I left my little friend in the living room and went into the kitchen, where I sat down at the island and quietly cried. Then I pulled myself together and washed my face and went back outside to the party. Carter was snoozing in the living room. Marilyn saw me come out and glanced towards Carter. "Everything okay?"
"Just fine."
Carter Henry Tusk passed away ten days later, August 3rd. It wasn't anything dramatic. Carter just kept getting weaker and weaker, whether because of the treatment or the fact that he could barely keep any food down, so he wasn't getting any nourishment. I heard from Tessa later that she went in to wake him and he wouldn't wake up, though he was still alive. She called an ambulance to take him to the hospital, but nothing helped. He was in a coma, and later that evening just slipped away without waking.
Marilyn called me at the office in Westminster and I drove home to help her break the news to the kids. I called the Tusks the next morning, but all I could hear on the other end of the line was Tusker crying. Eventually Bucky came on the line and whispered that he would call us later. We heard from friends the funeral service would be Friday morning, at St. Paul's. Visiting hours at the funeral home were Thursday night, and Marilyn and I took the kids. We debated whether the girls were too young, but they were nine like Carter had been, and we thought they would be old enough to handle it.
The funeral home was pretty well packed. Tessa's parents were there, along with both Tessa's and Tusker's siblings. Bucky looked fairly miserable, in that he was both bored to tears standing around like he had to, but also because he had loved his brother and was hurting as much as his parents. He saw us in the line and broke free to come over to us, where Marilyn gave him a hug and Charlie tried to act like a grownup. The girls were a touch bewildered, but soldiered on.
I was surprised by the turnout, but I shouldn't have been. You had quite a few biker types, rough guys who looked like they had been cleaned up special for the occasion, and you would see them standing next to a suburban family with a child Carter's age, who had been in school with him. I nodded and spoke to the people I recognized, but it wasn't the time or place to work the room.
We moved up the line to the casket. The undertaker had done a decent enough job with Carter, who was wearing a suit and a baseball cap to hide his baldness. Marilyn showed the kids how to kneel at the little prie-dieux in front of the casket, while I stood to the side. They all made the sign of the cross, and prayed quickly, before standing and moving aside to say what we could to the family. As I shook Tusker's hand, he asked, "You'll be there tomorrow?" The funeral was the next morning. Tusker and Tessa looked like they had been dragged through a knothole.
"Of course. Uh, do you need somebody to help, you know, with..." I nodded towards the little casket. I had carried a few in my time. He nodded bleakly. I looked beyond him and found one of the funeral home's people. "I'll go let them know."
"Thank you."
I was on the verge of leaving, when I stopped. "Tomorrow, at St. Paul's, at some point I want to say something, a eulogy, sort of. Carter asked me to say something for him."
It felt like every eye in the place turned to me, but of course it was just the immediate family and Marilyn, really. "Carter asked you to speak?!", asked his incredulous father. Tessa and Marilyn just stood there dumbfounded.
"Please, it will be easier to explain tomorrow. It's not going to be hurtful or anything like that. I just ... it will be easier to explain tomorrow. Please?"
"Uh, yeah, okay. Whatever.", he mumbled. Tessa just stood there stock still, her mouth open. We excused ourselves and moved off. I stopped to talk to one of the funeral directors and gave him my name and that I would help as a pall bearer. He jotted something down, and then we left.
"Carter told you to say something?", asked Marilyn after we settled the kids in her minivan.
"It will make more sense tomorrow.", I promised her.
After we got home, the kids were sent to bed. I headed into my den to start making some notes and typing something up. Marilyn stuck her head in after a bit to say she was going to bed, and I just looked up and gave her a quick kiss. I was going to be a bit longer.
I must have stayed up half the night typing and then retyping. I didn't sleep much, either, afterwards. I just hoped I had written something that Carter would have liked.
The next morning we bundled the kids off to church. St. Paul's was packed, all the way back into the annex. We sat in the middle, and I made sure I was sitting on the aisle. We went through the normal liturgy, and when it was time for the eulogy, the pastor stopped and said, "Giving the presentation on Carter is a family friend, Carl Buckman. Mister Buckman?" He stepped back, and I stood and walked up the aisle.
I was kind of nervous as I walked up to the lectern. My mouth was dry as I pulled my notes from my pocket and spread them out. I looked out on the audience, and down to my friends and family, and took a deep breath.
"Thank you. My name is Carl Buckman. I knew Carter probably as long as almost anybody in this church except for his parents. When Tusker and Tessa headed off to the hospital when she went into labor, neither of their parents were around, and my wife Marilyn was out shopping, so I got the call to come and keep an eye on their older son, Bucky. A few weeks later we were invited to the christening, here at St. Paul's. We seem to have come full circle.
In a lot of ways, Carter was just a pretty average kid. He liked to do the things that any other nine year old did. If you took him to the beach, he'd swim and chase seagulls and build sand castles. He liked watching his brother ride his motorcycle, but he wasn't a racer himself. He went to school and did well. His favorite season was the summer, when he could run around with his friends and goof off.
And then Carter came down with leukemia. Cancer is an ugly disease, and in a young child it's at its ugliest. Like everyone here, I watched as Carter went through the rounds of chemotherapy and treatment, and hoped and prayed that each new treatment would be the one that did the trick, the one that brought him back. The doctors tell us that we've never had as much hope as we have now, and that someday soon childhood leukemia will be a thing of the past. We aren't there yet. Carter didn't make it.
At times the treatment seemed worse than the disease. Carter just stoically stuck it out. He never complained to me, although I made sure to give him the chance. The medicines ravaged his little body. Carter kept going. He kept smiling for the others.
Here's the reason I asked to speak today. Carter knew he was dying. I think I'm the only person he told. Two weeks ago he and I were talking and he told me that it wasn't working, that he wasn't getting any better. He asked me what I thought, and I told him the truth, that I thought he was right, he wasn't getting any better. The funny part was that his face lit up and he said, 'Thank you! You're the first person to tell me the truth!' Then he said that everybody was giving him a lot of BS about getting better, only he didn't say BS, and then he worried he was going to get in trouble for using a bad word. I laughed and promised I would keep his secret. With all that was happening to him, he was worried about saying a dirty word. What a sweet guy.
And then he asked me to do a favor for him. After he died, he wanted me to tell his parents he was sorry. I didn't understand, so I asked him, 'Sorry about what?' It didn't make any sense to me. He told me he was sorry he had been such a burden to them; that they had to spend so much time trying to make him feel better when it wasn't working. He was sorry that his brother was taking a back seat to him. He was sorry he made his parents cry. I asked him if he had told his parents what he was telling me, and he said, no, that they were spending all their time trying to cheer him up, and he didn't want them crying because he knew he wasn't going to make it. He would rather go through the chemotherapy then make his mother cry any more. I saw what the chemo was doing to him. It wasn't pretty. I don't know if I could handle it. He went along, though, just to make his mother feel better because they were still trying.