Mike's funeral was over, without much tears. Everyone was controlled, even Val, who tightly held my hands, was not crying at all. She looked at the coffin and then threw the white rose as instructed and then she looked at me and back at the coffin, with the same curious big eyes. Perhaps there were things that she didn't understand; she didn't even know that sadness should be expressed in a funeral.
I thought Mike's mother would be agitated. The vulnerable-looking lady who loved her son to pieces, the amiable lady who always welcomed me and Val to her cozy household because we were "Mike's gems". I still remember how she has squeezed my hands when she knew that "Mike's little girlfriend" was pregnant, she told me in her soft voice that "we'll take care of you", with the sincerity conveyed through her firm yet gentle grasp of my hands. She did the same thing in the funeral, holding my hands and assured me that everything would be okay. Mike's father has the knitted eyebrows and eyes like eagles, a typical look of a man in authority, a man who runs a company. His eyes were filled with sympathy in the funeral when he looked at me; I sensed a softness in him which was rare.
Everyone shook my hands, stroke my hair, held Valerie and told us in their most gentle voice, "we're sorry you've lost Mike. But everything's gonna be okay."
A strange kind of unease aroused in me. I felt like, it was almost improper not to shed a tear at my husband's funeral and with all these people coming with good intention, to sooth the young clueless widow. But my tears had run dry. I couldn't cry, I tried to squeeze a few drops because "crying is good for a sad person", but I couldn't.
Mike's funeral was over, peacefully, with the girl-by-his-side-during-the-car-clash part omitted. No one wanted to mention it. No one wanted to recognize it. Except me who was still indulged in the doubts I had for what happened between Mike and the girl.
And so everything seemed to quiet down and went back to normal after the funeral. Mom and Mel were staying at my place to help me cope with housework so that I could spend more time with Valerie. They never said when they were going to leave, though Mel had to spend extra half an hour to travel to the primary school that she works in, she's a Home Economics teacher, while Mom had to skip her dates with her lady friends and community services, I felt grateful for their unconditional support.
I was arranged by Mel to take up a part-time job as a tutor in the child-care center teaching kids to draw, while Val was in school. To major in Visual Art in university was my plan when I was in high school. Drawing and painting seemed to give me the biggest pleasure in my high school years, and I believed that it still does though I had left my paintbrush drowning in the drawer after I had Valerie. It kind of thrilled me to be able to pick it up again, but it felt ridiculous that it took me a husband to exchange for the drive to draw again.
It was going well. The kids were well behaved except a few typical naughty ones, but when you tried to make things fun for them, they would sit and concentrate. Children had a gift of creativity in each and every one of them. They could come up with different versions of the same apple, some made it green, some made it in rainbow colors, some added a tiny bug popping its head from inside of the apple, some added themselves in the picture eating the apple or drooling and snatching the apple. If you asked a group of college students to draw an apple, they would come up with the standard red shinny fresh apple.
Valerie was doing okay at school as well. She was good at Art, which was something I could be proud of. It was something that I insisted in doing it myself, teaching Val to draw and producing "Art", like me, she seemed to take pleasure in swirling her color pencils on the paper or making a waste paper into a tiny paper rose. Complicated subjects like Math was left to Mike and Val did ok at them.
Valerie was allowed, or encouraged to take her little friends home for sleepover, so that she would have different companions besides the three "old women" in the house, as what my Mom said. The house was back to normal, and it's becoming more cheerful. I felt normal, I felt okay, I felt that I was moving on.
Not until one day the hospital called and told me that the cornea recipient would like to thank me, in person. Strangely, it was me who suggested that the meeting could be held in the hospital before the doctor mentioned it. What was I thinking? Why would I want to go back to the place where all the sadness and rage and betrayal and ugliness could be found?
The face of the girl in coma came back to my mind. Perhaps she was the reason I wanted to visit the cold place again.