Chapter One: Our Solemn Hour


The Our Mother of Heavenly Sorrow church located in Tampa, Florida, was bustling and busy for all the wrong reasons on a blustery December morning. It was a tall, regal building of two floors, built with white brick and stained glass windows and a giant white marble cross attached to the dark brown roof. Out front, the garden was beautiful in the summertime, overflowing and rife with petunias, roses and chrysanthemums. From the parking lot, a concrete walkway split the emerald green lawn, leading to white stone steps. The building had an aura of peace and serenity. Because it gave off such a comforting aura, the church seemed to be the perfect place to lay her to rest.

Inside, the carpets were deep and velvety blue, the walls painted a blinding white with baseboards that lined the bottom. John Cena, thirty-four and a nine-time WWE Champion, leaned against the enormous oak doorway, staring into the main warship room. He couldn't bring himself to walk inside. His blue eyes stared past the beautiful oak and red velvet pews, glued to the closed cherry wood casket at the head of the altar. His haggard face was crumpled in despair, every line in his face showing exhaustion and age; at intervals, his vision would become blurred with hot, stinging tears that he refused to wipe away. He was frozen in place, unable and unwilling to move.

Surrounding the casket were familiar faces - friends, family, all people he knew, loved and recognized - were lined up at the altar. Each of them walked past the casket, caressing the surface that was adorned with teardrops and daffodils. John stared at the yellow flowers, wincing; daffodils had been her favorite. Knowing that, John had made sure the church was overflowing with them.

None of this was supposed to be happening, not for a long time. Dying wasn't part of the plan. They were supposed to grow old together, have a bunch of kids and then retire in some pretty condo in Florida. That was the plan. She had deviated from it, but he knew this wasn't what she had wanted either. This had been the last thing on anyone's agenda. Now, with two weeks before Christmas, John found himself alone, in a big and empty house. In the week since it had happened, John found he didn't know what to do with himself. Some nights, he just stayed awake and drank, cloaked in darkness and silence. After the funeral, his mother Carol had invited him to come home with her, to go back to Massachusetts and piece himself back together, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. Without her, there wasn't a place on Earth that felt like home.

He wished that he would vaporize, just disappear. John wished he could follow her, to join her. But he couldn't do anything. He hated the feeling, being stuck saying goodbye to the only woman he was sure he could ever love.

At the head of the altar, his best friend Randy Orton turned to face him. He was standing in front of the casket, his heavily tattooed arms covered by a see-through white dress shirt. His right arm was draped around the shoulders of his sobbing wife Samantha, a demure brunette. She was clutching her three year old daughter to her chest tightly. Randy's expression was pained; a man not known for being good with words, Randy wished there was something he could say or do to help John through what was happening. Seeing his longtime friend in such pain was hard to see. He huffed, looking down at his feet.

Since it happened, John's mind had been replaying vividly the second he found out, over and over again. For as long as he lived, he was sure he was going to remember every little detail. It had been the Raw after Survivor Series. They were at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Out in the middle of the ring, John was giving his farewell address to the WWE Universe after being fired by the Nexus the night before. John's shoulders sagged, recalling the way he had been playing to the fans while she lay on the side of the road dying in the pouring rain. He had been firing up the crowd while she had been taking her last breaths, while the paramedics had been doing everything in their power to keep her alive.

As soon as John came through the curtain, he knew something was wrong. Vince had been there, flanked by Mike Mizanin and Randy. The three of them told him the news. Refusing to believe it, John rushed back to the locker room and tried calling her, but there had been no answer. Desperate, he called his brother, a police officer, who confirmed the news.

"She's gone," Dan Cena had told him, his voice drained of energy. Initially John had barely reacted to the news. He had allowed himself to sink into the first chair he could find, a steel folding chair. Everything around him seemed to fade out, leaving him stuck in a thick zone of silence. He could hardly hear his brother giving him a soft, PG-rated version of the details. Knowing that he was in no condition to do much of anything, Randy had gone to Vince. They put John on the WWE private jet and flew him back to Florida to make all the arrangements he needed to. Mike and Randy had joined him, the two of them afraid to leave John alone.

Blinking, reality crashed down on John like a tidal wave. He wasn't back in the jet, he was in the church, standing in the doorway in silence while his world collapsed around him. He hated that he couldn't stop what was happening, but he loathed the fact that he couldn't force himself to react to any of it. He was numb, unfeeling. It was a strange and scary feeling, but he couldn't shake it out of his nerves.

