Chapter 8 - LILY ASKED ME WHETHER DEAD PEOPLE CAN COME BACK
She was eight.
We were baking cupcakes.
Badly.
My medical training does not extend to frosting.
Lily suddenly asked:
“Can dead people come back?”
I stopped.
“No.”
“Then I wasn’t dead.”
“No.”
“But everybody said I was.”
“Yes.”
She looked confused.
“Was my funeral fake?”
I sat beside her.
“The funeral was based on a lie.”
“Were people sad?”
“Yes.”
“Were you?”
I laughed and cried at the same time.
“Very.”
She thought.
“Did I miss my own funeral?”
Technically.
“Yes.”
“That’s weird.”
Extremely.
Then:
“Can we have another one?”
I stared.
“For who?”
“For the bad coffin.”
That surprised me.
Her therapist later loved the idea.
Not a funeral for Lily.
A goodbye to the object and the story that had trapped her.
The actual coffin remained evidence for years.
So we made one from cardboard.
Lily decorated it.
Black marker.
Purple stars.
A dinosaur because Toby from another story does not exist here—ignore; no, can't mention. Let's keep consistency.
She drew a horse.
A rainbow.
Then wrote:
I AM NOT IN HERE.
At a private therapy session, she tore the cardboard coffin apart.
Not violently.
Piece by piece.
Then put it into recycling.
Very Lily.
Afterward she asked for ice cream.
Also Lily.
Recovery was not linear.
She had nightmares.
Feared locked doors.
Hated sleeping medicine even when medically necessary.
Panicked in churches for a while because the funeral home chapel had smelled like lilies and candle wax.
We worked through it.
Slowly.
Exposure with professionals.
Control.
Choices.
She chose which doors closed.
Which adults touched her.
Which doctors entered the room.
At every medical visit, the clinician explained what would happen before touching her.
If she said stop, we stopped whenever medically possible.
Agency.
That became healing.
Then she asked about Grandma Margaret.
“Is she still my grandma?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I don’t see her?”
“Yes.”
“Can I hate her?”
“You can feel whatever you feel.”
“What do you feel?”
I thought.
“Angry.”
“Only angry?”
“No.”
I remembered Christmases.
Margaret holding newborn Lily.
Soup when I had the flu.
Her crying when Ryan and I divorced.
People are rarely only the worst thing they did.
But the worst thing still matters.
“I also remember good things.”
Lily nodded.
“Me too.”
Then:
“That makes me feel bad.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Remembering someone loved you sometimes doesn’t mean you have to let them hurt you again.”
She thought.
“Can I love somebody from jail?”
“Yes.”
That seemed to satisfy her.
Years later, that would become the relationship she chose.
Letters.
No visits.
Then eventually one supervised video call after Margaret had served many years and completed treatment programs.
Lily decided.
Not me.
By then she was fourteen.
She asked one question:
“Why didn’t you protect me?”
Margaret cried.
Then answered:
“Because I protected my son instead.”
Accurate.
Lily ended the call after twelve minutes.
No hug.
No forgiveness speech.
Afterward:
“You okay?”
She shrugged.
“I thought she’d have a better answer.”
May you like
So did I.
But sometimes the truth is disappointing because there never was a good reason.
