Free Violence by Timothy McDougall

occurred, he would still have a simple visitation, closed caskets, that night.
    Anderson stared down at his daughter’s angelic face. Tristan’s skin looked like veined marble. He ran one of his fingers over the area of her hair where a large bluish-purple bruise was visible on the back of her scalp and let his finger light on her delicate eyebrow.
    He then turned, looked down the length of Karen’s body. He could see dark bruising under her forearms, on her wrists and on her shins. She must have struggled, kicked them. An even more vicious torrent of guilt racked him.
    They would now go back to God as unified, as whole as he could keep them. They left this Earth a long time ago. He was truly alone and the weight of this reality caused him to involuntarily sink to his knees. He was saying his good-bye now. His arms outstretched on the gurneys was all that kept him from toppling. He wouldn’t look at them again.
     
    “’Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God, also have faith in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?’… Dear friends, we now commit the bodies of our beloved Karen and Tristan to the grave, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, as we entrust the souls of the departed to our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.” The priest finished the final blessing as he stood in the blazing sunshine outside the burial crypt that would hold Karen and Tristan’s remains.
    Anderson placed the first roses on their caskets and stepped away so the other mourners could set down their roses and pay their last respects. Many nodded sympathetically in his direction as they filed past and headed back to their cars.
    He didn’t have a reception luncheon after the services, which no doubt was a relief to many of these people and to Anderson because he didn’t know any of them and it would have been strained. The priest was a bit surprised that Anderson didn’t ask him to say grace over the food at some banquet hall but Anderson didn’t know him either, even though the priest kept calling him by his first name Noel with unnerving familiarity. The church service was enough and was well attended like the visitation the night before and the brief service at the gravesite today.
    There were many friends of Karen’s and Tristan’s that showed up to the wake, including a few neighbors, and of course Roman, Joyce and the rest of his employees and their families. There were also some genuine tears shed and Anderson appreciated that. Tristan’s friends wept constantly and openly, their little faces red from the steady sobbing. The girls brought photos they had of themselves with Tristan, some wrote notes. They tacked them all to poster boards. It took several easels to accommodate all the remembrances.
    The adults in attendance at the visitation told Anderson that they had met him previously at the community pool or some school function, a Children’s Concert, a Parents’ Night: events that he sleepwalked through and now longed for so much it felt like it was literally tearing his heart apart. Still, if there was a highlight of this whole process it was that they came at all. It wasn’t easy for them, Anderson knew that, and he acted like he recalled their initial encounter and thanked them for coming.
    Anderson’s most odd moment came when he felt the plush lushness of carpeting at the funeral home was somehow profane, although it should have had the opposite effect. He thought everything should have taken place on hard cement because every step he took felt like a pounding march as the days wore on, no matter what surface he treaded.
    Anyway, it was time to go. The committal service was complete. Anderson needed the heat of the sun because his soul felt as cold as the crypt in which Karen and Tristan would be entombed. He had heard “sorry for your loss” hundreds of times in the last few days, and