The Wild Wolf Pup (Zoe's Rescue Zoo #9)(125)

Still, I didn’t cry, not a tear.

At the funeral parlor I picked out the most lavish casket, the final throne for the king. Anthony gave the funeral director Victor’s favorite suit, and he assured us he would pin it to look like it was tailored to fit. We matched the handkerchief to the tie just as he always did and included a pair of his Italian loafers. Some might say I was being foolish since I had kept the casket closed but I wanted my husband to be impeccably dressed for his final sleep just as he was in life. He would want that too.

Once his wake was settled, it was time to pick a burial plot. The ride around Green-Wood cemetery to decide on where we would both rest eternally, that broke what was left of my heart. He tried so hard to give me what I wanted in life, bought that huge house because he thought it would make me happy. We made that house our home and now I was left choosing our final home. And still I didn’t cry.

The girls met us at the florist and we ordered the traditional pieces. A bleeding heart from me, a broken heart from Nicole and Mike and a piece the florist called the Gates of Heaven from Adrianna and Anthony. We also ordered the rosary beads for inside the coffin and made that from his grandchildren. So along with their pictures, Victor would be buried with remnants of Luca and Victoria.

The night before the wake the girls came over, and together with my in laws, we went through old photo albums to display around the funeral parlor. My daughters marveled over one photograph in particular, one of me and their father. The year was 1984, and it was one of a few where my husband was dressed casually in a pair of jeans. I stared at the photo and the outfit I was wearing, white fitted pants and a turquoise blouse. I wore a lot of that color in the early years and I remember why, Victor loved the color on me, told me it reminded him of the first day we met.

I wound up slipping that photo into Victor’s folded hands the morning of the wake when they allowed me to view him before they closed the casket for the final time.

Victor’s wake reflected his life. It seemed anyone Victor ever met throughout the duration of his sixty-six years showed to pay their final respects. Some of the faces I remembered, some I didn’t. All I thanked for coming and told them how grateful Victor would’ve been. The old time gangsters competed by sending extravagant floral arrangements and stood in the back of the viewing room sharing stories of all the illegal activities they conducted with my husband. The younger ones, the fresh faces like my nephew, sat vigil, quietly taking in the death of a mobster. Whether they were young or old, veterans or new blood they showed up, but I knew that once the dirt settled over my husband, they would fight tooth and nail for everything he built.

Then there were the loyal men who never wanted a piece of my husband but were always there to lend a hand when rough times fell upon him, those were the men in leather. Jack Parrish stood the left of my husband’s casket and his vice president stood to the right. They never left his side, not once, stood like two soldiers guarding his body until it was time to head to church for the final mass.

And even then they didn’t leave his side.

As the hearse pulled away from the funeral parlor, they straddled their bikes and rode alongside him, accompanying him to the church we were married in. But their loyalty didn’t stop there, the Satan’s Knights respectively removed their cuts and carried my husband’s casket into the church.

It wasn’t until I entered the church and the choir sang Amazing Grace as I walked behind my husband’s casket that I lost myself and the tears fell uncontrollably down my face.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me…

I once was lost but now I’m found,

Was blind, but now, I see…

I stared at the coffin as the priest prayed over Victor’s body, begging our Lord to relieve him of his sins and welcome him into his arms. As he continues the mass I continue to beg and bargain with our Lord for a chance to be reunited with my love.

Forgive him Heavenly Father.

Please don’t take away my eternal love.

The mass ended, it was time to take Victor to his final place of rest, the home where he’d wait for me to join him. A funeral procession of fifty cars, two limousines, three flower trucks and hearse guided by a dozen bikers stopped traffic along Fort Hamilton Parkway.

Wherever Victor was, I knew he had a grin on his face, loving that his send-off was as big as his personality.

The media were waiting outside the cemetery gates hoping for one last headline, snapping photos of us as we cried over his grave. One by one, everyone laid a rose on his coffin until there was only five of us surrounding him. Michael and Nikki said their goodbyes first, followed by Anthony and Adrianna.

Then it was just me.

Me and Vic.

I stepped to the coffin and placed my rose on top of all the others.

How do you say goodbye to the love of your life?

You don’t.

I’ll never say goodbye to my Victor.

I leaned over the coffin and pressed my lips to the top of it.

“Until we meet again my eternal love…I’ll be the girl in the turquoise jumpsuit.”



The End.

For now.





Epilogue




I ease Reina into the passenger seat of Lacey’s car after the cemetery. The two of us defied doctor’s orders, she took herself off bedrest and I damned my hearing to hell by riding, neither of us willing to give up the opportunity to pay our final respects to Vic and his family.