I find that I have forgotten so much.  I do not remember much of my life.  What I do retain is fragmented, broken pieces, mostly emotions tied to tragedy or triumph.  Keystone moments of my life, great rejections, first kisses, kiss offs, broken hearts and fulfilled promises.  Some would say these are the things we are meant to remember, but for a guy that can recall Joe Mantegna's 1991 monologue from when he hosted Saturday Night Live, well...fragmented recall is unacceptable.  I know that the much of life is mundane and I in particular have spent much of it in passing time as quickly and painlessly as possible, but I remember enough to know that there are thousands of anecdotes and moments that were so intriguing that if I could just collect them and form them into a basic narrative, they would enthrall the reader to no end.  A house full of boys is never short of chaos or angst.  There was blood, noses and gerbils thrown from a second story window (nice work Conor) and there was an incident where I reenacted a scene from Crocodile Dundee telling my brother that what he held was not a knife, though as I made to pull out a bigger knife, his little pen knife opened my palm, proving both my point moot and the point that the pen may be mightier than the sword, but perhaps the penknife to be mightier still.  
  I guess when it comes down to it, I have to start with the things I remember clearly.  I remember the garage of my condo.  I remember being ankle deep in cedar shavings, planing out the edges of a box.  Daniel had come to my need as I had previously done for him, in the wake of his own tragedy, when his own sweet Rebecca has died after three short days of life.  Daniel brought wood and his help.  We cut a box, at first much too deep, but after calling the cemetery caretaker and affirming the appropriate dimensions, we amended our plan and we were back on track.  I was a little concerned that the stress of a body, even a small one would be too much for the soft wood and it would break, spilling my son's body on the ground, adding insult to catastrophe.  I realized I was exaggerating the stresses placed on the box.
  I took a step back and reassessed.  Of course I had wasted precious time, first planning on purchasing a coffin rather than building one.  Liam was breathing his last and I felt too overwhelmed to move, let alone build something, with everything rent around me.  It was when he was gone, with a known timeline that I understood how important this was.  With Rebecca, Daniel and I needed to have her coffin immediately, before the Sabbath began, a coffin with no metal fasteners, appropriate for an infant.  All the cemetery had available was some flimsy plastic thing that he wouldn't bury a Barbie doll in.  That was necessity.  With Liam, this was necessity as well, but of a different sort.  I needed to know that he would be covered in love for eternity.  We built a box out of cedar, a sacred plant.  I padded the inside and lined it with white satin.  I fastened steamer trunk handles that I had used for my work cart and that had accompanied me through my apprenticeship, a difficult and arduous learning experience.  I oiled the wood with Dark Walnut colored Danish Wood Oil oil and used extra upholstery tacks to make the halo of a celtic cross overlay I had affixed to the cover of the coffin.  The lid bolted down to the bottom of the box.  Looking at it, I thought only of how clumsy and oversized it looked.  I was concerned because the boards had not been jointed and there were a few small gaps that the casual observer would probably ignore or miss.  Our neighbor Kathy came by with a smile on her face earlier in the day.  She saw me starting the project and asked cheerfully what I was working on.  Daniel ran interference and told her what we were doing and why.  She broke down and retreated back to the safety of her home, to lick her wounds.  The sheer number of people that were affected by Liam's death still continues to amaze me.  Not because I doubt his influence or the impact a small child can have on such a large number of people, but because I had almost convinced myself that his charisma and greatness were merely in my mind, a father's love and adoration which magnifies his son's qualities to epic status, Achilles to my mind.  So there I stood, an hour before dawn, alone in the garage, pressing the final golden pins into the lid of my son's coffin.  With each one, I said a prayer, though I was certain there was no one at the other end of my stream of consciousness.  I prayed that I had done right by Liam.  I prayed that I had made an acceptable resting place.  I prayed that despite all of my failings, I had been an adequate father, balancing the gifts of providence with love and devotion.  I hoped Liam knew as he lay there in the dark, in his mothers arms, blinded by the train that had pulled into the station to carry him into oblivion , that he took with him, in a satchel under his arm, the best parts of me, the parts that swallowed life by the gulp and choked on it with mirth, the parts that recognized beauty in simple graces and loved rolling down a hill and collapsing into a heap at the bottom, bereft of breath or shame in the act.  Those things were gone.  I allowed the last vestiges of my art, my desire to perform my craft, my energy to do anything to flow through my hands and fingertips and press those gold upholstery tacks into the soft cedar lid.  I walked up the long flight of stairs to the main floor, expecting Lisette to be asleep.  She was awake of course, her son was dead, there would be no sleep this evening.  I brought her down and showed her my work.  She nodded assent and that was that.
  Later we brought the casket to the funeral home.  They prepared the body.  Since Liam was so small and would be buried immediately, he was not embalmed.  The funeral home took such beautiful care of him, completely gratis.  Lisette and I viewed the body.  Liam was in a beige sweater and khaki slacks, his most prized possessions laid in his coffin with him.  His sword and shield at his feet like a fallen Norse warrior.  His dragons and totems.  In a final feverish attempt at eternal proximity, I cut a silver half dollar into 4ths (please don't tell the treasury department) and placed one of the 4ths with Liam.  One I now wear on a chain around my neck.  Lisette has one around hers as well.  We have a last piece for Sophia when she is old enough to be responsible with it.  I thought Mario may want one as well.  In that eventuality, I think I will take a coirner off mine and inset it in a ring and give the necklace to Mario.  I will wear the ring.  Michelle came into the room as we said our final goodbye to our son.  She took a few pictures.  Lisette asked the funeral director several times if he was sure Liam was dead.  He looked like he was asleep.  We touched his cold skin, kissed his cold lips and placed the lid on the coffin, screwing to top down securely.  We brought him to St. Anthony's where his Great Grandparents, his Great-Great Grandmother, two Great Uncles, a cousin and other family members lay nearby.  As a piper played his favorite tune, Loch Lomond into the wind, a small cedar chest that carried my hope was laid into a hole, covered with dirt and cloaked in black.  This was my worst day.