Rest in peace, Joseph in pieces

Anthony's death came in the early hours of the morning, after three days of us running back and forth to Pittsburgh, sleeping in hospital waiting rooms, and watching him struggle for breath and being lobbied by everyone in a white coat to let him go.

For us, there was closure. We knew what was happening. We knew he was suffering. We knew it was over. And we knew what that meant.

For Joseph, well, he didn't know because we were kind of stumped on what to tell him. For the first day, while we made funeral arrangements and called family members, we avoided telling him anything. We eased into the shallow end, talking about heaven and other people like his Nonna and Grandpa Joe who were already there and loved him but couldn't be with him here. We worked our way slowly toward what we knew was inevitable. The periodic "I miss Grandpa. When is Grandpa coming home?" that punctuated our lives.

When it came, we told him that Grandpa had to go to heaven. That he died, and that meant he didn't hurt anymore, that Grandpa loved him but couldn't be with him anymore.

It didn't work. We could tell he didn't understand. We knew that would come in time, and it would be ugly when it did.

I thought it would be if he saw the body at the funeral home. We did everything we could to avoid it. But active 4-year-old, big room, too many relatives that haven't seen him before, that's a recipe for disaster. Inevitably, it happened. He saw Grandpa...and thought he was asleep. He was drawn back to him again and again to check on him. He wasn't upset. Just curious.

Until the next day at the funeral. That was different. He thought Grandpa's ride in the big bed with the lid to the big car was neat. But at the chapel, when the box wasn't opened, he got restless. As the service went on, he became increasingly agitated. And then it was over. The other mourners left. We got up and walked up the aisle.

And that's when Joseph broke.

I know my son's crying. He had colic. He cried for weeks on end. I've heard him cry because he was angry or frustrated or sad or hurt or sick or tired. Until a cold day at the end of January, in a stone-quiet cemetery chapel, I never heard him cry like his heart was broken. It was endless and keening and lost.

"No! We have to get Grandpa! He doesn't live here! He doesn't live in that box! He lives in our house! He has to come with us! Grandpa! No! Grandpa! Let him out!"

It was awful. In the end, only his daddy, the only person who missed Grandpa nearly as much as he did, could console him. It took forever to get him settled down enough to get into the car. But on the way home, we realized that it hadn't gone away. Periodically, it bubbled back up. And when Matthew dozed off in the passenger seat, asleep just like Grandpa, it seemed, Joseph went crazy, screaming, crying and kicking.

Anthony was gone, but in many ways that mattered, so was my little boy.