The House on Hope Street - By Danielle Steel Page 0,21
for all of them, and she wanted to get ready so she could help Liz in every way she could. It was going to be an unthinkably awful day for Liz and the children.
In the end, it was even worse than Victoria, or Liz, had expected. The entire family went to the funeral home, and they broke into sobs the moment they saw the casket. There were flowers standing next to it, and a spray of flowers on top of it, Liz had asked for white roses for him, and the smell of them was heavy in the room when they entered. And for a long time, there was only the sound of sobs, and finally Victoria and James took the children away, and led Liz's mother away with them, and Liz was left alone with the mahogany casket she had chosen for him, and the man she had loved for nearly twenty years resting inside it.
“How could this happen?” she whispered as she knelt next to him. “What am I going to do without you?” The tears streamed down her cheeks as she knelt on the worn carpet and rested a hand on the smooth wood. It was all so inconceivable, so unbearable, so much more than she had ever thought she could bear, except that now she had to. She had no choice. This was the hand that life had dealt her, and she had to live through it, if only for her children.
Victoria came to get her after a while, they went out to get something to eat, but Liz couldn't eat anything. The children were talking by then, and Peter teased the girls to cheer them up, and kept an eye on his mother as he sat next to Jamie and told him to eat his hamburger. They had all suddenly grown up overnight. It was as though Peter could no longer allow himself the luxury of being a teenager, but had become a man. Even the girls seemed more grown up suddenly, and Jamie less of a baby. They were all doing their best to be strong and be there for their mother and each other.
Carole drove the children home after they ate, and the others went back to the funeral home with Liz. And all afternoon people came to pay their respects, and cry, and comfort Liz, and chat with each other outside the funeral home. It was like an endless cocktail party, with tears, and no food, and Jack in the casket at the end of the room. Liz kept waiting for him to step out of it and tell them all it was a terrible joke and it had never happened. But it had, and it seemed to go on forever.
They went through a second day at the funeral home, and by then Liz was alternately numb and feeling hysterical, but outwardly she was extraordinarily composed, so much so that some people wondered if she was sedated. But she wasn't, she was just on autopilot, and doing what she had to.
Monday dawned with dazzling sunshine, and she went back to the funeral home before the funeral, to be alone with him. She had decided not to see him, and was agonized over it. She felt as though it was something she ought to do, but she knew she just couldn't. She didn't want to remember him that way. She had last seen him in the ambulance, and on their office floor, moments before he died, and that was agony enough to remember without adding further torture to it. More than anything, she was afraid that if she saw him, she couldn't stand it, and would lose her grip completely. She left quietly and drove home, and found the children waiting for her in the living room, with their uncles and their grandparents. Her mother was wearing a black suit, and the girls were wearing navy blue dresses their grandmother had bought them. Peter was wearing his first dark blue suit, that Jack had just gotten him a month before, and Jamie was wearing a blazer and gray flannels. Liz was wearing an old black dress Jack had liked and a black coat that Jean had borrowed for her on Sunday. They looked somber and respectable, and as they filed into the pew at St. Hilary's Church, Liz could hear people cry and blow their noses.
The service was beautiful and brief, the church was full, there were flowers everywhere, and afterwards it was