passing had, well, passed, we could all get together, a family reunion, a party and celebrate her life. She figured at that time, there would be more joy and laughter at the get-together than there’d be right after her passing and at a formal funeral. She left all the planning in my father’s hands, who I found out believed and wished for the same.
When my mother passed, my brother, sister and I got together with my Dad, but that was it. We received phone calls from relatives saying how sorry they were, but no mass gathering of mutual mourning. I’d been to funerals in the past, namely for three of my grandparents – my Grandfather on my Mother’s side had died when I was still a little too young to be attending a funeral. Luckily, I had been old enough that I carried memories of him, and some of our outings together – he wasn’t forgotten. As I’d been to funerals, I knew the difference between them and what my Mother requested, and it was at that time I realized the viewings and the funeral were for the living. Both allow you to wrap up that person’s physical life, and contemplate their spiritual life, and where they were, or where they were going. It brought about closure. With my Mother, it just seemed for the longest time, in the weeks following her death that I was at loose ends; I hadn’t been given the opportunity to formally say good-bye, like I had at other funerals. It was hard, because you didn’t know what to do and you felt like you should be doing something. It’d been rough – hard on me and my siblings.
When Dad got sick and knew he was terminal, I knew what was coming. He’d all ready made arrangements with a funeral home for his death and planned to do the same as my Mother; no viewings and no funeral, just cremation as soon as possible. There’d be no expensive coffin or up-selling on services by the funeral home – probably a relatively easy task seeing how they’re hitting you up at a time when you’re at your worst and most vulnerable. As far as Dad was concerned, find a good cardboard box, stick him in it and burn everything.
“I don’t want to be laid out for everyone to gawk at me,” he had told me as he lay in a bed towards the end. “I don’t need that. Everyone walking by the coffin looking at me and saying, ‘He looks good. They did a good job.’ I don’t look good. I’m dead, forchristsakes.”
I had to laugh, because he was right. I’d heard that so many times at the funerals I had attended. He or she looks good. That’s important when you’re being cremated or buried; you don’t want to go to the afterlife looking a mess. I’d actually been to one funeral, a friend of the family, where there was great debate over how bad a job the funeral parlor had done with the deceased’s make-up. Viewings were a strange world.
“When I’m gone, you’re going to do the same for me as I did for your Mother. I’ve made the arrangements,” my Father continued. “You have to promise me you won’t do anything else?”
I just looked at him.
“You have to be strong,” he continued. “Others are going to want you to have a funeral and a viewing; you might even get some pressure from your brother and sister, but I’m counting on you to stand firm and follow my wishes, okay?”
“Yeah, I will.”
“Good, because if you don’t, I’m gonna come back and haunt your sorry ass. Got it?” he said, with a smile, despite the pain he was in.
We both laughed. It is surprising how many times Dad and I shared a laugh during his battle with cancer. There were a lot of moments where we didn’t laugh; where things happened that cut us both to the core of our souls; things I remember to this day and still haunt me. At the same time, we’d always managed to have a laugh and find the humor in things. I know when some friends and family visited, they were surprised how open we were about his circumstances, and were probably thrown off by some of the humor, but that’s just the way it was with us. My Father was a great man, who taught me many things, and if I could be half the man he was, I’d consider that a victory in life.
When Dad passed I followed his wishes, despite the fact that I, like my siblings, in many ways, wanted the closure a funeral would offer. I followed his wishes, and you know what, he hasn’t come back to haunt my ass, although at times I wished he would, just so I could see him again.
I needed to see Safia.
She had walked out of our home, after giving me a kiss and saying good-bye to me; at that moment I didn’t realize it was the last time I’d ever see her. I wasn’t ready to accept that; I needed to see her again.
So I staked out the funeral parlor. I parked across from it and waited till just before closing time, when I had witnessed everyone having left – at least those I believe were either her family or friends. I really only knew Rijja and Kareena.
It took some talking, but I convinced the individual working at the parlor that I needed to see her; I explained the situation, and luckily, I’d caught them on a good day, because despite the fact he was closing up for the night, he let me in.
That walk in the funeral home is possibly the worst you’ll ever make. He was leading me to the room where Safia was laid out, and all the time he was doing so, I knew I was getting closer and closer to her; and even though I desperately needed to see her, I was afraid of seeing her. Seeing her, like that, would just drive home the reality of her death.
