The shock hits first; the grief, second.

The shock I could handle. I’d experienced that before. Adrenaline was easy once there are pre-programmed responses, once a body has experienced a situation a few times. Hitting the waves isn’t too bad after that.

I took care of my responsibilities, contacting the people who needed to know that I wouldn’t be there for work. I wouldn’t make it to my dentist appointment. I didn’t know what to do with the attention, so I only told the people who I felt should know. I packed a few things, just a couple of changes of clothing. I’d never experienced a death in the family before, not like this. I kinda thought we were invincible, the eight of us kids. And if one of us were to go so soon, I didn’t think it would have been Margaret.

My boss offered to take care of Jeeves at the farm, but I needed him to come with me. Dogs are very useful as distractions and excuses, I’d found over the years. I’m not good with boundaries and saying no, but I can take care of him without feeling bad.

Sorry, I need to go walk my dog. Sorry, I need to go home to my dog. Sorry, my dog needs me.

I didn’t know what sort of situation I’d be walking into when I got to my mom’s house, but I suspected I’d need something to take care of when I got there.

It was the longest three-hour drive I’d ever taken. Jeeves sat next to me, watching me, being patient, and very quiet. I don’t know how I drove through the tears, but I managed. And there are smells and sights to Pennsylvania that hit me every time. I don’t know if it’s just nostalgia, an ache for a time that felt familiar, if not safe, but usually, when I drove to Pennsylvania, the rolling hills were comforting. The smells changed. The colors grew more vibrant. The memories weren’t happy, but they were mine.

This time, nothing changed, nothing felt different. It was just an empty, dirty turnpike that I could barely see, a drive that lasted for too long.

Everybody else was crying when I got to my mom’s house and nobody knew what to do. We’d never been here before. This was new. Ugly. The grief began as the shock wore off. We had to make plans and talk to people. We had to figure out meals and where people would sleep. We couldn’t let anyone else stay at the house, there were too many of us immediate relations there already, and we needed to accept that this was okay. And we needed, desperately, to know what happened the morning she died.

The grief crept in through it all, hitting heads and bodies, intertwined with the guilt. We were tired, and it felt bad.

I think that’s the best way to describe it. It felt like a slow, consistent thumping inside my skull. It was exhausting. I had a headache, and it felt like my face wanted to slide off. I wanted to outrun it. I wanted to numb it. I didn’t want to feel it anymore. Talking to other people was a welcome distraction. I could smile and try to comfort those who couldn’t handle it because I was handling it so well, myself. That facade ended quickly, and I instead decided to try to numb it. Alcohol was easy, there was a liquor store down the road and a bar across the street. But the hangovers were worse than the grief itself. I’d wake up with a much bigger headache, a dry mouth. The numbing didn’t last long enough.

The arrangements were chaotic. Where do we have the memorial, who will be speaking, who is coming? What do we do with her body? We can’t see her, we can’t have that closure, not with how she died. How did she die? What happened? Who did it? Was it a murder or a suicide? It was an open investigation, but we couldn’t get a hold of the detective, and we needed to know. We could go see where it happened, we could look inside. I decided not to, and the horror of the bloodbath hit some of us even worse. There was a death report on the scene, giving us more information on what happened. We need to go get flowers, go to the funeral home, decide how to divide her ashes. How much do we allow Schlep to participate? We can’t stop him from participating. That’s fine, she was his daughter too, we don’t want to fight him, we can’t fight him. He insists on fighting us. He wants his girlfriend there. What girlfriend? The one who used to walk in on Margaret in the bathroom, shove her down the stairs? The one who enabled further abuse and even encouraged it? The one who didn’t have any sort of relationship with Margaret or any of us? That girlfriend?

Absolutely not.

He had a lawyer call the oldest of us, inquiring about Margaret’s estate. She had a car, a BMW. It was the car she wanted, and our mother cosigned it, which meant that it was in her name and he couldn’t touch it. He had no rights to it. But he could have half the ashes. We didn’t ask him for money. Friends and family helped us raise what we needed to take care of her. We asked him for nothing.

He called the community in New York City, told them details about her death we didn’t want people to know yet. They broadcast it on Facebook Live on a Sunday. A friend texted me about it when she found out, and the horror hit me, threatening to suffocate me. How could they do that? Why would they do that?

Schlep decided, despite the open investigation, that she’d died by suicide, not by murder, but the case was still open. The detective finally sat the rest of us down, explained what had happened. He wasn’t bothered by Schlep. The detective answered our questions carefully and patiently.

Schlep decided that he would have his own memorial if he couldn’t come to ours, as we kept the details hidden and only told the people we felt we could trust. While trying to grieve for her, suddenly we had to protect ourselves against our father.

We’d given him a full half of her ashes, despite there being eight of us (only seven kids left now, one mother) on the other side, needing a part of her so we could remember. He told our mother that if she didn’t force us to go to his memorial, he’d throw the ashes away.

Emblem of Our House is an on-going series about the death of my sister Margaret in 2018, published every Monday here and on Instagram @EmblemofOurHouse.