He jumped, startled, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was a soft, familiar and comforting hand. Turning, his eyes fell on his mother. She was dressed in a black skirt suit, her white hair tied back in a bun and topped with a beautiful black veiled clip. She dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex. "I'm so sorry, honey," she whispered, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from all the crying she had been doing. He couldn't speak. John was surprised he could even nod, but he managed to before turning his eyes back to the scene in front of him. Eve Torres and her boyfriend Rener Gracie were standing with Stephanie McMahon and her husband Paul. Stephanie was dressed conservatively, her head bowed.

On the other side of the church, a choir was singing "Amazing Grace". It had been a beautiful service that John had watched from the back of the church, unable to walk through the arch. The pastor stood in front of the choir, shaking hands and offering spiritual words of encouragement to her grieving parents. They turned to look at him, but he cast his eyes to his feet. John was ashamed to admit that he hadn't spoken to her parents since everything happened; he couldn't bring himself to. He hated that he couldn't find the words to say. He was ashamed to face them; he blamed himself. In the end, he felt there was no excuse as to why he wasn't there. In the end, he had failed to protect her, to keep her safe. He would never have the chance to make it up to her. He had failed himself. No words of wisdom or encouragement could help him. Faith was hollow. Words were empty.

He allowed his thoughts to browbeat him, to abuse him. His face remained stoic, offering curt nods to everyone who looked back at him. Outside, it was raining, a strange occurrence. The flurries were heavy, the wind cold enough to make Hell freeze over. John thought about the Christmas tree, about her gifts sitting under the tree. It hurt his heart to know she wouldn't be there to open them.

Vince approached Stephanie with his wife Linda. He told John to take all the time he needed to work through the grief. It killed the WWE Chairman to see his top star so thoroughly destroyed. John knew that Vince would have rather amputated his arm than give John the time off, but being fired by Wade Barrett had given everyone a perfect out. Returning to WWE was the last thing on his mind. At the moment, he didn't care if he ever came back. He had allowed himself to become consumed by the business and now he found his priorities and his feelings had shifted. He wished he had a crystal ball, because he had no idea what was going to happen to him from one day to the next.

For the past few days, the Orton family had been staying with him, making sure he was eating and taking care of himself. Randy had taken John to the doctor's office and gotten him sedatives to help him sleep. The dream world was the only place John felt any peace anymore. He'd never admit it, but John had entertained thoughts about the sedatives. Once Randy realized that John was on a steady diet of whiskey, he had confiscated the pills, afraid John was going to hurt himself. As much as it killed Randy to watch his friend struggle, he knew that it was up to John to find his way out of the pit of darkness he was in. For John's sake, the Orton family collaborated with John's family to make all the funeral arrangements. The only thing John was adamant about was the daffodils.

On this day, there was no tough guy exterior. "Hustle, Loyalty, Respect" and "Never Give Up" didn't exist. On this day, John Cena was nothing more than a sinking, broken shell of a man. He was in quicksand, and he had no idea how he was going to get out of it. His eyes shifted to the smiling paragraph on the left of the casket, at her high school graduation photograph. The pastor was staring at him, as if he were trying to gauge whether or not it was safe to approach John. He wanted no part of the pastor, of the religious jargon that would provide him no comfort. Prayers weren't going to solve his problem. Every day, he was going to wake up in an empty bed, in an empty house. He had to live the rest of his life without her.

Her clothes were still in the dresser, her books still on the shelf, everything from Twilight to Confessions of a Shopaholic. As much as it hurt him to see her things daily, he couldn't bring himself to box them up and get rid of them, and he refused to let anybody else touch them as well.

He shut his eyes. His head hurt from all the whiskey and sleep deprivation. John wished he could shut his brain off so he wouldn't have to think anymore. Slowly, John knew he was venturing further into the throes of madness. The choir stopped and an organ began to play. People were making their way towards him, getting ready to leave the church. Her wake was going to be held at her parent's house. John had no intention of going. He couldn't face the words and the sympathetic stares. The pain ripped a hole in the pit of his stomach, created a haemorrhage in his heart that he just couldn't stop. He stared down at the ring on his finger, and the grief and anxiety began to really overwhelm him. Just what was he going to do now that she was gone? How would he survive?