A/N As always big thanks to lilacmermaid25 on tumblr for the prompts that inspire me to keep writing MSec stories. I suppose this will borrow a lot of dialogue from 5x08 The Courage To Continue and then make some deviations. This is just a little one shot. Thanks for reading - please leave a review if you'd like to! - Laura
Prompt: Elizabeth is actually really upset at the kids for not taking the Arlington discussion seriously – she didn't have the chance to have this conversation with her parents, and she has always felt that they wouldn't have wanted to end up where they did.
Prompt: Elizabeth is sure that her brother doesn't visit the cemetery where their parents are buried either, and she can't get past the idea that they must have been lonely all these years.
Family Meeting
"Kids, mom's home. Let's do this." was the first thing she heard as she walked through the door of their Georgetown home after a long day at the office. She glanced down at her watch as she closed the door behind her and gawked at the time.
"Oh no! I said don't wait for me for dinner, because I, we didn't" Elizabeth protested as Henry got up from his desk to greet her. Ignoring her protests he pulled her close and kissed her softly on the lips.
"This is the family meeting, remember?" Henry asked, still holding her close. Her eyes widened as she remembered that they'd scheduled the family meeting to discuss where the kids may want them to be buried and her stomach did somersaults, she had been dreading this conversation.
"Right.. Good, yes." Elizabeth said and followed Henry into the living room where Jason and Stevie were already sitting on the sofa, Alison was just coming down the stairs.
"Any word from Monaco?" Henry asked.
"Oh, still nothing. His Serene Highness is really living up to his billing - Won't hustle for anybody." She replied, lightly patting Alison on the shoulder as she passed her by on the way to join her siblings.
"Hey gang!" Elizabeth said, almost too enthusiastically.
"Hey, um - is this going to take long?" Jason asked, making himself more comfortable on the sofa. "Rafer and I have a Call of Duty session."
Stevie and Alison both rolled their eyes at their younger brother.
"Well, that's as good a transition as any.." He said.
Elizabeth took a deep breath and readied herself to jump in, it was fight or flight and she had to make herself do this.
"Okay, guys - your father and I are eligible for burial at Arlington National!" She told them, throwing up both thumbs and plastering on a fake smile, thinking this could possibly be the most awkward conversation she'd ever had with her kids, even more awkward than the talk.
"Oh my God, I knew it wasn't just a basal cell carcinoma!" Alison exclaimed, fear flooding her usual carefree features.
Elizabeth hadn't taken this into consideration, almost forgetting that she'd only recently had skin cancer cells removed, it hadn't even crossed her mind that one of the kids would try and link these two events together.
"It absolutely is - was." Elizabeth stuttered, trying to reassure the three of them. "We're fine, I'm fine." She said calmly and turned to Henry, hoping that her facial expression would be enough to signify that she was screaming Please Help Me internally.
Henry began to awkwardly chuckle at the look on his wife's face and interjected into the conversation.
"Everybody is fine. This is.." He started, pausing to get a control on his laughter. "We're gonna live long enough to burden your golden years. We just need to make some decisions. So we wanted to consult with you about our burial plans."
Elizabeth, still laughing from Henry's 'Golden Years' joke nodded.
"Yes, solicit your input, because it matters to us." She added.
All three McCord children stared at their parents, trying to digest what they had just been told. Elizabeth thought it was interesting how each child reacted in such a different way. Jason was fidgeting on the sofa, Alison looked as though she had just been hit by a tonne of bricks and Stevie just looked plain uncomfortable.
"You guys should be cryogenically frozen." Jason joked.
"I think that technology has been debunked." Stevie said.
"That's not on the table, pal." Henry said, dismissing his son's silly suggestion.
Alison gasped and pointed at her parents accusingly.
"This is about your presidential run." She said. "You guys are worried about an assassination attempt."
"No." Elizabeth said firmly, taken aback by the fact that Alison was throwing out all of these wild conspiracy theories, that was normally Jason's stronghold. "This is about planning the future, and do you three have an opinion about where you'd like to visit us when we're…"
She was unable to finish the sentence.