I took a deep breath when we got to the doors of the room she was laid out in, and went inside. There’s nothing like the stillness and silence of a funeral parlor; I don’t think you can duplicate that anywhere; I wondered how they do it, where they import it from. That room was as still and quiet as any room had ever been. At the front of it, or back of it, I don’t know which it is, was the coffin, the lid open, and lying there was Safia, the woman of my dreams.
I knelt down at the side of the coffin and I wept. There’s crying and tears, and then there’s real misery; those tears and sobs that originate deep down from within you and shake your whole being as they find release - it is almost a primal thing; definitely raw. Those are the tears that overcame me as I knelt there looking at her. It was true, Safia was in fact dead. There she was, lifeless in front of me. I don’t know how I survived that moment.
I’d often thought it was better if someone just suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack and that was it – it was over. Having watched two parents slowly fade away, it seemed like a more ideal way to lose someone. What a schmuck, I was. Suddenly losing someone doesn’t make it any easier –
a loss is a loss is a loss.
I was lucky; the gentlemen who had let me into the funeral parlor was in no hurry to rush me out, even though it was past the time he was supposed to have left and gone home. In all this I had found someone compassionate, who allowed me the time I needed to be with Safia and say my good-byes.
God, how I loved her, and still do.
I didn’t know what the future would hold now, but I knew it wasn’t going to be what I thought it was going to be; with her death my life had changed dramatically; I just didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it in the long run.
I knew I couldn’t stay there forever, so I said my final farewell and kissed her on the mouth; she was cold to the touch. I took one last look at her. Dad was right. She didn’t look good; she looked dead. Gone was that twinkle in her eye, that sly smile, that essence of joy and a love for life that drew me to her in the first place.
Safia was dead
.
I
Stayed
away from the funeral. I didn’t even drive out and park somewhere near. I’d said my last good-bye to Safia and in many ways it had been better; it wasn’t us surrounded by a bunch of people who didn’t approve of our love, it was just the two of us, alone, as it’d always been.
I did receive a lot of support from my family and friends during this time. As I’d mentioned, they’d been furious when they found out how Safia’s family was treating me; they had told me I should have crashed the funeral; why’d I listen to them?
To hell with her parents.
And, as I suspected, I got tired of defending my actions. They meant well, but none of them considered that maybe I really didn’t want to see her parents or any of her family. The more I thought about how they had treated her, the angrier I got; I didn’t want them in my life, now, especially with Safia absent from it.
Everyone meant well and I appreciated it, because it was tough; I will admit that in losing Safia, for a time, I did turn into a basket case. Rather than writing, I just seemed to rattle around our home doing nothing except thinking about her. I’d lost people in the past but this was different. While I still believe my parents were taken from me way too early in life, I had lived what seemed a lifetime with them; we had a long and storied history together, and even though I wanted more, our time together seemed more complete. With Safia that wasn’t the case; we were just getting started. Even though I know it served no purpose, I spent a lot of time wondering and daydreaming about the possibilities of what could have been. When would we have gotten married? What would our kids have looked like? Hopefully for them they would have taken after their Mother – the beauty, not the beast. What would our grandkids have looked liked? I’d always had this daydream about growing old with someone – celebrating our 50
th
wedding anniversary. I thought about that moment, when as two little old people we’d be sitting on the front porch of our house, sipping lemonade and watching the grand-children playing in the front the yard. It’d be a peaceful moment full of contentment; a life well lived by the two of us together. That wasn’t to be the case.
I’d found true love and it had been taken from me. I’d beat the odds in life and had actually found the right woman. That’s like winning the lottery if you ask me. It’s potentially, mathematically, a once in a lifetime event. I now knew I was going to grow old and die alone; I’d had my chance and the fates had snatched that happiness from me.
As I was going through my mourning period, Kareena did pop by a few times; it wasn’t because we were close, or she wanted to really see how I was doing – the pretense she used – but because Safia’s parents had sent her over to collect Safia’s things. I knew they were putting her in a difficult position, but I really didn’t care. I kept putting her off, telling her I’d get to it next week and so on and so on, until I’m sure she realized I was never going to pull any of those things together – I was never going to turn over Safia’s personal items. Kareena stopped popping by.
In one last ditch effort to get them though, Rijja had been sent over. I felt really bad, because I knew she probably didn’t want to do it, but was merely following her parent’s orders. She came by, again, under the pretense of seeing how I was doing, which, maybe, a little bit, she actually cared about; we had gotten to know one another a little bit when Safia was still alive.
