My wife died on the back of my Harley on a Tuesday afternoon. By Wednesday morning, her family had a lawyer telling me I wasn’t allowed at her funeral.
The letter came by courier. Real courier, the kind you have to sign for.
I stood in my kitchen in the clothes I’d slept in and I signed for a piece of paper telling me I had no legal standing to attend the burial of the woman I had been married to for nine years.
It said her parents had claimed the body. It said Michigan law gave them the right because there was no formal directive from Sarah. It said if I attempted to attend the service or the burial, they would seek a restraining order.
It was signed by a lawyer named Peter Halloway. Sarah’s uncle. A man who had walked out of our wedding reception because I toasted her in front of my club brothers.
I read it twice. Then I sat down on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets and I stayed there for a long time.
The accident wasn’t my fault.
I know how that sounds. Every husband who kills his wife on a motorcycle says that. But the police report was going to say it too. A kid in a pickup ran a red light on Old Mill Road. He was texting. He hit us broadside at forty miles an hour. Sarah went one way, I went the other, and the bike went up over the hood of his truck.
I woke up in the hospital with a broken collarbone and eleven staples in my scalp. Sarah didn’t wake up at all.
She was thirty-eight. She’d been on the back of my bike for every big moment of our life together. The day we got engaged. The morning of our wedding when she made me drive her to the courthouse because she wanted to feel the wind before she wore the dress. Every anniversary. Every good day.
She loved that Harley. She loved the way it felt when I opened it up on Route 12.
Her family had never forgiven her for any of it.
The day before the funeral, I called her sister Meredith seventeen times. She never picked up. On the eighteenth call, her husband answered.
He said, “Frank. You need to stop calling. This isn’t the time.”
I said Sarah was my wife.
He said, “I know. And I’m sorry. But her mother is in charge of this and there’s nothing I can do.”
I said all I wanted was to say goodbye.
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, “There’s going to be a viewing tomorrow morning at Rowan Funeral Home. Nine to eleven. Family only. If you came at eight thirty and went to the back door on the west side of the building, and if you knocked twice, I would let you in for ten minutes. That is the most I can risk. If Meredith’s mother sees you, I lose my marriage. Do you understand?”
I said I understood.
He hung up.
I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in Sarah’s chair at our kitchen table and I looked at her coffee cup, still on the counter where she’d left it Tuesday morning. Half full. Lipstick on the rim. I couldn’t bring myself to wash it.
I got to Rowan Funeral Home at eight fifteen. I parked three blocks away. I walked the last stretch in my only suit, the one I bought for my father’s funeral in 2011.
I found the west side door. I stood there in the alley next to a dumpster and I waited.
At eight thirty exactly, the door opened.
Meredith’s husband, Dan, stood there in a black suit with his eyes red. He motioned me in fast.
He said, “Ten minutes. That’s all I can give you. She’s in the front viewing room. Nobody’s here yet but the director.”
I nodded.
I walked down a carpeted hallway that smelled like flowers and something chemical underneath. My hands were shaking so hard I had to put them in my pockets.
The viewing room was small. There were folding chairs set up in rows. A podium at the front.
And there she was.
Sarah.
They’d put her in a blue dress I didn’t recognize. Her mother must have brought it. Sarah didn’t own blue dresses. She wore green and cream and sometimes black. Blue washed her out and she knew it.
But her hair was right. Somebody had done her hair the way she wore it. Loose. Parted on the left.
I walked up to the casket.
I put my hands on the edge and I looked down at my wife.
She looked like she was sleeping and she also didn’t. There’s something the living have that the dead don’t and I don’t know how to describe it except that Sarah wasn’t there. What was in that box was the shell. My wife was gone.
I couldn’t cry. I’d cried myself dry the night before. I just stood there and I looked at her.
I said, “Hey, honey.”
I said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him.”
I said, “I’m sorry your mother won’t let me sit with you at the end.”
I said, “I brought you something.”
I reached into my jacket pocket. I pulled out the thing I’d carried for three days.
It was a small silver pendant. A little motorcycle, no bigger than a quarter. I’d bought it for her fifteen years ago at a rally in Sturgis, back when we were just dating and she’d never been on a bike. She’d worn it every day since. She was wearing it when we crashed.
The paramedics had cut her chain off. I’d found the pendant in a plastic bag with the rest of her things at the hospital.
