The Funeral Bride

 The paramedic job I had when working at St. Mary’s Hospital was one that I had trouble coping with. It was a bloody job and, working in ER, watching people die right there in front of you is something, or at least I, never got used to. It’s a bit ironic for a hospital job, yes, but it was something that I developed over time from being a paramedic in the first place. So, of course I never envied my friend Kevin’s job of being the hospital pathologist. All that exposure to the mangled bodies and the constant blood and guts is something that I never knew how he could sleep at night. But low and behold, it never did anything to ruin his charismatic disposition.

      Kevin, in spite of his bloody profession, had a very sunny and positive personality. He was always that back-slapping, everybody’s best friend kind of guy. Always buying people drinks, treating his friends to dinner, lending people money, he really was a good guy. And I think back on those memories with a sense of both nostalgia and regret.

     But around six years ago, a tragedy had struck his life, one that destroyed Kevin and left a mere shell of who he was in his place. It was his wife, Katherine, a pretty blonde woman who was very similar to Kevin in many ways. Albeit a bit quieter and more withdrawn, she was also a very caring and good natured person.

      Kevin loved her more than anything. She was his soul mate, if you believe in such things. This I knew, and that was why it was so heart wrenching to receive that phone call on that wet and foggy spring morning from a distraught and weeping Kevin, something that I’ve never seen Kevin do before. I knew that Katherine hadn’t been feeling well lately and she wasn’t recovering. She just kept getting worse. So they went to the doctor to see what was really wrong with her. That’s when I got the call.

      “Its cancer,” I heard Kevin say, his voice breaking “She has cancer, breast cancer. And it’s already pretty far gone.”

       It was like getting hit by a freight train. I liked Katherine a lot. She always was so sweet and nice. Just a good natured person. It made it all that much more tragic for both I and Kevin to hear.   

       It was near unbearable for him. The long and hard fight against the disease had worn him down to nothing. As the months rolled by, Katherine only got worse and worse. The chemo wasn’t taking and she just got sicker and sicker. I watched as she lost all her hair, her color, she became near skeletal thin and lost even her personality and slowly and painfully, despite everything they did, she died, in that hospital room with him by her side, whispering in her ear how much he loved her.

       The funeral was a day that still is something I hate to think about. A gloomy, Monday afternoon, we followed the hearse from the church to the graveyard, and there, while the casket waited to be lowered into the soil, he broke down and embraced the casket, bawling onto the wood, and all I could do was rub his shoulders, tell him I’m sorry and let him know I was there for him. It made me feel like an ass that I couldn’t do more.

      Kevin was never the same after that.

      As the months went on after the funeral, Kevin had changed entirely. The man who once the life of the party was now gone and replaced with a cold, quiet and withdrawn ghost who barely spoke and rarely smiled.

      I didn’t see him much, even less as time went on, he didn’t answer his phone much, would only talk when someone spoke to him first and even then he it was only a one or two word response. Whenever I did ask him if he wanted to hang out, he would often say no, and if he said yes, it was always to the bar where he would get completely black out drunk. I didn’t blame him of course, though it pained me to see him like this. I always reminded him that I was there for him, but he never did come to me for any advice.