Free When the Messenger Is Hot by Elizabeth Crane Page B

now, I manage to suppress my urge to say, Oh really? and follow it up with a lot of sarcastic questions. I zip up the wheelie bag and wait about a half hour before crying, followed by crying more than I ever thought possible. Followed by crying continuously for the next month, crying when things are funny and crying when people say nice things. Followed by wondering what god was thinking. Followed by wondering if god thinks.
    The next day: I call everyone who needs to be called and note inappropriate responses such as dismay that my grief conflicts with someone’s cocktail party. I take a call from a nice college friend I lost touch with and I appreciate her overlooking the fact that I never responded to her wedding invitation.
    Day two: I wonder if it’s wrong to go out to dinner followed by knowing that it is and going anyway and laughing in between crying spells followed by wondering later how I could have laughed when nothing is funny anymore.
    Day three: I realize that I am marking time in “days since” now and I realize that it is Thanksgiving and I note irony again.
    Day four: I realize that the outfit I brought for Thanksgiving is not also appropriate for a funeral and I think about going shopping and then I feel creeped out about shopping and then I get my cousin to go shopping for me.
    Day five: I realize that the medical community is actually a medical industry.
    Day six: I decide not to go to the funeral and then I go to the funeral. I sob like I did when I was a kid and didn’t get my way, that way kids do when they seem like they’re going to stop breathing they’re sobbing so hard. I note that there are several hundred people at the funeral and I wonder if I even know several hundred people and I wonder if even several people will show up at my funeral. I feel grateful when the minister’s homily reassures me that there is a god and I feel strangely reassured by her admission that she has no idea why these things happen or whether god is participating in this area at all. I appreciate that the minister speaks kindly of my mother while avoiding canonization. I consider joining this church even though I live 900 miles away and still have some dissatisfaction with god and I laugh through my tears when a dozen people of various faiths and distant cities tell me they are considering joining this church, but later I feel less certain about joining this church when my father hands me the audiotape of the homily (apparently a routine practice at this church), which to me seems like a macabre wedding video I would never want to watch.
    Back at the house, I laugh with my friends like it’s a party and note the overwhelming compassion of everyone present and I tell all my friends I love them. After they leave I call up everyone else I love and tell them I love them and vow to myself never to speak to anyone again who I don’t completely love.
    Day seven: When I find my mother’s pink socks among the laundry the housekeeper has folded and put on my bed, I cry on them and put them in my suitcase.
    Day nine: I go back to Chicago.
    Day eleven: I go back to work.
    Day twelve: When I can’t stop crying, I go back to New York for two more weeks, realizing that my body is out of my control.
    Month one: I join a support group and I notice that I am now marking time in “months since.”
    Month two: I resent anyone who still has a mom and speaks about it openly in front of me.
    Month three: I notice that the people in the support group don’t appreciate my sense of humor and I realize that outside of Manhattan everyone has not already been through therapy and may react by stomping out of rooms instead of laughing at my sense of humor. I burst into tears when my mom’s car comes even though it’s a thousand times better than my K car, which at this point doesn’t even go anymore.
    Month four: I cry a few times a week and quit the support group because it’s