CHAPTER 31
Grief is a journey we must all eventually walk through. Thankfully, we don’t have to walk it alone.
I arrive at the cemetery at midday. The sky is overcast with gray clouds, and it is as if the world feels the weight of this loss.
I stand with Raven, watching on as Bethany exits the limo.
Her hair is pinned in a simple French twist with a few strands having come loose.
Her black dress and pumps are modest and simple.
The dress itself hugs her tall and lithe figure and comes to rest just under her knees.
Her face is red, splotchy, and devoid of makeup, but exquisite even like this, heartbroken, and completely devastated.
Her tears are small rivers that trail down her cheeks and drip like raindrops from her chin. She’s clutching a handful of tissues in one hand, but it’s as if she’s given up using them.
Axel, her teenage son, exits after her and immediately goes to her side.
His long blonde hair is in a low ponytail, and he’s wearing a slim-fit black suit sans tie.
Bethany walks with her arm around his shoulders, the sides of their heads pressed together as they hold onto each other and make their way down the road to the hearse.
Bethany’s mother follows, an older and shorter version of her daughter.
She’s carrying Bethany’s daughter, Medda, a small blonde child, and the little one is asleep, her head full of curls resting on her grandma’s shoulder.
It takes a while for the HOC members and other bikers who followed the hearse procession through the city to arrive and park in a long line down the cemetery street.
The roar of what must be over two hundred bikes is like a sorrowful song on blast to the town, letting everyone who hears it know that a man who lived his life with love for the open road has passed on.
Dozer and Goose, as one, pull the black and silver casket from inside the hearse. Cap, Griz, Mav, and Septic step forward to grab on. They hoist it until it rests on their shoulders. Bodie keeps a white-gloved hand on the back and follows them as they carry the casket to the gravesite.
Goose’s face is stoic. His hair is loose and hangs a bit over his eyes, which are red-rimmed and puffy.
Dozer, who is unable to wipe his tears, grinds his jaw as if to fight against his inner turmoil.
Cap’s face holds more anger. His gray-blue eyes blaze with it.
The others fare no better, all caught up in the emotions riding them at losing their HOC brother.
Bethany, Axel, and the rest of the family follow the pallbearers carrying Hodge. The procession is slow and sober. Eventually, Raven and I are able to fall in and join the long line of people attending the funeral. We walk arm in arm.
We take seats opposite the family. Most of the HOCs stand off to the side. The vast number of civilians and bikers surround them and the casket. Many support clubs have also come to pay their respects. Pappy, Smoke, Deeds, and at least another two dozen Greenbacks among them.
It’s an emotional ceremony. A pastor delivers Calvin Hodge’s last rites.
He reads passages from the bible about death and loss, but afterwards it’s his words of wisdom that bring as much relief as grief.
Sentiments about a cut lifespan, unexpected loss, and finding ways to focus on the life Hodge lived, the happiness his years blessed many with, instead of dwelling in the darkness of why and time lost.
It’s unreal that he’s gone. Here one day and gone the next. That a senior citizen blasting through a red light could cut his life short in a blink.
Bethany sobs into her son’s shoulder. He tries to comfort her as best he can, but he’s falling apart as well. It’s heartbreaking to witness. When certain moments get to be too much for me, Raven squeezes my hand and vice versa.
What wrecks me the most is seeing Goose pinch his eyes repeatedly to remove his tears. A dam ruptures, and it’s as if his tears are contagious because mine flow more freely behind my glasses and spill down my face. I feel his grief somehow, as if it’s my own.
I dab and wipe the tears that come, but it’s no use. The tissues are drenched and pointless.
I let myself feel it. I let my heart ache for him and everyone here.
I let their pain sink in, and for the first time, as I watch them experience this loss, I see them as a family.
Not an MC. Not like the Greenbacks. But a close-knit unit of individuals who care deeply and hold the well-being of the club, its members, and their families above that of greed or power or money.
Over the past few months, their actions, their investment in this town, and their care for one another has shown me that this is the value to be found in a motorcycle club, in a brotherhood.
At the core of what they believe in is each other, meaningful pursuits, and that, united in this, they can prosper.
This is what a good MC looks like when a man with a good heart leads it and believes that the club and their families come first.
I think back to the last and only funeral I attended. A memory I haven’t thought of for many years.
I was only a child when my father passed, and most of my memories of him are nothing but wisps in the ether.
But I remember his smile. What his blue eyes looked like when they lit up.
I remember those God-awful corduroy short-shorts he wore with polos, and how he’d chip and putt golf balls on our front lawn, always itching for the next day he could be on the green, his favorite pastime.
I remember the joy he took in lawnwork, and how immaculately he kept our lawn and flowerbeds.
He actually swore there was a method to his madness, his diagonal mowing that crisscrossed. What it was, I’ll never know.
He valued things he didn’t have when he was younger, like a beautiful home, large yard, and our vehicles. Everything we had, material things, he treated with the utmost care.
It took me years to understand this wasn’t him being materialistic, it was that he was a simple man who loved all life could offer, and he took care of everything he was ever blessed with, because he knew what it was like to go without.
He, too, was taken too soon. And like with Bethany, the loss tore my mother up. She’d been a mess the day of the funeral, and for many months following it. At the time, I had no idea how much losing my father would change her or change my own path in life.
It makes you wonder how any choice at any given moment can lead you down different pathways.
How it’s a never-ending maze until we can one day find our own rest in death.
When and where you stop along the way and what sections you choose to explore further, the people and material things you pick up to take with you, are to be determined by each person, I guess, as they make their choices to go left or right or straight on through in those moments.
It’s fucking crazy when you think about it.
Because who would I be if I’d taken a different Greyhound bus to escape my stepfather after my mom’s utter denial?
How might it have changed my life?
I sit with this question for a while. I let my mind run wild with the possibilities and what-ifs, until the subconscious little devil in my head scolds me. Because ultimately… It doesn’t matter.
I am who I am. Flaws and choices and all.
What choices I make going forward are the only ones that matter.
Bethany curls forward and screams, then sobs.
Axel folds over her back and holds her as he does the same.
Bethany’s mother throws her free right arm around the two and tries to comfort them both.
But the ripple effect is felt by everyone witnessing it, and together in this space, there is shared grief for her, them, and the loss we are all experiencing all over again.
Nick, Dozer’s mother and Cap’s wife, comes forward and offers to take Medda from Bethany’s mother so she can hold her daughter. Dozer brushes away a steady flow of tears. Cap stands beside him, his hand on his son’s neck. Bodie has his hand on Goose’s shoulder as Goose’s shoulders shake.
It’s not a loss or a day that will easily, if ever, be forgotten.