Kevin

The day of the funeral rolled around and the ceremony was beautiful. The white and yellow roses were tied to each aisle with red silk ribbons, and I realized when I walked in they matched the suit Michael was being buried in. His black pinstripe suit boasted of a pale yellow button down and a bright red bowtie, and for a split second I thought the man was just going to sit up and tell all of us this was a crude joke.

With all the emotion Tina had been showing this past week, I expected her to crumble. I expected her to be sobbing into my lap during the entire ceremony, but instead it was her mother. Her mother was the one sniffling throughout the entire ceremony and Tina was simply staring off into space.

Staring beyond her father’s open casket while the ceremony passed her by.

When it came time for the eulogy, Theresa stood up. I figured Tina wouldn’t be up to giving it like her father requested, so I was glad Theresa took the reigns. She wiped her nose before she walked up to the platform, and I wrapped my arm around Tina as she sighed.

It was the first sound she had made since she’d sat down next to me.

“I know I’m not the one Michael designated to give the eulogy, but my daughter is aching,” she began. “So, if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to give her a few minutes to collect herself by speaking a few words of my own.”

Tina’s face ripped over to her mother’s as I watched her skin pale. Her hands began to tremble and tears began to flood her eyes, and I clenched my jaw in anger. Of course Theresa would try to find some way to backlash this onto Tina. She had made it very clear this morning she wouldn’t be up to doing this, and here her mother was throwing her under the bus like she always did.

“Kevin. I can’t do that. I-I-I don’t-... But, I thought she-... What’s-”

“Sssshhhh…” I hushed in her ear. “Just take a deep breath. All you have to do is tell them how much you loved your father. Maybe tell them a story of your favorite memory of him. That’s it.”

“No, no that’s not it,” she said harshly. “My father deserves better than that. I can't give him better than that. She was his wife, for crying out loud. Why can’t she do it!?”

“For those of you who didn’t understand Michael and I’s marriage, this admission will come as a shock. But, for the last couple of years, Michael and I had been sleeping in separate rooms.”

The room fell silent as Tina’s eyes slowly pulled over to her mother’s, and all I could do was gawk. Whatever the hell was about to happen, the train was in motion, and I had absolutely no way of stopping it.

I could no longer be the buffer Tina needed me to be, and something told me her mother wanted it that way.

“Michael and I loved each other dearly, but it takes a great deal more than love to make a marriage work. It took a great deal of energy to try and pull ourselves back from the mire, and by the time our days wound down, all we wanted to do was be alone.”

I watched as Tina’s jaw slowly unhinged. The vice grip she had on my hand was causing my fingers to turn white, and I tried to bite down on my lip and keep my mouth shut. If this was the only thing I could provide for her in this cataclysmic moment, then I needed to give it to her.

No matter how much it fucking hurt.

“I loved Michael very much,” Theresa said as tears rose to her eyes. “But, laying next to him was hard. Every time my body would press against him, I could feel the weight he’d lost. Every time he rolled over in the morning and kissed me, the twinge of urine on his breath would remind me of how his body was failing him. How his body could no longer keep up with me. How I would soon no longer have him. So, we slept in separate rooms. We had a night nurse come over to stay with him, and I’d cry myself to sleep every night because I was too weak for the man who’d been so strong for me over the course of my lifetime.”

I felt Tina’s grip relent just a little bit and I breathed a sigh of relief. The blood rushed back to my fingertips and my hand began to tingle, but the sensation didn’t last for long.

Because Theresa most certainly wasn’t done.

“I don’t know if Tina will be well enough to get up here and speak, and we honestly shouldn’t expect her to. She’s lost her father, and I remember how stifling it felt when I got that same phone call all those years ago. It’s a pain that will never go away, and every Father’s Day I still shed a tear for him. And now? I’ll shed a tear for them both, because Michael was a wonderful father to our daughter. In ways I could never have been.”

All at once, Tina released my hand and leaned into my body. I could tell she was settling in for her mother’s words as they looked at one another. Her mother was poised in her direction from the booth and her eyes were locked solely on Tina’s, and I could tell she was entering her own little words as her mother poured forth words she’d been longing to hear for years.

“Tina, my beautiful daughter. There will never be a moment for the rest of your life where you won’t miss that man. You’ll walk by a bakery and smell a cheese danish cooking and think of him, or you’ll chew on a stick of mint chewing gum and be reminded of his morning rituals. You might find yourself driving past a tobacco shop and stop in just to smell the scents and take it all in, and I know this because I do it. I do it now with your father gone, and I did all those things and more when I lost mine. Our relationship has been less than perfect and we have never really understood one another, but I need you to know that I understand this. For all the differences we have, I understand the hurt you’re experiencing. Do not force yourself to get up here and speak. If you have something you want to say, I hope I’ve provided you with some time to gather yourself so you can say it. But, if you have nothing, then that is fine, too. Because at one point, your father had nothing. Neither of us had anything when we first got married. That’s simply how it is when you begin something new. And that’s what this is: something new. We’ve never had to live without Michael until now, and we’ll have to navigate that together. But, I’m here. And I’m willing to do that with you, so long as you’ll have me.”

I felt her shoulders hopping with her sobs before her mother dashed from the podium. Tina flew from the pew and threw her arms around Theresa, pulling her close while the two of them sobbed. The few people who attended the funeral were wiping tears from their eyes, and I looked on and committed this moment to memory.

This life-altering moment that would force everyone associated with the two of them to walk a slightly different path.

I looked back at our group and saw the girls dabbing at their eyes. Spencer and Brady had their jaws clenched, but I could see their glistening orbs as they looked on in shock. We were watching an almost three-decade feud extinguish right before our eyes, and there was a certain kind of beauty to it that none of us ever wanted to forget.

We trailed behind the body as we headed to the burial site, and everyone was ominously silent. No one shed tears, no one hiccuped with sobs, and no one sniffled. People tossed more roses onto his casket while he was being lowered. I stood behind Theresa and Tina while they leaned on each other for support, but I could tell their gazes were out along the horizon. I don’t think either of them could really watch what was happening, and there wasn’t a soul that surrounded them that could blame them.

And then, like clockwork, Tina turned to her mother and uttered the words I’d been dreading for days.

“Mom, we need to talk about dad’s business.”

“Sweetheart, I can’t do something like that right now. We just lowered him into the ground,” she said.

“Why don’t we talk about something like this over dinner?” I stepped in and asked.

“That’s a much better idea,” Theresa said. “Tina?”

“Dinner at the house tonight?” Tina asked.

“Dinner at the house,” Theresa confirmed.

But all I could do was shove my hand into my pocket and feel around for the sheet of paper I kept on my body. I was saving all the information I’d gathered for the time it would be necessary, and I began rehearsing my speech for dinner in my head as we all walked away from the gravesite.

Something told me this wasn’t going to go over well, and I hoped Brit would still be up for talking some sense into tina.

Because I had a feeling she was going to need it.