Those We Love Most Read Online Free PDF

flowers around the closed casket, the distinct waft of lilies, the flowers of death. Maura had been adamant about not having an open casket, and Margaret had been amazed by the clarity her daughter displayed during the funeral preparations and planning. She wanted to be involved in every single detail, choosing his clothes and the photographs, the songs, and even the catered dishes afterward. Her eyes had burned with the brightness that one sometimes associated with madness, but Margaret knew that such combustible energy, that superhuman overdrive, would not last. She was braced to catch her daughter when she crashed.
    Margaret scanned the front pew containing the members of her family, all dressed in varying somber shades of clothing. She took in Roger’s patrician profile next to her, his slightly hooked nose and round lips. At sixty-five, the almost full head of hair he proudly possessed was gray largely at the temples, his secret vanity. Their daughter Erin and her husband, Brad, sat to Roger’s right, next to their two children, and beyond them was her son, Stu, and his wife, Jen, who had left their baby daughter at the house with a sitter. Next to them were Pete’s parents, June and Stan, staring grimly ahead. They were good people, Margaret thought. June had been at the house or hospital almost as much as she had since the accident. On Margaret’s opposite side, closest to the aisle, Maura sat stiffly as Ryan fidgeted uncomfortably between her and Pete on the faded red velvet seat cushion. Did her grandson even understand, at six, that his brother was gone forever? Little Sarah would only know of James through stories. That thought abruptly sucked the air out of her, and she blinked back tears. The truly difficult days were yet to come, Margaret realized. The hardest part was being home after the rituals were complete, sitting angrily with grief and learning to accept it.
    The organ music began mournfully, and the altar boys finished their preparations, heads respectfully bowed. Illuminated by the perfect projection of the summer sun, the elaborate jewel-toned stained-glass window at the front of the church glowed, each tiny fragment uniting into an image of Mary and the baby Jesus. The priest adjusted his vestments on the side of the altar, shifting his Bible to the other hand as he strode toward the center of the chancel. Margaret looked down the row at her family again. Underneath the current of grief, she felt pride in the way they had all pulled together. Stu and Erin had their own responsibilities, their own full lives. They had all simply stopped in the tracks of their respective days after that first phone call and manned the house, gently navigating well-meaning neighbors who wanted to linger off the front porch and stonewalling those who seemed bent on gleaning tidbits of information. In the days after the accident, they stood steadfastly in the doorframe of the Corrigan household with their own aching hearts, accepting the chicken casseroles and pans of lasagna with one foot protectively propping the screen, bracing against well-intentioned intrusion.
    People always came out of the woodwork at a time like this, for good and bad. There was some need in human nature to insert yourself immediately, to take action, even if you knew the person only tangentially. The proximity to tragedy and sorrow caused an immediate evaluation of your own relative good fortune. The people who really understood, though, would hang back until the right moment, knowing that the real work began when all of the cars had left the driveway.
    She and Roger had had little time for serious conversation since the accident and his sudden return from Florida. He was in shock, they all were, and he felt frustrated at how helpless he was to assist their child. The tragedy had seemed to turn him inward, sinking him further into his own thoughts and private grief. Yet there was a part of her, as she sat stiffly in the pew, that was hopeful.