The Mourning Mail (final release candidate #7)

Chapter 1

ONE MONTH AGO

I didn't know what lay ahead as I walked in quiet contemplation across the grounds of the Crestview Memorial Gardens. Bright red summer tanagers, mercurial and insistent, flitted about the treetops. Anna's hummingbirds and lesser goldfinches darted among light fragrances, emerging leaves, and beautiful blooms. It was the height of the mating season and another gorgeous spring day in late May. The weather made me grateful to live near the coast of San Diego.

Several more days would pass before I learned of the crimes and their gratuitous violence. But someone had already tipped the first several dominos. Among them were the violent deaths of two women and the desecration of their corpses. Those lay rotting miles from here in shallow unmarked graves covered with fallen leaves. There'd be other dominos, and they wouldn't stop tumbling until after I'd twice fear dying myself in gruesome ways. But for the moment, I was oblivious that upcoming events would consume my every waking moment. I didn't yet know the pulse-pounding dread that would linger after more than one of my dreams startled me awake.

Not knowing meant this day would be a tranquil one for me. I was here because I'd missed my opportunity last weekend. To keep that from happening again, I'd set this breezy early spring morning aside. I'd reserved it for personal reflection and to reminisce with my family.

I kneeled before the marker, and my fingertips gently traced the inscriptions carved into the stone. As I did, a childhood memory leaped across thirty years and inserted itself into my thoughts. It arrived immersed in the naïve confusion and fear I felt the first time I saw this monument. My brother Eddie had just passed. When Dad had the marker engraved for placement, it came pre-inscribed with all of our immediate family's names. I yanked Dad's sleeve to ask, "Dad, does this mean I am going to die soon?" as I began sobbing in fits and starts.

"No, honey, you are going to be fine and live a very long time," Dad said as he lowered himself to his knees. He wiped my tears softly with a tissue.

"We wrote all our names so Eddie could look down from Heaven and know he wouldn't be alone."

"But Eddie doesn't know how to read," I worried as I thought about it.

"The good thing about Heaven, sweetheart," Dad replied, "is that he'll be able to do anything he wants." 

And with his words, the terror subsided. The memory, however, has stuck with me for all these years.

I wanted—I needed—to visit Mom and Dad at their gravesite today. An unhealthy reserve of guilt and a general sense of disappointment in myself were building inside me. Picking up freelance writing assignments to pay my bills placed severe demands on my schedule. With that as an excuse, I'd begun skipping weekends here and there when I should have been finding the time to see them. After Mom passed, Dad religiously visited her every weekend and holiday. He never shirked despite the pressures of running his construction business. And when we both knew Dad's time was coming, I promised him solemnly I'd stop by regularly.

We buried Mom in the family plot almost four years ago. But the loving mother we once knew had left us a year before that. Her Alzheimer's had progressed steadily in the last two and a half years of her life. That last year, she could no longer remember who we were or what we meant to one another. The few memories she could share by that point were of her childhood and teenage years before she met my father. Those recollections didn't hold the same meaning for the rest of us.

The one person who could identify with her as a teenager was her sister, Debra Ann, for whom I was named. She was still lively and alert, but Mom didn't recognize her as an aging woman. Mom had developed a deep paranoia that we, now unknown to her, were taking and misplacing her things and playing mean-spirited jokes. Her suspicions and frustrations exposed the cruelest of ironies. She was, to us, no longer to the person we once knew, either. Six decades of warmth and togetherness as a family would end in strangers to her respectfully attending a stranger's funeral. We'd lost more than a mother.

As Mom passed while her body lived on, the sadness spread itself over a long time. Each month we'd learn to accept what she'd lost. We'd then watch helplessly as a little more slipped away, a perverse installment plan for heartache. By the time she left us, I felt more a sense of general sorrow and relief than I did a deep grieving. She'd truly gone to a better place.

The last month since Dad left has been very different for me than it was with Mom. Dad's diagnosis was pancreatic cancer; we had only three months together after learning of his illness. Through the end, Dad was still as sharp as ever. We'd often played chess when I was much younger. Had we played a game, I suspect he still could have beaten me if he'd wanted. But, as was his habit during those long-ago days, I would have hoped he'd let me win.

We spent many long hours discussing so much in the last ninety days. But Dad was selling his business interests as a general contractor and builder. I had the pressing demands of my career. So, though we'd often converse on the phone, we didn't get together those last two weekends.

Then came the Tuesday when he suddenly had a seizure and expired in the hospital. There were no more opportunities. Before the harsh reality strikes, you believe with every new day that surely there'll be at least one more. There's a cost to that way of thinking. I've wished so many times since that I could have those two weekends back to spend with him.

Maybe it was because the ending was so sudden, the door slamming rather than closing softly. But somehow, I abstracted myself from the reality of Dad's passing. I felt almost as if my emotional being was hovering in a corner near the ceiling. It silently watched the entire scene, biding its time before getting involved. There've been frequent moments since when I thought the floodgates were about to burst open. Once they did, I knew I'd collapse into a sobbing heap of tears, hysteria, and grieving.

But it's never happened. I'd feel a catch in my diaphragm at some passing remembrance of him. Or I'd lose my thoughts for a moment, a sense of panic rising within me, but then it would melt away. In the month since his death, I have felt an overarching sorrow that sucked the upper peaks from any joy that came my way. Still, I've not felt the sudden, painful outpouring of grief I'd expected and that I thought Dad deserved from me.

Thirty-eight years ago, Mom and Dad completed the adoptions of my older brother Eddie and me. Dad then purchased the Wynn family plot at the memorial gardens. It would serve as the last resting place for the four of us. He used barter and talents of persuasion to get the oak tree from my grandparents' farm moved to the head of our burial site.

It has been a Wynn family tradition for centuries to celebrate new beginnings alongside preparations for endings. The practice goes back to before the Battle of Hastings when the family name and crest first appeared in recorded annals. When Dad was born, my grandparents set up a trust that bequeathed him enough money for the plot and moving the tree. They wanted to be buried at their farm. They understood that Dad might have dreams of doing things with his life other than animal husbandry. Dad's parents knew someone would likely sell their property to new owners when they passed. It wouldn't be available to Dad and his future family when each of their lives ended.

I found out later that Dad acquired the plot and had the tree moved in something of a rush, not usually the way he did things. Learning that made me wonder if Mom and Dad knew Eddie was sick and adopted him despite the challenges. That would have been like them. Even though they struggled to build Dad's business back then as they broke from his parents and their farming life.

I always wanted to ask and never found quite the right time. But a year later, Eddie passed away after being diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme. He became the first member of our family to make his ultimate home in the memorial gardens. Mom and Dad felt deep sorrow when he passed. I'd catch them holding something he'd made and crying while they sat on the bed in his old room. Yet neither of my parents ever expressed regret for the brevity of their time with Eddie. Dad was fond of saying the entire world was secretly jealous of them. Other couples had to deal with the children that came to them by chance and genealogy. But he had gotten to choose the two he wanted most from among the very best.

Over the past four decades, the oak has grown into a gorgeous spreading shade tree reminiscent of an Ansel Adams photo. As it's matured, the groundskeeper has faced significant challenges keeping up with the acorns it drops. Each time I hear or see one fall, it pleases me that Dad and his decisions still have a visible effect on the world in which I live.

But Dad's influence was about to extend far beyond acorns falling from a tree, and I would become his willing agent.

Another of many things I did not yet know.