The next few days for me are still largely a blur. Time has dimmed some of the details and taken the edge off the raw emotion of the moment. But, it's more a set of memories from slices of times and events that are more easily recalled.

In retrospect, I realize that I was functioning on a combination of adrenaline and "auto pilot." It is interesting what people can remember or think of to do in this type of situation.

_____________________________

After talking to Catie's oldest brother, I went upstairs to repack my suitcase. Now I wasn't going for just a couple of days, I was going for the week and I was attending a funeral for Catie and her mother.

I really couldn't bring myself to sleep in my bed either. There were just too many thoughts and emotions flooding my mind; mostly about the time that Catie came to stay with me, our time in this bed, and the future lost in such a senseless manner. It was possible, even likely, that "Catie's pregnancy started right here," I thought. Now all of that was gone. The joy I felt just hours earlier was gone. I eventually got up, showered, and waited until I needed to leave for the airport.

I realized that it was unlikely that any of Catie's friends, coworkers, or her employer in Chicago knew of Catie's death, yet. I didn't have Catie's little phone book from her purse and I knew only one number and that was Jody's. I called her number from the RDU airport terminal and got her answering machine. It rang only twice before her outgoing message played (meaning there were other messages on the answering machine). The message I left was something like:

"Jody. This is Gary. Something tragic has happened to Catie and I'm flying to Portland through Atlanta. I'll give you a call when I reach Atlanta."

I knew that I didn't want to leave a message on her machine that Catie was dead and I knew it was an hour earlier in Chicago. If I had thought about it, I would have waited a minute or two and called her back. But I didn't think of it. I got on the plane for the first morning flight out of RDU to Atlanta. I had the standard Delta cheese Danish and orange juice for breakfast on the plane. The rest is just a blur other than it was dark outside and the lights inside the plane seemed almost too bright.

When I arrived in Atlanta, I found the gate for the flight to Portland and then I was off to the bank of pay phones.

I dialed Jody's number and she picked it up on the first ring. She had heard the phone ring earlier, pickup, and then heard my message but couldn't pick up the phone in time to answer it.

"What's happened?" Jody asked.

"Catie's dead," I said.

"NO! HOW? WHAT HAPPENED?"

I told Jody what I knew or I had pieced together from what Abby had told me and what her oldest brother had told me.

"Her mom was killed instantly. Catie was badly injured and they had to pry or cut her out of the car. They worked on her for several hours at the hospital and tried to save her. They couldn't. Her injuries were just too bad."

I stood there holding on to the phone letting that sink in for Jody. I could hear sniffling from her crying quietly. Other than the two of us sniffling and crying, there were no words. She realized, in that moment, that she had lost her best friend as well as a lover. She finally said "I'm so sorry, Gary. I almost called to her parents house after I heard your message but it's still early out there. Is there anything I can do?"

"Not right now," I said. She asked about funeral arrangements and I told her that they were still being planned but that it looked like a Saturday funeral for Catie and her mom.

"Can I tell you one more thing?" I asked Jody.

"Sure."

"Catie was pregnant. She just found out yesterday morning. She called me from the doctor's office to tell me. About 8-10 weeks. Her doctor thought that she was going to have twins."

All Jody said in response to that was "Oh, no!"

"She went back to her parents house and we had the most wonderful and amazing conversation when she called me back...about having children together, about being together. We were going to celebrate the New Year together and tell her family our plans..."

I could barely get out the next words: "I can't believe she's gone."

I tried not to sob on the Delta concourse, but the tears were streaming down my face. Jody was trying to soothe me. She was crying, too, and most of what she said didn't really register.

I finally regained enough composure to say "I'm so glad our last words to each other were about our love for each other."

"You were so good for her," Jody said.

All I could think of to say was "Thanks. So were you."

The logical portion of my brain began to kick back in. "I guess we'll need to let her boss and the other people in the company know that she's died. We're going to need some help with that. Can you help?"

"I'll do what I can," Jody said. I told her that the HR staff probably wouldn't work directly with me or her because we weren't family-related, but I was going to be with Catie's family once I got to Portland and that I'd call her after I got there to take care of the things we needed to do.

Jody told me to take care of myself and that we'd talk later. She gave me another number to use to call her. I'm sure that when we hung up, she went off and cried the way I had a few hours earlier. I sat in the gate area until my section of the aircraft was called to board. I mostly slept on the flight to Portland after breakfast was served. It was another cold grey day in Portland when I landed.

I picked up my rental car and drove to Catie's parents house. I had to focus to keep my mind from wandering lest I end up the same way as Catie and her mother. I pulled up to the house and I experienced a mixture of dread and relief. Dread about all the sorrow (plus dealing with the news about Catie's pregnancy); relief because we all loved them. As I got out of the car, a bit of sunshine burst through the clouds and I looked up at the house. Abby was standing there watching me through the window. She waved and I could tell she announced my arrival.

