Rick Mofina - Perfect Grave

Then Krissie, a nine-year-old girl from the shelter’s day care, went to the podium alone. She looked at her young, single mom, who nodded tearfully as Krissie unfolded a crisp sheet of paper and read, “You made us feel important, like we counted. My mom said you saved us. We love you and we will miss you. God bless you.”

Finally, Sister Vivian spoke on behalf of the other nuns.

“She is the light in the darkness and we will carry on with her mission but with broken hearts, for Anne was our sister, our friend, and we loved her.”

But she was not perfect.

Not a mention of her own failings, her shortcomings, and the self-doubt she battled with on the pages of her journal, Sister Denise thought as she listened to Vivian. Why not mention that Anne Braxton was also very human like the people she helped every day?

Denise didn’t understand.

She didn’t understand why Vivian was so determined to protect Anne’s cryptic past. Why not let everyone hear Anne’s own words at her funeral? Denise didn’t understand anything anymore and pressed a tissue to her eyes.

Some sixteen rows back from Sister Anne’s casket, Rhonda Boland squeezed Brady’s hand. She prayed for him, and for Sister Anne, a woman she never knew but would have liked to have known. Sister Anne would’ve been a good person to turn to-a person she could have gone to for comfort, now, in her most desperate time.

She was the “light in the darkness.”

Rhonda glanced at Brady, reading his prayer book. She was puzzled by whatever mysterious cosmic forces gave rise to his desire to be here. She took some comfort in the fact they’d come. She needed help, even if it was spiritual assurance, because Brady was just a little boy who’d known death too well. His father and now Sister Anne. Maybe God was preparing Brady for the worst.

Maybe God was preparing her?

Between speakers, Rhonda looked around at the mourners jammed into the room. Nearly all were street people. She met the eyes of one man who seemed to be fixated on her and Brady. Rhonda shrugged it off and looked away.

Several moments later, all heads turned to a commotion. It was coming from the entrance, which was jammed with a line of mourners that spilled out into the street.

Grace Garner stood at the back of the crowded room estimating the number of news people among the cameras along the side. She spotted Jason Wade but didn’t make eye contact. Focus, she told herself, while through her earpiece she received updates from the surveillance unit and the plainclothes detectives who were posted everywhere.

“Absolutely no sign of anyone wearing the DOC sneakers, Grace.”

“Thanks.”

For most of the service, John Cooper sat quietly on a hard-back chair in a far corner of the room with his face buried in his hands. Leona Kraver, a retired music teacher and shelter volunteer, who’d read the Seattle Mirror that morning, had recognized Cooper.

Leona indicated where he was sitting to the two detectives who’d asked for her help prior to the service. The two big men locked on to Cooper and began making their way to him.

“Grace, this is Foley. We’ve got an ID on our subject. At the back near the door.”

In a short time, the two detectives and two uniformed officers managed to get John Cooper outside, where they shoved him against the wall, patted him down, handcuffed him, and placed him in the back of an unmarked car.

It roared off with news crews rushing from the shelter to the street straining to get footage, or a frame, comparing success with each other.

Some grinned, some cursed.

“What the hell was that?”

“Did you get that?”

Jason Wade made it outside in time to see Grace Garner and Perelli get into their car. He rushed to Grace’s door and tapped her window.

“What’s going on?”

Grace shook her head. She gave Jason nothing as their Malibu squealed away, leaving in its wake a stained page of the Mirror to swirl at Jason’s feet.

Cassie Appleton emerged, walking toward Jason as she scrawled in her notebook.

“I think they just arrested somebody, Jason. Did you see who it was?”

S ister Anne’s final journey took her an hour north of Seattle, then east into the breathtaking countryside of Snohomish County.

The hearse and two other vehicles of her small funeral procession moved beyond the farmland and fruit orchards to a cemetery at the base of a steep hillside. It was sheltered by forests of fir and cedar, bordered by thick vines and berry bushes.

She would love it here, Sister Denise thought, as the procession slowed and turned from the old highway onto the soft earthen pathway cutting into the graveyard that was first used by missionaries in the late 1800s.

Father Mercer and Sister Vivian rode in the lead car, followed by the hearse and the Order’s big van. Sister Ruth drove the van.

None of the sisters in the van talked much. During the drive, most retreated into their thoughts. Sister Florence and Sister Paula whispered hymns while Denise confronted her problem: Sister Anne’s secret journal.

Part of her yearned to tell the others about it so they could remember Anne as a totally human and flawed woman.

Denise also wanted their support to press Vivian to share her discovery with the detectives. The police might find useful information in Anne’s poetic self-deprecation. Admittedly, there weren’t many details, but maybe the detectives would find value in the dates, or some other aspect that would lead them to her killer. Anything can be the break that solves a case, her father the police officer used to tell her.

Anything.

Should she disobey Vivian and tell Detective Garner?

Tell someone?

Lord, what should I do?

The procession eased to a gentle stop near the open grave, next to the mound of rich, dark Washington earth. A lonely lark flitted by and sparrows sang from the trees. The funeral director and his assistants guided and helped the nuns carry and position Anne’s casket.

In all, about a dozen people were gathered for the burial. It was private. No news cameras were permitted. Afterward, the nuns would oversee a reception at the shelter.

Sister Vivian took Father Mercer’s arm and helped him from the car. He was well over six feet, but bent by age, with wispy white hair and a phlegmatic face creased by time. The nuns did not know him. He was an old friend of Sister Vivian’s, a retired Jesuit who’d flown in from New England to take care of the funeral mass.

Vivian walked him to the casket, where he produced a worn leather-bound Bible, containing cards with rituals written in his hand.

He began by inviting the mourners to reconcile their souls by reflecting in silence. Then he spoke of God’s love, the sacrifice of His only son, the mystery of death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For Scripture, he read from Isaiah 61:1-3.

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord; and a day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.”

Denise didn’t really understand that choice. She wondered about it after Mercer ended with the Lord’s Prayer. Then each of the nuns kissed the casket and placed a rose on it.

Like the others, Denise also faced the fact that Anne had no husband to mourn her, no children or grandchildren to carry on. This was the reality of a religious life. It was a meaningful life. A good life. But at times it could be overwhelming. All of the sisters accepted it. Self-sacrifice was the burden of a life devoted to God and others.