Innocence

I run down the hallways of the Los Angeles General Emergency Room wondering just what the fuck happened that would spiral Johnny out of control. Is something wrong with him? Is he sick? Is he hurt? Was he in an accident? Is Matthew all right? A hundred and one questions run through my head. Sara’s not far behind me, she’s probably thinking the exact same thing.

I run to the nurse’s station and hope that someone can answer my burdening questions. Instead, I hear Johnny’s cries of hysteria.

“No! God! No! Why did you have to take him from me?” Johnny cries. I look around, wondering where he is.

“Are you Maci?” a doctor asks me, coming out of a room. He looks exhausted. I don’t blame him for two o’clock in the morning. I nod.

“What the hell is wrong with my brother?” I demand. The doctor puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder, which I shrug off in an instant. I don’t want his sympathy right now. I want answers!

“Maci, your father had a heart attack a few hours ago,” he tells me. Tears weld in my eyes and I shake my head.

“Where is he?” I ask.

“In there with your dad.” he says.

“He’s okay, though, right? He’s okay?” I ask, confused with this situation.

“Oh my god,” Sara cries. “You’ve got to be fucking with me!”

“Maci, I’m afraid your father didn’t survive. He passed away about an thirty minutes ago,” the doctor says.

My heart skips a beat. My head is spinning. I can’t feel a thing. I slide down on to the floor against the white wall. I feel tears trickling down my cheeks. It’s like my world has stopped. My father’s dead. I tune the world out in hopes that this is all just a bad dream.

The night continues on in a blur. The nurses finally pull Johnny out of the room that my father was lying dead in. He’s crying hysterically. He sees Sara standing over me, he walks over and hugs her tight. He continues to cry as he sees me on the floor. In fact, when he looks into my eyes, he kisses Sara’s cheek and sits down next to me. He puts his head down on my shoulder and holds my shoulders.

An hour later, we’re sitting in the medical examiner’s office discussing and planning everything. We receive my dad’s personal belongings. The medical examiner suggests an autopsy. But neither of us can make that decision tonight. We’re too shell shocked.

Sara drives Johnny and I back to her apartment. We fall asleep within minutes of arriving. All of the crying has drowned us further into exhaustion.

When we wake up the next morning, nothing’s the same. I can’t look at Johnny without seeing just a small bit of my dad in him. I start to notice a similarity in the two. Johnny has my dad’s nose and eyes. Seeing this makes me cry even further.

I keep myself in my room all day. I look out the window, holding my stomach between my palms. I feel a hardness in my stomach, the baby. I think about how my dad wanted to be a grandfather and how my baby would be his first grandkid. I cry at this thought. My dad will never get to be a grandfather and he’ll never meet his first grandchild, who’s growing in my belly.

“Maci” I hear a voice knock on the other side of my door. I don’t say a word. The door opens and it’s Matt. I feel a fresh burst of tears building up in my eyes. He walks over to me and hugs me tightly. “I’m so sorry!” He says, rocking me back and forth in his arms. We don’t say anything. We just sit together and look out the window for what seems like hours.

“Mace,” Johnny says, coming in my room a while later. I look at his face and he has fresh red tear marks on his face. “I, uh, the medical examiner called. They performed the autopsy this morning,” he says with a crack in his voice. A fresh bout of tears flows like a river out of his eyes.

He sits on the edge of my bed and I get up and sit next to him. I put my hand on top of his and wait for him to squeeze it. I wrap my arm around his shoulder and place my chin on his shoulder. We cry together. Neither of us has ever experienced anything like this before. We’ve never had a death this close in the family.

“We have to make the arrangements,” Johnny says after he’s calmed down a little more.

“The autopsy?” I say.

“Natural causes. Cardiac arrest. There’s really nothing more. He took a few pain pills to get rid of the chest pain he’d been having, along with the rest of his pills for his heart. They said that the combination of the pills he took wasn’t lethal,” Johnny says softly.

“What are we going to do about mom?” I ask. “She won’t want to be there, they haven’t talked in years,” I say.

“I know,” he admits. “But we have to get the arrangements out of the way,” he says.
For the next three days, I can’t focus. I don’t even know what day of the week it is. I can’t think period. I called and told our step mom, whom lives in Nevada, what was going on, she agreed to come and help us. I appreciate it, and I'm glad she's going to stay strong in our small family.
But none of that matters now. The only thing that matters is my father’s funeral.

The funeral takes place on that next Monday. There were no observation hours as Johnny and I both felt that the best way to say good-bye is a solid tribute, not a viewing of his body.
The funeral home pulls the wooden casket out of the hearse and carries it into the church.

They place it on the stretcher that will carry it down the aisle as Johnny and I push the casket with a few of the funeral home directors with us. I see Sara, Matt, Jimmy, Brian, and Zacky, sitting in the front pew of the church. I keep pushing the casket down the aisle while tears stream out of my eyes.