Dead she thought, but she couldn't say it out loud. It felt like such a taboo, it was such a finality and it made her heart ache every time she thought about losing Henry or leaving her children without a mother just as she had been forced to grow up without hers.
"Is this some sort of guilt from the grave kinda thing?" Stevie asked, her head tilted to one side and her hands resting behind it. "Like, if we don't visit you enough you're going to haunt our dreams or something?"
Elizabeth frowned, starting to get a bit agitated that her three grown up children were unable to take this seriously, she looked over to Henry and shook her head.
"What? Nothing to do with guilt." Elizabeth said.
"Because I will be visiting you every year." Stevie said.
"For the first few years, then it's going to taper off." Jason added, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
This was the final straw, Elizabeth slammed her fists down onto the glass coffee table in an
attempt to expel the anger coursing through her veins. She loved her children so very deeply but their inability to process this, to even take it seriously and not make jokes made her furious.
"That's enough." She said firmly and pronounced. All three kids' eyes were wide - they knew this was her angry voice.
"Now I had hoped that you three were old enough to take this seriously, but obviously I'm wrong." She began.
"Mom.." Alison tried to interrupt. Elizabeth held her hand up to silence her.
"Let me finish." Elizabeth said, and she began to pace the room. "You guys should consider yourselves lucky." She finally said.
"I was fifteen when I lost my parents." She began twirling her wedding ring on her finger, something she always did when she was nervous or worried. "I know it's not a nice conversation to have, the idea of it is horrible to even think about - I know." She continued.
"But I was so young that I had absolutely no say in anything to do with my parents funeral or burial arrangements. To this day they're buried in some cemetery near where I grew up - I have never been to visit them since the burial. I'm pretty sure your uncle Will hardly ever goes to visit them either - and the guilt, it's crushing - what if they've been lonely all these years? What if they think that we've forgotten about them, or that we don't care? It's so hard to think about, the finality of it all. That's why every year I go up to Black Top Mountain on the anniversary of their death to find them."
Henry watched in silence as his wife lectured the kids, shocked to learn that she had never been to visit her parents graves and floored by the now obvious reason why she had been dodging these burial questions and calls.
"What I'm trying to say," Elizabeth said, sitting down on one of the arm chairs opposite her children on the sofa. "Is that you have that chance, here and now - to make some decisions which will make things much easier down the line when things do happen. You have this rare chance that I never had and I think you should run with it. Everybody dies - it's the only thing that we're definitely sure will happen to us in life, it shouldn't be the taboo that it is - but please, I really hope that sooner rather than later you can be brave and help us to make these decisions."
"I'm sorry mom." Stevie said quietly.
"Me too." Alison said.
"Me three." Jason chimed in, the three kids looked at each other.
"We'll take some time and come back with you to a decision, okay?" Stevie said, looking at her younger siblings who nodded in agreement.
Elizabeth smiled, placing her hands on her knees as she observed her three babies.
"Thank you." She breathed.
"You've really never been to visit grandma and grandpa since the accident?" Stevie asked.
Elizabeth shook her head, a trickle of guilt washing over her.
"It was always too hard." She said. "I couldn't accept that they were gone, I still have trouble with that even now, and it's been thirty six years."
"Maybe if you went to visit their graves, it would help you to accept it?" Alison asked.
"I don't know Noodle, maybe." Elizabeth said.
"We could all go." Stevie said. "As a family."
Elizabeth smiled as her phone buzzed in her pocket, she pulled it out and sighed, Jay was calling her.
"But mom, one more thing. Are you absolutely sure you're not dying?" Alison asked.
"Never." Elizabeth said, whilst answering her phone. "Jay, what's up?" She asked.
"Okay, I'll be right there." She said and hung up - placing her phone back into her pocket. "Well, I have to go deal with a real crisis. Thanks for the talk - let us know when you three have made a decision." She said and she stood kissed each of the children on the forehead and hugged Henry goodbye before setting back out to the office.