Chapter 25

All of us collectively operated on autopilot over the next few days. Gina, with her public-relations background, somewhat reluctantly accepted the role of family spokesman for the media. At one point, the media identified her as “the wife of the deceased firefighter’s sister.” This resulted in, of all things, the loonies from Westboro Baptist Church announcing their intention to picket the funeral to thank God for killing firefighters as, I suppose, punishment for R.J.’s failure to disown his sister for not being straight.

Ultimately, they never showed up. Much later, I learned that a local businessman quietly reached out to the church and made a one-time-only offer: a donation to the church in exchange for them staying home and, of course, forgetting that the conversation ever happened. They agreed, and only afterward realized that an amount had never been specified when they received a check for five dollars.

Meanwhile, seemingly everyone in the greater Cincinnati area tried to bring food to Jerry and Diane’s home. Mike Adams came by the day after to check on everyone, and saw no fewer than twenty casserole dishes piled up next to the front door, because there was no more room in the refrigerator or the freezer. He called a volunteer at a local shelter to come pick them all up to feed to the homeless. Then he called the chief of police to request that the checkpoint be set up at the end of the street, so that only people who lived on the street, or people we specifically invited, could come near the house.

The most unenviable task in a mountain of unenviable tasks fell to Chris, a social worker accustomed to speaking to young children at some of the worst moments of their lives. She grimly volunteered to tell Eric and Ashlyn that Daddy had gone to Heaven and wouldn’t be with them anymore. She reported that they were confused by this more than anything, Eric more so than Ashlyn. They had no real frame of reference for the permanence of death.

Chris and Gina brought Cassie and the kids to the house two days after the fire. Cassie was a shell of herself, barely functioning, and only by taking direction from others. Ashlyn quietly took a coloring book and sat at the dining room table, drawing pictures. Eric looked around, saw me, and crawled into my lap. I wrapped my arms around him, desperately wanting to, if not remove this awful reality entirely, shield him from it for as long as possible. Eric, for his part, sat quietly, not really saying or doing anything, and soon dozed off in my arms.

As he slept, the arrangements were finalized. Although not particularly religious, R.J. and Cassie attended a local nondenominational church. The pastor of their church, Reverend Harris, would be conducting the funeral service on Monday morning, the 26th. This was to be preceded by a public viewing on Sunday afternoon. The church refused, quite vehemently, to accept payment for the use of their facilities, and a fund was set up to cover all other costs, a fund which collected nearly $20,000 in the first 12 hours.

Now all that was left was for us to survive the next few days with our collective sanity intact.

Sunday morning dawned cold and damp, with intermittent rain showers. R.J.’s body had already been prepared by the funeral home, and the public viewing was scheduled to begin at 1:00. The family arrived at 12:30 to have a private viewing beforehand.

At 12:15 Lisa and I pulled up to the funeral home and were immediately stunned.

It was cold.

It was raining.

It was nearly an hour before the doors would open.

And there were at least a hundred people already in line.

“Oh, my God,” Lisa said softly, “I did not expect this.”

We were escorted inside through a back entrance. Eric and Ashlyn were there with Chris and Gina, and the funeral director nodded toward Chris. She knelt down to their eye level.

“Listen ... we’re going to go inside in a minute and I want to tell you what you’re going to see. Now...” she drew a shaky breath. “You’re going to see Daddy lying down. It’s going to look like he’s asleep, but he’s not asleep. Daddy is in Heaven, like I told you guys, but his body is still here, and that’s what you’ll see. He won’t be breathing. He won’t be able to wake up. But you can talk to him. He’ll be able to hear you from Heaven. But this...” Chris’s voice broke a little. “This is going to be the last time you’ll see him here on Earth, okay? But there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’ll be okay.”

I noticed Eric holding a piece of yellow construction paper. The funeral director opened the door and Chris led the kids in first.

Eric was the first to walk up to the casket, staring at his father’s face.

“Hi Daddy,” he said softly. “I made this for you.” He put the paper in the casket next to the body.

It was a childlike picture of a fire truck, and in his equally childlike scrawl, he had written underneath, “To Daddy, Love Eric.”