Would you give up a closet for the one you love?

Shortly after Ned picked up Bill's cremains, Poppy wanted to have a "visit" with Bill.  Ned called and asked me if I'd bring Bill out to Poppy's.  I drove out one Saturday and picked up Ned. We headed to Poppy's with Bill in tow.  I certainly understood a father missing his son.

Poppy was not happy with me that I was not going to bury Bill's cremains and he was really not happy that I chose to put him in the crock I selected.  I had always treated Poppy special, it was not always returned.

Love Note from Bill

The summer before Bill died, I had his family over to the house for a cook out.  It was a hot summer day.  I had made a special sign in the drive way for Poppy as he was crippled and I didn't want anyone to take the parking space that would allow him to park at the top of the driveway close to the door.  The sign merely said, Poppy Parking Only.  He got a big kick out of it, that I treated him so kind.  He brought flowers that year to plant in my garden, giant dinner plate poppies.  Every year they come up, remind me of him.

I always sent him cards for holidays from Bill and I and he loved getting them.  He told Bill at our wedding that he'd married a fine woman, but weeks later, I wasn't all that wonderful in his eyes.

He may have been angry with me over the confrontation with Donna at the funeral.  He may have been angry that I cremated his son and refused to bury him.  He may have been angry that I put him in a "god damn cookie jar," his words, not mine.  He may have been angry about things the girls may have shared with him, but one day, I was no longer a part of the family in his book.

He was thankful that I brought Bill out to his  home.  We visited briefly as he sat at the dining room table, the jar resting in front of him.  He kept touching it, caressing it,  as tears welled in his eyes.  He was having a difficult time.  

The night Bill died, he sat up near his head and said things to him that he probably should have said when his son wasn't dying.  Every child wants to know they are loved and their parents are proud of them.  Poppy mumbled his feelings towards Bill, I was close enough to hear them.  He was proud of him and he wished it was his "crippled body that God took" verses Bill's.

Poppy asked me why I had put his "son in a god damn cookie jar."  I understood his question, but I had a difficult time responding.  I gave this considerable thought, what to put him in.  I wanted it to be some thing special not some expensive plain looking urn.  I shared with him how I had labored over my decision to place him in this crock, that it was Bill's and how much he loved it. It didn't matter, Poppy was not content.  "How do you know where his head is and his feet, he's just all jumbled in there."

My Bill - R.I.P

Ned sensed I was a little irritated and stepped in to lighten the conversation. Poppy wanted Bill to spend the week with him and I agreed.  I would be back the next week to pick him up. I picked him up at Ned's though, I never went back to Poppy's.

The family has an annual picnic each year around Fourth of July.  I was invited out that year, although I felt like an outcast with Poppy, my sister in laws, Anita and Jonnan always made me feel welcomed and my brother in law was the best. Ned had met the love of his life in those few short months that Bill had been gone. He brought her to the party and I sat next to her. They had only been "dating" for about six weeks at the time, so I'm sure she felt like I did, an outsider.  I knew Anita, Jonnan and Ned, but everyone else was new to me and most had met me at Bill's funeral. Nikki came and cowered by Poppy's chair as if someone was going to harm her.

I never understood those girls.  They didn't like the Klebusch's.  They spoke poorly of them all the time, but if there was something one of them could give to them, they were there with their hands out for the taking.  Bill's siblings would have done anything for them, but there was tension in the air that day from the behavior they had displayed during their brother's illness.

I didn't stay long.  I was uncomfortable around Poppy.  He wouldn't even acknowledge I was there. I still sent him cards on Father's Day and Christmas, but in 2007, he became ill. Ned wrote to me to tell me he was in the hospital and it was not looking like he'd be with us much longer.  Within days, he died.  I read about it in the newspaper, the afternoon of his service. I was pretty crushed  that no  one had called.  I heard he didn't want me there and the stories have varied, but it boiled down to the cookie jar and my refusal to bury him.  

Bill's oldest sister wrote to me in January of 2006, around what would have been Bill's fiftieth birthday.  She wanted to remind me, it was her brother's fiftieth birthday, as though I might have forgotten.  She and I never saw eye to eye after the funeral arrangements had been changed. She wrote to me suggesting it was time that we gave him a proper burial, mentioning that she "heard I had moved on" and it was time.  I saw red the day I received that email.  How dare her suggest that I had moved on!  I had not moved on, I was struggling to get out of bed each day and face the world!  My fingers couldn't hit reply fast enough and I wrote a scathing response to her, banning her from ever contacting me again.

I called Ned.  I wanted to know if he knew she was going to do this and he said they had all warned her to not go there, but she had a mind of her own.  All of Bill's siblings were fine with me keeping Bill until I was ready, whenever that was, they understood.  They knew how much we loved each other, Lana, had never been around us, so she didn't see the bond we had.

I knew where Lana had gotten the notion I had "moved on" and it aggravated me more.  In the late summer of 2005, I had been to Dick's Sporting Goods and ran into Jeff. He wondered how I had been and I told him about Bill.  He had met Bill the day he sat in my driveway all day long, Bill brought out the engagement ring that Jeff had given to me and sent him on his way.

He asked me how I was and I was honest.  I wasn't doing well.  He wanted to know if I'd like to go grab a bite to eat and talk, so we did. He still loved me, but he knew I didn't have the same feelings for him.  After I shared Bill's story with him, he  remarked that "was what he had always wanted between us, but he could see," that I was still very much in love with Bill.  He offered a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen and I took him up on it, with one condition, it would never go any further, we could be friends.

We had dinner several times, went to movies, took road trips to the State Parks and hiked.  At Christmas he drove me to the airport to see me off.  I was flying to my parents for two weeks.  We were walking down a corridor and I was having a moment, Jeff reached for my hand and pulled me in for a hug.  As we parted, I saw Ashley and Donna across the way, they were both looking at me and I excused myself to go speak to them, but when they saw me coming across the aisle, they darted.  I'm sure Ashley told Lana I had moved on.  Little did she know, I still struggled with moving on.  A glimpse in time, one slide in a slide show, and people create their own stories of what happened before and what happened after that flash in time.  No one really knows except the characters who shared that moment.

I saw Jeff on and off for a few months, but his feelings continued to deepen and I was numb.  He wanted to get married, it didn't matter to whom, he just wanted to be married.  He met another woman, on line and tried the jealousy thing to discover, I don't play that game and I will walk away in a heart beat, it you try to play it on me.

He ended up marrying this woman, who had been married five times before.  I had talked to him just before he proposed and suggested he wait a little longer before making such a commitment.  He "was in love," he told me she was very much like me, the marriage lasted two years. He's moved on, but we had touched base after his divorce and he agreed, he should have listened.  

There are some men who just need to be married, they don't look at the big picture, they think they can change it, mold it, to what will work, but it doesn't work that way.  Women are the same.  Both have their own agenda's as to why they crave the desire to be with anyone.  I have to really love someone to take that step and as I have gotten older, the measuring stick has changed.  I ask my self, "Would you give up a closet for him?"  If the answer is no, my heart isn't in it.