“My parents have asked me to get Safia’s things,” she finally told me during the visit. “They want her stuff back.”
I just nodded my head absently. I understand her parents had lost a daughter; I have no way of knowing how that feels; how devastating it can be. And I know Rijja had lost a sister, but at the same time, I had lost my love. We were all hurting, and we all had a claim to Safia’s memory – she belonged to all of us.
“I know, Kareena’s been by,” she started to say, “They, my parent’s, just want...”
I held up my hand. She hesitated. It probably wasn’t the hand that stopped her, but the suddenly intense expression on my face. I think it unnerved her a little.
“Everything is where it should be. And where it’s going to stay,” I said.
“But Mom and Dad...,”
“Disowned her,” I interrupted, “threw her out of the house. They turned their backs on her, if you recall.”
“They...”
“They turned their backs on their little girl,” I said, the anger taking hold. “And don’t tell me I don’t understand, because it’s easy to understand. Their little girl didn’t do what they wanted, grew up and became a woman and an individual of her own, so they cast her aside like she didn’t matter. They put their faith before family. That’s it in a nutshell.”
Rijja was just looking at me. Maybe she agreed with me, maybe not. I don’t know, as I never actually sat down and talked to her; found out how conflicted she had been about all that had happened since Safia and I had met.
“Whatever’s here, here in my and Safia’s home,” I continued, “remains here; this was Safia’s new home, her true home. They kicked her out, now in death they don’t get to reclaim any part of her. What’s here stays here, and if they come over and try anything I’ll have them arrested for trespassing on private property. As far as I’m concerned, your parents can go to HELL!”
I wasn’t proud of myself. Rijja didn’t deserve any of my wrath; she was just doing what was expected of her. At the end of our conversation, I had started to lose my cool and it wasn’t fair to her; and it wasn’t even fair that that was related back to her parents. I didn’t know them, and sure, based on how they treated Safia I harbored anger towards them, but I should have kept my cool. Rijja left and that was the last I saw of anyone connected to Safia for a while.
Time has a way of healing all wounds, or at least, that’s how the saying goes. We cannot grieve forever, as whether we like it or not, we have to move on after losing someone. We have to eat, sleep, work, everything. As much as you feel like you want to give up, life continues and takes you along for the ride. As time goes by, the more and more you get on with your life.
That’s not to say you don’t remember. There had been more than one occasion I found myself driving along, when I’d be thinking of my parents or Safia and the tears would suddenly well up. It still hurt, but not as frequently as it did shortly after their deaths. This also posed a problem, as in many ways I didn’t want to lose the intensity of that feeling regarding their loss. I lived in fear that with time, memories would fade, and I’d lose an essence of them in my thoughts that I didn’t want to lose.
My Mother was the first to go; of course, with cancer, that last year to year-and-a-half she had been wasting away in bed, the cancer slowly stealing her life. I remember my last visit to her, several days before her death; she looked so small and frail. As you looked at her, you almost wondered where her body had disappeared to under the covers. Memories of her battle with cancer occupied my thoughts shortly after her death; unpleasant memories. But now that time had passed, when I think of my Mother I think of her at a different time; a time when she was younger and more vibrant and alive, a big smile on her face. Slowly the same had been happening with my Father. But I still from time to time struggled to remember things; at least as vividly as I could. I lived in fear of even those good memories fading so much that I couldn’t remember clearly enough, and my parents would be lost to me forever. The time I had spent with Safia had been much shorter than the time I’d spent with my parents, and I truly lived in fear that in time, or with the passing of time, I was going to forget her – the memories would fade so much I’d be struggling to remember our time together; I’d know it had happened, we’d been together, but in my mind I wouldn’t be able to conjure up those memories; I wouldn’t be able to see her. She deserved much better than that. I know I’m being irrational here; there’s no reason why those memories should ever leave me forever, but at the same time, I feared even losing that piece of her from my life.