I hugged each of the family members including some that I hadn't met previously. Those who weren't crying showed the red eyes that indicated they had been crying. Abby gave me the longest and most tear-filled hug. We didn't say anything (or nothing I remember). We just held each other while tears streamed down our faces. I kissed her on the cheek as we finally broke our embrace and tasted her salty tears.

There were too many conversations to adequately catalog in the first few minutes. Catie's brothers told me that they had an appointment at a funeral home at 2:00 PM and they wanted me to go along. I called Jody to see what had been happening since I talked with her from Atlanta. She gave me some names and numbers to call and some of the documents that needed to be faxed concerning Catie's death. She asked if there was any additional information concerning the funeral (still looked like Saturday) and asking if there was anything else I needed.

"Yes, do me a favor. Go by Catie's apartment and see if her car is there. She didn't tell me whether she drove to the airport or whether she got there some other way. If she drove, we've got to figure out where her car is."

I returned to the groups that were downstairs in the house. It didn't take long before the subject of Catie's pregnancy came up. It was raised by the fiancée of Catie's oldest brother and she asked several questions about it. For the longest time, I thought asking those questions in those moments was inappropriate.

"It was a real surprise," I said. "She found out yesterday and that she might be having twins and called me right away from her doctor's office." I repeated that we had talked about having children prior to finding out she was pregnant and that we were already planning our life together. I turned to her dad who was just sitting there listening to this and said "We were planning to talk to you and Marianne over New Year's to let you know what had happened, that Catie was pregnant, and to ask or let you know that we wanted to get married. Catie was already making plans to move to North Carolina to be with me. We had already decided that we wanted to be the parents of this child or these children. We wanted you to know first, from both of us, that you were going to be grandparents."

He didn't say anything as the tears of loss were flowing. He gave me a slight smile when I mentioned being a grandparent.

"But aren't you still married?" she asked. I turned back to the fiancée.

"Yes. Catie and I talked about that, too. We (my ex-wife and I) just completed the mandatory one year separation and have agreed on the property settlement and all that's left is to file the paperwork. That was going to happen in just a few weeks after all the official paperwork was properly completed. Catie and I wanted to clear all of that up before Catie moved to North Carolina. And that was before we knew that she was pregnant."

We needed to go to the hospital to obtain the official death certificates for Catie and her mother. On the way to the hospital we passed the scene of the accident. It was cleaned up, of course. There were skid marks and stain marks where vehicle fluids had stained the roadway but that was all that could be seen from the vehicle. When we arrived at the hospital, we went to the morgue. Catie's brother asked if I wanted to see her (body). With a deep breath, I said yes.

They rolled her out of the cold storage unit. She was covered, of course. The attendant pulled the covering from around her head. She was pale and there was bruising on the right side of her face from her head injury. Otherwise, she looked like I had seen her when she was sleeping. I reached down and grasped her right hand and held it in mine. It was cold, of course, and with no response. But how I wanted her to suddenly awake and be with me again. Still, I just wanted to hold on. I was unaware of my tears until someone handed me a tissue.

I just stood there for a minute or so holding her hand. There was just the cold awareness that she was laying unmoving on the table. I finally stepped forward, leaned over and gave her a kiss, put her hand back on the table and turned to thank everyone. I was ready to leave having seen her. We were given personal effects from each of them. Catie's included the necklace and the ear studs I had given her for Christmas just a week before.

I was lost in my thoughts about her on the ride to the funeral home. I had family members who operated a funeral home, so I have a different sort of relationship with funeral homes compared to other people. But it was all business-like, as I knew it would be. The bodies of Catie and Marianne would be obtained later in the day. The obituaries were prepared and the funeral service plans were developed.

We also went to pick up other personal property recovered from the car. This included their purses and other items taken from the scene. We finally returned to the house and it had been a long and very emotional day for all of us. Fortunately, there were other people trying to make sure that there was food for the household. Meanwhile, back in NC, no one knew anything about what happened. I called back to my ex-wife and told her that Catie had died in a automobile accident and told her that I'd be in Portland through the end of the week. I didn't tell her anything about Catie's pregnancy.

It was hard to knew what to do or what to talk about. I wasn't officially part of the family even though everyone now knew how important I was to Catie. I mostly listened, with Abby sometimes cuddled up at my side to be comforted when we were sitting in the living room. I realized later that it was only a month earlier when the three of us had such an intense sexual tryst right there.

The suns sets early in Oregon right after the winter solstice and the clouds made it darker even earlier. The hours to the new year just dragged on and celebrating New Year's just wasn't festive at all.

I slept in Catie's room where we had been just a month before. I wasn't sure exactly how I'd react. But twenty four hours after Catie had been fatally injured, I found it somehow comforting being in her bed, smelling her scent in the sheets and the clothing that I placed in bed with me. Tears, yes. As the new year started, I was naked in Catie's bed, alone in my sorrow.

