The Coldest Christmas

"I'll be careful," she said. "I won't rush," she said. Now, she's unnaturally silent. The absence of her voice seems to add an uncanny chill to the already freezing air. She should be talking. She should be laughing, and sitting in front of the fireplace with a mug of her favorite cider, begging me to turn down the "racket" blaring from the speakers. She should be with me, in my arms, with her child, she should be HERE. But she isn't. And I'll never know what compelled her to not wear a seatbelt that day.1

I thought that I would be prepared for this, seeing her body in the casket. It's just HER, after all. It's the same person that I've woken up beside for the past 26 years, the same face that I kissed each morning before hurrying off to the office, the same face that always broke into a lopsided grin whenever I managed to do something particularly stupid, it's Cassy. However, the icy blue eyes I found myself peering into were missing a vital something. The laughter and warmth in them had vanished, replaced by an empty void. This wasn't Cassy, I realized. Cassy was gone. 2

I hadn't cried about her death before the funeral as one would expect a loving husband to do. That's not to say I wasn't devastated, of course. I certainly was. It's just that the entire thing seemed too utterly surreal to actually be happening. This COULDN'T happen to me. Or her. It was the sort of tragedy that you happened to read about in the paper that had befallen someone you had never met in a distant place. Someone who's name was just that: a name, an arrangement of letters printed in black ink that was forgotten by lunch. Only seeing firsthand her body spread out like that made it seem real to me. Completely, painfully real. I remember thinking how out of place she looked in the graveyard. She never liked them very much, you know. Whenever we drove past the one on 3rd Street on the way to the local market, she would always turn her head away and shut her eyes as if erasing the sight from her memory. I can't say that I know the origin of her fear, and I deeply regret not asking. It's one more thing I'll never know about her. Come to think of it, there are a great many things that I'll never know about her. And why didn't I ask when I had the chance? There were countless opportunities, after all. It's simply because I assumed that we had an eternity together. All the time in the world. This assumption was my largest error, as eternity is not as long as one might believe.3

The tears came then. No sobs, though. I somehow was able to smother them before they bubbled out and I was reduced to an emotional wreck, but just barely. And as the salty trails stained my face, the man who stood beside me ( a lanky Italian man whom I vaguely recalled being Cassy's younger brother) awkwardly laid a hand on my shoulder in what I supposed to be a consoling manner. But it was entirely too stiff to be comforting. It seemed mechanical. I fought off the urge to shrug off the bony hand, although I was sure that it would have been excusable and understandable were I to do so. But I didn't. I simply stood there and cried. I don't remember much of the funeral (I think I was in a mild state of shock, to be honest), but I vividly remember her being lowered into the ground. I remember praying that wherever she is now, she is happy and safe and warm and loved. I prayed that the drunk driver who collided into her car would rot in jail for the rest of his pathetic life. And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed that my daughter, who was on her way from her college up north to our house after hearing the news, was wearing her seatbelt that night. 4