Wallowing in misery and self pity was not something Safia would have approved; so I forced myself to get on with my life. I’d fallen behind on my book, despite having deadlines to meet with the publisher. Considering the circumstances, and thanks to my agent, there was some understanding there and some leeway; at the same time, business is business, and they still expected a solid book, so I threw myself into my work as an escape. When I had first started researching and writing about Houdini and Conan Doyle, I’ll admit that I found myself supporting Houdini’s position more than Conan Doyle’s. I could see his point of view regarding Spiritualism, much more so than Conan Doyle’s blind belief in the ability of humans to make contact with the other side. Things changed after Safia’s death, because now I had a better understanding of where Conan Doyle was coming from. I had an intense longing to see Safia again; to speak with her again. If someone could have made that possible, I probably would have taken them up on the offer; if I’d thought there was even a remote possibility that I could speak with her again, I’d probably sit down at a séance and take that chance. It’s easy to judge others and their actions, but sometimes we don’t fully understand them. With the losses in Conan Doyle’s life, he just wanted the chance to reconnect, and thought he had found the secret to doing so. I now understood him. So, in a way, even in death, Safia inspired my work for the better. She helped me understand my subject matter, and helped turn what would have been just a good book into a great book; her last gift to me.
If it hadn’t been for the book, I don’t know if I could have gotten through it all. I knew that the minute I finished it, and turned in the first draft to my agent and the publisher for notes, I’d feel like I was at loose ends with myself. I had nothing to hold my attention and keep me from thinking about Safia and what could have been; I did, but not to the extent that I did shortly after her death; now it wasn’t a crippling process that turned me into a basket case, but a bit of a painful thought that left me longing for the possibilities of what could have been.
One of the results of my relationship with Safia was the fact I was now hyper-sensitive to the word ‘Muslim.’ Before, if an article appeared about some Muslim issue or they addressed the topic on talk radio, I had listened to it as background noise, not really caring too much; now, it affected me; I listened more intently, and found myself getting more and more angry; it was usually a case of one Muslim group or person or another complaining about the way we were doing things in our society and how we weren’t bending over backwards enough to accommodate them and their beliefs. And the anger coming from many Muslims who called in, ranting and raving about the topic, rather than taking a good look at both sides and weighing them equally – not all Muslims who called in, but more than enough – bothered me. When has the world ever believed in just one thing? Has there ever been on this planet, throughout the centuries, one universal religion? No. Never. The fact of the matter is, the world is a very big place, full of different people, and at any given time throughout history, those people have worshipped and believed how they have chosen to – and they’ve all done it differently. That approach, of course, had led to some horrific events throughout humankind, as these differences led to wars or even individual moments of violence against one another, but that has always been the way it is. We live in a diverse world, and the only thing that keeps us all sane is understanding – understanding what I believe, my neighbor may not, and that’s okay, because he’s free to believe whatever he wants, just so long as he’s not trying to ram that belief down my throat – and vice versa. Tolerance is the key to peace in our society – keeping us from each other’s throats. Stop asking us to accommodate you, especially when your agenda is not to accommodate us, but to make that mistake others have made in the past, which is to try and make your belief the universal belief of the world. It will never happen.
When I came across these discussions on the radio, I’d tense up; there was an unreasonable anger in me that I hated. Anger is never good; it is never productive; anger threatens to weaken and harm the human soul. Despite the fact I knew it was wrong, I couldn’t control my feelings in this matter.
Life went on and I went on. But once again, life has a way of kicking you in the butt when you least expect it.
It had been quite some time since I had run into anyone who knew Safia. Based on the fact her parents hadn’t welcomed me into their world - we had maintained primarily a separate life away from her family and friends – those who had crossed over into both lives, Kareena and Rijja, had no desire or reason to maintain a relationship with me after she was gone – and didn’t. I didn’t make an effort to keep them in my life either, so it was a mutual parting of the ways.
I was finally starting to feel good about my life again. I had successfully completed a couple of rewrites on my book and the publisher was happy with the results. It seemed the writing part of this endeavor was over, with the last thing I wrote for the book being the dedication, “To my love, Safia. My inspiration.”
Now that I had finished it, it was time to think about what came next. I still owed my publisher a couple of books, so there was still more work to do; I just had to figure out what interested me; what topic did I want to immerse myself in for the next year; what topic could I bring a fresh perspective to, and as was my process, I found myself in a book store, just slowly looking through the aisles, seeing if anything caught my attention. I’d stumbled upon the Houdini/Conan Doyle connection after having read a wonderful new, at the time, biography on Houdini. While that author covered the illusionist and escape artist’s entire life, the sections on Houdini and his relationship with Conan Doyle intrigued me; I knew they could use further exploration and elaboration. I was hoping to find something that interested me, and in reading find some aspect of that interest that deserved further exploration.