Life # 158: that time Harry and Tom ran a funeral home.

Auckland, New Zealand, 2009

"Why doesn't it get any easier?" Harry asked as he dabbed at his eyes with a tissue that was so soaked it was falling apart in his hands.

"Cancer is never easy," Tom said, crossing one leg over the other as she sat back on the bench in their garden that overlooked Curlew Bay in Auckland, offering a stunning view of the many city lights across the water now that the sun had just set. Right after they'd married Harry and Tom had bought the acre of land and spent the next year building a three bedroom ranch home with their own hands. Most of their family thought they were nuts, since even then the price for the land had been ridiculously high, but Harry and Tom had a pretty good idea what was going to happen with the housing prices in Auckland over the next twenty years, and indeed, after two decades they were living on what was essentially a goldmine. Not that they had any plans to move. They loved living there, but it was a nice little nest egg to have.

"Not cancer," Harry said with a quick glance at his wife before shaking his head. "I mean, yes, cancer never gets easy, I know, but I'm talking about losing a parent." Harry swallowed and inhaled a deep breath. "Losing a mother."

"Ah." Tom gave Harry a look as though Harry had just said the silliest thing in the history of silly things. "She's your mother. Of course you're grieving when you lose her."

Harry dabbed at his eyes again, tissue now mostly disintegrated. "I mean, I've lost mothers before, almost a hundred and fifty of them. I just expect it to be a little less…you know…"

"Painful?" Tom guessed with a knowing little smile.

"Yeah." Harry rubbed against his chest. "Or a little less heart-breaking."

Tom sighed. "I don't know in how many different ways I have to tell you this, darling, but she was the woman who gave you life and who raised you. She was your mother."

"She was a tyrant," Harry muttered, feeling simultaneously incredibly annoyed with his mother and empty with immediate grief.

"Granted, she had a few things in common with the world's most successful dictators," Tom said smoothly, causing Harry to snort with amusement. "But in the end she was a good woman, who worked hard to raise you and your siblings and to turn her funeral home into a successful business."

"Fuck, I'm going to miss her," Harry sighed, while giving up on his disintegrated tissue and just rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Me too," Tom said quietly, which Harry thought was very generous of Tom, seeing as how Harry's mother had never thought Tom was good enough for her precious youngest son and had always been overly critical of her, which Tom had politely ignored for over two decades with the patience of a fucking saint. Harry's mother had not been an easy woman to get along with, but Tom had worded it just right when he'd called her a good woman.

Tom turned a little to look at Harry. "Do you want Pat to get your mother ready tomorrow?"

Staring at Tom with wide eyes, Harry quickly shook his head. "Are you fucking kidding me? Have you met my mother at all during the past two decades? She'd come back from the dead if I let Pat touch her body. Pat's not family." Harry decidedly shook his head. "I'll prepare her body for the tangi. We'll take her to the marae first thing in the morning. My sister and aunts will now stay with her during the night."

Harry and Tom were Maori, and Harry's mother had started a funeral home that specialized in Maori rites. They also provided more westernized services, but they'd gained a great reputation within the Auckland Maori community and beyond.

Harry's older brother and sister hadn't been interested in following in their mother's footsteps and joining the family business, but Harry, once he got his memories back in his late teens, had no problem being a funeral director, seeing as how he'd been a mortician in one of his earlier lives. And Tom, while she was able to perform all the practical tasks in the business, did prefer to stick with the business side of things. Harry didn't mind getting hands on with the dead, even if one of them was his own mother.

"We get to be loved," Tom said out of the blue.

Harry sat up a little to look at her. "Huh?"

"That's what makes all of this worth it," Tom said with a small but knowing smile. "Every life, we get to be loved by lots of people. Parents, grandparents, siblings, children. And we get to love them in return."

Staring straight ahead into the darkness ahead of them, Harry mulled this over. It was true enough. While in a rare few lives they were stuck with abusive relatives, for the most part they had good families. By no means were their many parents and siblings and children that they'd had over the many, many lives perfect, but they were generally good people trying hard to do right by their loved ones.

And honestly, that was all anyone could do with their lives in the end.

"And to lose that hurts," Tom concluded quietly.

"The cost of love is loss," Harry agreed with a small nod. This wasn't the first time they'd had a conversation like this one, but every now and again losing a loved one really hit one of them badly and they had to have a little talk again to help settle their emotions.

"Dad?"

Harry turned around on the bench to see their eldest son Robbie lurking near the backdoor. Robbie was seventeen, almost eighteen, and he had made a sport of lurking about the place with the world's most disinterested expression on his face. "Yeah, Rob?"

Robbie shuffled closer to the bench, his younger brother Pete slinking after him like a weary feral cat. Pete, who had just turned fifteen, had recently started acting like he was the world's most unique snowflake and no one understood him and his suffering.

Ah, puberty. It never got old.

Robbie stopped in front of the bench and as one Harry and Tom moved apart, making room for their sons. Thankfully, for once their boys didn't need more of an invitation to join in a family activity and they both sat down between their parents.

"Dad," Robbie said softly, staring down at his folded hands in his lap. "Are you preparing Nan tomorrow?"

"Yep, first thing in the morning," Harry said, wondering where this conversation was going. Neither of their boys had shown much emotion yet at the news of their Nan's passing. And while Harry's mother had been a bit of a tyrant in her business, she'd been an absolute sweetheart of a grandmother, spoiling her grandchildren rotten while berating her children for not taking better care of her precious grand-babies.

"Could I…I dunno…be there?" Robbie all but whispered.

Harry almost fell backwards off the bench in sheer shock. So far, Robbie had never, ever shown any interest in the family business, and while Harry would love for one of his sons to follow in his footsteps, he wasn't about to force his kids to choose a career they didn't enjoy.

Clearing his throat, Harry nodded, his eyes welling up a bit again. "Sure. I'm getting her ready at first light and then we'll take her to the marae. Your Nan would be happy to have you help get her ready." Gently, Harry placed his hand on Robbie's knee and gave it a few pats, and will wonders never seize, Robbie didn't pull away.

Pete, meanwhile, was leaning against Tom who was running her fingers through their youngest son's hair while she whispered in his ear.

Harry was tempted beyond belief to make a smart remark about their sons' out of character behaviour but decided against doing so, no wanting to ruin the moment.

"We got to love her," Harry heard Tom whisper to Pete. "And we got to be loved by her."

Harry firmly closed his mouth as not to point out his mother had done many things in her life, but loving Tom had never been one of them.

Not the time.

Tom caught Harry's gaze over the tops of their childrens' heads and they shared a knowing smile while Tom mouthed, "Worth it."

And yeah, despite the puberty and the tyrant mothers and the heart-break, in the end it was worth it, time and again.