I couldn’t put it around her neck. The casket was open just to her waist and I didn’t want to disturb her. So I tucked it into her folded hands.
I said, “You keep it. You take it with you.”
Then I heard voices in the hallway.
Dan came running in. His face was white.
He said, “Her mother’s here early. Frank, you have to go. Now.”
I looked at Sarah one more time.
I said, “I love you. I’ll see you when I see you.”
I walked out the west door and back down the alley and I did not turn around.
I sat in my truck three blocks away and I watched people arrive at Rowan Funeral Home for a service I couldn’t attend.
I saw Sarah’s mother, Diane. She got out of a black Cadillac in a black suit and dark sunglasses. Her sister was on her arm.
I saw Sarah’s father. He looked like he’d aged twenty years since the last time I saw him at their fortieth anniversary party in 2016.
I saw Meredith. She looked at my truck across the street and she didn’t stop walking but her step slowed for a second. I don’t know if she saw me or if she just felt me.
I saw uncles. Cousins. Friends of Sarah’s I’d met once at Christmas parties.
I did not see anyone from my life. My brothers from the club had wanted to come. I told them no. I told them the last thing this family needed was a row of Harleys in their parking lot. Even now. Even this.
They understood. They were riding out on Route 12 at that exact hour, all forty of them, in Sarah’s honor. That was the deal we’d made.
I sat there until the service started at eleven.
Then I drove.
I drove out of town, out to Route 12, out to the stretch where Sarah had loved to open up her arms behind me and pretend she was flying. I pulled over at our spot. The bend near the reservoir where you can see the water through the trees.
I stood there for a long time.
I said things out loud to my wife that I’ll never write down for anyone.
I got back in my truck and I drove home, and when I pulled into my driveway, there was a car parked out front.
An old Buick. Silver. Immaculate.
An elderly woman was standing next to it in a black dress.
I recognized her the second I got out.
Sarah’s grandmother. Nana. Eighty-four years old. Sarah’s father’s mother. The only member of that family who had come to our wedding. The only one who had ever hugged me at Christmas.
She had a walker with her. She was leaning on it.
She said, “Francis. Help an old woman inside your house. I can’t stand out here in this cold.”
I helped her up my porch steps. I sat her in Sarah’s chair at the kitchen table. I made her tea because it was the only thing I could think to do.
She watched me the whole time. Her eyes were the color Sarah’s had been. That same green that went gray in bad light.
She said, “Sit down, Francis. I don’t have all day.”
I sat.
She reached into her purse. She pulled out an envelope.
She said, “Diane doesn’t know I’m here. She thinks I’m at my sister’s. I told her I couldn’t handle the burial. She believed me because I am an old woman and everyone believes what they want to believe about old women.”
She slid the envelope across the table.
She said, “Sarah gave this to me on Mother’s Day. I want you to know that. She did not give it to her mother. She gave it to me. She said, ‘Nana, if anything ever happens, you make sure this gets to Frank. Promise me.’ I promised her. I am keeping my promise.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of paper. Sarah’s handwriting.
It was dated May of last year.
It read:
To whoever needs this — I want to be buried next to Frank someday. Not next to my parents. Not in the family plot in Ashland. Next to my husband, wherever he ends up. If he goes first, hold my spot. If I go first, wait for him. My family will fight you. Fight back. Sarah Halloway Whitmore.
She had signed it. Under her signature she had written, “This is my directive. This overrides anything else.”
She had gotten it notarized.
There was a notary stamp on the bottom of the page.
I looked up at Nana. My hands were shaking.
I said, “This is real.”
She said, “It is real. Sarah paid a lawyer she found online. She did it because she knew, Francis. She knew what her mother would try to do. She loved you and she knew, and she prepared.”
I said, “The burial is in an hour.”
She said, “Then you had better move fast, boy.”
I called my lawyer from my kitchen phone. He was a friend of my club president. He answered on the second ring even though it was Saturday morning.
I read him the directive. I read him the notary information.
He said, “Bring it to me in twenty minutes. I’ll call the funeral director myself. If this is what you say it is, they cannot bury her against her written wishes. I don’t care what her mother has already paid for.”
I helped Nana back into her Buick. She kissed my hand before she drove away. She said, “You take care of her. You do what Sarah wanted.”