I slept. I don't know how well. I was awakened by a knock on the door. I didn't have any idea of what time it was. I had a pillow drawn close to me with one of Catie's shirts that I had pulled from the clothes hamper.

"May I come in?" It was Abby.

I looked up. "Sure," I said. She came into the darkened room and got on the bed with me. She was wearing her pajamas and I was naked under the covers. She saw the pillow I was sleeping with as well as the shirt.

"I can't believe they're gone," she said.

"Neither can I," I said.

"Does it help?" she asked pointing at the pillow and the shirt I was sleeping with.

"I don't know. Smelling her scent..." my voice trailed off. I got up out of the bed, turned on some lights and pulled some casual wear out of my suitcase. I put them on and sat back down on the bed diagonally across from where she was sitting. We started talking and she told me that after she came home from the hospital that she took the two journals that Catie had with her. When I asked her why, she told me she did it so that others wouldn't read through stuff that might be bad for her and then added "for us."

She didn't know what life was going to be like without her mom. And we just sat there and talked. We talked about what Catie wrote in her journal about us and what we did together. She told me that Catie really loved me, that it wasn't just some fling with a good looking older guy.

"Did you really just find out she was pregnant?" she asked.

"Yes. Why? Did she write about it?"

"No, she didn't write anything about being pregnant except a two word entry on Monday. that said 'I'M PREGNANT!' and there were two pictures inserted at that page in her journal. She probably didn't get a chance to write anything else. But she wrote several times in the last couple of months about you being a father after she went to North Carolina to visit you. She liked your waterbed, by the way. And she wrote about what it would be like to be parents."

"We did talk about that. Makes me wonder if she suspected she might be pregnant," I said.

"Can I see them? The pictures?" I asked.

Abby got up to go to her room. She came back with Catie's newest journal. When she opened the journal, there was Catie's announcement and two grainy black and white photos from Catie's ultrasound. I teared up. Yes, it did look like there were two embryos there.

"Were you scared when she told you?"

"Yes," I paused and then said "Abby, please tell me you aren't pregnant!"

"I'm not pregnant."

I let out a breath at that answer. We talked a few more minutes before there was another knock at the door. It was Abby's youngest brother.

"Come on in. We're just talking."

He came into the room and sat down on the bed with us. He saw the two photos.

"Those were her children?" He asked.

"Those were OUR children," I corrected.

"Sorry," he replied. The conversation turned to memories of Catie as they were growing up. Catie, as the oldest child, had a different influence on each of them. This discussion between the two of them and telling me stories probably went on for another 30-45 minutes. Eventually, we got up and went downstairs.

New Year's Day had some of the appearance of normalcy while we all dealt with our grief. Parades, football games and basketball games on the television. Early in the afternoon, the family was sitting around the kitchen table while they went through their mother's purse and Catie's purse as well as items retrieved from the passenger compartment of the car. They would have to go back and recover any additional items from the wrecked car later in the week. It reminded me that I needed to call Jody.

She answered the phone.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"About as well as can be expected. Some of the shock has worn off. How was your New Year's?" I asked.

"A little subdued. I went to a party last night and a lot of people there knew Catie. There was shock there, too."

"Did you find Catie's car?"

"Yes, it's right in front of her building." I asked her to look up and give me the number for the apartment complex rental office so I could call them the next day. Her apartment would need to be emptied out in the near future and there would need to be arrangements for that. We chatted for a few minutes and she told me that she and a few others would be flying to Portland on Friday for the funeral on Saturday. I gave her the information on the Friday night gathering for friends and family as well as the Saturday funeral.

I thanked Jody for being so helpful for her friend and told her that I'd call her again on Thursday (or before, if we thought of something else). I sat down at the table as they started to go through Catie's purse. Inside was all the usual items you would expect to find; keys, wallet, a small make up kit, a small personal phone numbers book. There was another sonogram in her purse similar to the ones I saw from her journal.

In her wallet were her driver's license, credit cards, debit card, medical insurance cards, money and some wallet sized photos of family members, a couple of her and I together, and a few of me that I had given her that were more X-rated (like the ones from Rooster Rock State Park or me in my bed decorated for Christmas). I wasn't embarrassed by the photos. She wanted the photos to look at when we weren't together and I provided them.

In the other items picked up from the passenger compartment was another sonogram. I've always wondered if that came out of her purse from the impact or if she had pulled one of them out. While the truck running the red light was always the issue, I've wondered if Catie had told or was telling her mom she was pregnant, had pulled out one of the sonograms and that had distracted Marianne just enough to not see the truck coming. We'll never know and I kept that thought to myself in that moment.

"You know her apartment needs to be cleaned out?" I asked. Nobody had gotten to that yet.