I am sorry for your loss

are the six most painful words i believe i have ever heard. so innocous on the surface. i mean your loss could the loss of your hometown football team, the 20 bucks you bet on something ridiculous, common everyday words that are like a knife to the heart when used in the original context. every utterance more painful than the first. salt in that open wound. a twisting of that knife already embedded in your heart.

so my brother was buried yesterday. still processing it. got riproaring drunk last night. me and my sister-in-law, the new widow. o hurting from the drinking and hurting from the finality of it. B and I in an amazingly well-coordinated move, managed to both get out the - not having teary goodbye cause it's not when i left - that would have been too much. i will see her again, it's not final but in some ways saying goodbye to her and the other troopers today had a finality to it. a very harsh and cold reality. i can't think about that yet.

getting out of there without either my parents or myself breaking was another amazing feat of denial and ability to in impose my own reality the situation. nope, i reject your reality and substitute my own. just another trip. nothing different about this trip. nope, not a damn thing.
all those images one sees in movies about police and funeral deaths? the pomp the circumstance everything, it's all true.
another thing i learned was that the friends of Karume needed to hear those simple phrases "i am sorry for you loss" or "my condolences on your loss" or what have you because the friends, especially as we get older, became a pseudo-family to him, they worked with him, vacationed with him, went to academy with him, served with him, knew him in ways the family couldn't and wouldn't ever. it was as much their loss as it was ours. the focus is on the family and his wife but his friends needed the support and the words of sympathy and condolence as much as we did. i found myself just reaching for them in the receiving line and holding them and letting them cry, it was all i could do. it was an interesting revelation for me to see that. to see how my brother had made such a strong impact on the lives of these people. heartbreaking to see and feel their grief. i learned about my a brother i didn't really know. i mean, i knew him as my older brother, we had a easy-going, non-serious relationship. never did talk about serious stuff. he never really wanted to and i never knew how with him but we had what we had and it was good. he knew i loved him and i knew he loved me in his own way which usually meant yanking my chain and teasing me. i was so gullible when it came to him. older brothers you know.

i still don't really believe it. kept waiting for him to sit up and say april fools at the viewing. it wasn't right. it wasn't him. this was all wrong. a horrible bad dream. i mean, i knew it was coming. i think i knew it beginning when it was diagnosed. mom said today she thinks he also knew from the beginning. knowing it and feeling it are very very different. i knew it was going to happen, i knew it was going to be hard, but the actuality of it all was something i couldn't have been prepared for. up to the moment we walked into the church, and i kept backing away.....if i don't go in it can't be true, just won't go in, nope, not going in, i'll wake up and it will be a bad dream, luckily my remaining brother was there to pull me together. i am not sure i am ever going to be able to fully express the surrealness of it all. the honor guard at the church. more than half the church completely filled by state troopers and various town police units, cadets from the police academy, standing outside the church in formation waiting for karume to appear. in 30 degree weather. standing at attention in the cold. waiting for him. this man, this "G" i didn't know. G-money, G-unit, Boomer. how they knew him, how i got to know him over the course of those few days. to watch the honor guard at the funeral home come down to pay their last respects was absolutely heartbreaking. these big strong strapping men, all squared away in their dress uniforms with tears streaming down their faces as they stood in formation and saluted him one last time.
he wasn't in that casket. not my brother. he wasn't there. he was sitting back and taking notes with that little half smile on his face. just filing the information to pull it back out on you later. that casket couldn't ever have contained my brother. too small.

they closed down the highway for the funeral procession. closed down the interstate. blocked intersections and at every intersection the police stood and saluted until the hearse went by.

you know i knew that there would be pomp and circumstance i just didn't expect to be so emotionally overwhelmed by it. that probably made me crack more than anything else. the presenting of the flag to the wife. she broke. she has been so strong over the course of all of this and that act, that finality, the reality. it was so hard to hear.

and my parents. oh my. mom rose to the occasion so brilliantly so strong, so positive and saying all the right things and reaching out to strangers to comfort them and be comforted. papa shrank even further away into himself. i worry about him. mom is a survivor. papa? perhaps when he's home and processing and among his own things it will be better.



still processing. it is still quite surreal. i don't feel he's gone. can't be. i can hear him.