When we reach the end of the aisle, we stop and leave the casket where it is and retreat into the first pew. The priest begins a sermon of life and death. I try to listen as much as I can, but my mind keeps wandering. I think of where my father is. Is he in heaven?

The mass continues on and eventually, the priest calls Johnny up to the podium. Johnny walks up to the alter, bows his head at the sign of the cross and proceeds to the podium. He takes a piece of paper out of the breast pocket of his suit pocket and clears his throat.

“Hi. I’m Johnny Seward, Jonathan Sewards’ son. I’m not here today to tell you all a bunch of stories about my childhood that involve my father. I'm just here to tell you he was a great man, and me and my band wrote a song." Johnny's voice cracks, and suddenly the guys are on stage, their road manger, hands them their instruments, Matt takes the microphone and begins to sing,

"Never feared for anything.
Never shamed but never free.
A laugh that healed the broken heart with all that it could.

Lived the life so endlessly.
Saw beyond what others see.
I tried to heal your broken heart with all that I could.

Will you stay?
Will you stay away forever?

How do I live without the ones I love?
Time still turns the pages of the book it's burned.
Place and time always on my mind.
I have so much to say but you're so far away.

Plans of what our features hold
Foolish lies of growin' old
It seems we're so invincible, the truth is so cold.

A final song, a last request
A perfect chapter laid to rest
Now and then I try to find a place in my mind.

Where you can say,
You can stay awake forever.

How do I live without the ones I love?
Time still turns the pages of the book it's burned.
Place and time always on my mind.
I have so much to say but you're so far away.

Sleep tight, I'm not afraid.
The ones that we love are here with me.
Lay away a place for me
'Cause as soon as I'm done, I'll be on my way
To live eternally.

How do I live without the ones I love?
Time still turns the pages of the book it's burned
Place and time always on my mind
And the light you left remains but it's so hard to stay
I have so much to say but you're so far away.

I love you
You were ready
The pain is strong enough to despise
But I'll see you
When He lets me
Your pain is gone, your hands are tied.

So far away.

And I need you to know

So far away
And I need you to,
Need you to know..."

No one speaks. As they walk off the altar and back to their seats. He takes a hold of Sara’s hand and she whispers something in his hear before kissing his cheek. The priest begins to speak again. Before we know it, the funeral mass is over. Johnny and I are walking back down the aisle, pushing our father’s casket to the back of the church where the funeral home carefully brings it to the back of the hearse, pushing it in carefully.

The hearse drives down to the cemetery, which is the backyard of the church. Just as we reach the graveyard it begins to rain. Everyone from the mass walks down with us. We follow the path until we see the hearse waiting for us at a green tent. Chet and I decided that it was the right thing to do to bury our father with our step brother who died in a wreck. Our wish was granted by the funeral home. Once everyone’s settled under the tent, my father’s wooden casket is once again pulled out of the back of the hearse and carried over to the grave. It rests on the pulleys, which will lower it into the ground.

The priest begins to speak again, saying a final prayer over my father’s casket while pouring sand on the end of the casket in the shape of a cross. He continues the burial ritual, praying once again. The whole thing lasts twenty minutes. After that, we’re given the chance to say good-bye to our father once again before his body is committed to the ground forever.
I let everyone say good-bye before I say my own. Once I’m alone under the tent, I place my hand on the casket one last time. I whisper my good-bye to the casket, hoping that my father will hear it, even though I know he won’t.

“Bye dad. I love you. I can’t begin to express how grateful I am for all you’ve done for me in this past month. I love you so much! The baby loves you! I’m going to miss you so much! But I’ll see you again one day. Good-bye daddy. May you and my step brother be forever happy in heaven together,” I say. I press down on the casket. I lean over and kiss its’ wooden surface as if to kiss my father good-bye. I take my hand off the casket and lean my head into Matt's shoulder, he kisses my hair and whispers, "It'll be ok."

Johnny, Sara, Brian, Zacky, Jimmy, Matt and I walk back up to the church where the rest of the funeral guests are. The church generously donated their hall to us for a brief gathering to celebrate the life of my father. We walk up in silence, letting the day’s events sink into our hearts.
When we get to the hall, we’re greeted by the funeral guests, all of whom we don’t recognize. People come up to us, telling us how sorry they are. But we can’t understand who they are and how they knew our father. We leave it to them to answer those questions.

“Hi Johnny, Maci,” one man greets us. “I’m so sorry about your loss.” He shakes our hands.

“How’d you know our father?” I ask.

“I graduated high school with him. I’m in shock. I reconnected with him a few months ago. He was so nice. But he never mentioned he had children. Oh well. I’m sorry for your loss,” he says again.

Conversations go on like this for a while. Johnny and I are lost. We don’t know these people, but we’re grateful that they came here today to pay their respects to our father. He would have appreciated it.

Finally after a long day we all go to denny's for dinner.
We all sit there in silence eating our pancakes, we are not even halfway home to Huntington, but we were starving, after we finish Matt pays, and then we all climb back into the car. I sleep on Matt, and Brian drives us home.