I drove to my lawyer’s office at ninety miles an hour.
He read the paper. He made three phone calls in front of me. His voice got harder with each one.
He hung up the third call and he said, “The burial is being paused. The funeral director is a decent man and he understands what this document is. He is telling Diane right now.”
I drove to the cemetery.
I got there in time to see them. Standing around the open grave in the family plot in Ashland. Diane in her sunglasses. Sarah’s father with his head down. Meredith holding her mother’s arm.
The casket was on the platform above the hole.
The funeral director was standing next to it with a piece of paper in his hand.
Diane was screaming at him.
I got out of my truck. I walked across the grass in my suit.
Diane saw me coming. Her face went from red to white.
She said, “You. You did this.”
I said, “Sarah did this. Fifteen months ago. Notarized. I have the paper. She wanted to be buried next to me. Not here.”
Diane came at me. Her sister caught her by the arm.
Diane was screaming words I won’t repeat. She was screaming that I had stolen her daughter twice. Once in life and once in death.
Sarah’s father put his hand on Diane’s shoulder.
He said, “Diane. Stop.”
She turned on him. He didn’t back down.
He said, “If Sarah wrote it, we honor it. That’s all there is.”
Diane sat down in the grass. Right there in her black suit. She sat down and she put her hands over her face and she made a sound I have heard exactly twice in my life. Once from my own mother when my father died. And once from Sarah when we lost the baby in 2018.
I didn’t go near her. I didn’t have the right.
The funeral director asked me what I wanted to do.
I said, “I want to take my wife home.”
He said the casket could be moved to a different cemetery once the paperwork was filed. He said it would take a few days. He said in the meantime, the casket could be held at the funeral home.
I said thank you.
I walked back to my truck.
Sarah’s father followed me.
He caught up to me at the edge of the plot. He was breathing hard.
He said, “Frank.”
I turned around.
He said, “I’m sorry. For all of it. For nine years of it. I let my wife run things because it was easier and I was a coward. Sarah knew that. I think that’s why she went to my mother instead of to me.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
He said, “If you’ll let me, I’d like to come to the burial. Wherever you have it. I’d like to be there.”
I said, “It’s a small cemetery. West side of town. Row of veterans and their families. My father’s there. My mother’s there. There’s a spot for me and there’s a spot next to me. Whoever wants to come is welcome.”
He nodded.
He said, “I loved my daughter. I know I didn’t act like it. But I loved her.”
I said, “I know you did, sir. She knew it too. She talked about you.”
He put out his hand.
I shook it.
We buried Sarah four days later.
There were seventeen people at the graveside. My club brothers, all of them, in their leather. My lawyer. The funeral director who had refused to bury her in Ashland. Nana in her walker, brought by her caregiver. Sarah’s father, in a plain dark suit, standing at the back with his hat in his hands.
Meredith came too. She stood next to her father. Her mother did not come.
The pastor said the words. My club president said a few words after him. Then I said what I could say, which wasn’t much.
I put the little silver motorcycle in my pocket that morning at the funeral home. The one I’d tucked into Sarah’s hands. The funeral director had noticed it and asked me if I wanted her to keep it or if I wanted it back.
I thought about it for a long time.
I gave it back to the funeral director and I asked him to make sure it stayed with her.
She loved that pendant. She wore it every day for fifteen years. She was wearing it when we crashed and she should be wearing it now.
I ride Route 12 every Sunday now. Same bend near the reservoir. Same spot where she used to spread her arms and pretend she was flying.
I go alone.
I talk to her. I tell her what’s going on. I tell her Nana passed last spring at eighty-five, peaceful, in her sleep, with a photograph of Sarah on her nightstand.
I tell her her father calls me every other Sunday. We don’t talk about much. He asks how the bike is running. I ask how his garden is doing. Sometimes we don’t say anything for a long time and that’s fine too.
I tell her Meredith sent me a Christmas card last year. First one in ten years. It just said, “Thinking of you. — M.”
I tell her her mother has never spoken to me again. I tell her I hope one day she will. I tell her I’m not going to push it.
I tell her the spot next to her is waiting for me. I tell her I’m not in any hurry but I’m not scared either.
I tell her she was the best thing I ever did in this life.
Then I ride home.
And I put her coffee cup back on the counter where it belongs.
Half full. Lipstick on the rim.
Waiting.
