You Were Just Here
And Somehow We Missed You
There was sour cream in the fridge, and milk and cheese. She hadn’t been able to eat dairy in years so it had to have been his. He had gone so recently his food in the fridge was still good. We ate as much of it as we could, choking down the pistachio gelato and the American cheese so she wouldn’t have to throw it out later.
I don’t have anything new or interesting to say about this but I can’t think about anything else, so here we are, in the house at night, the crickets still creaking, oblivious of the frosty nights that will soon fall as if they had a debt to collect.
We buried him on a Sunday, unusually, an exception made for far away family. I remember them talking idly about their deaths years ago, about how they wouldn’t let the worms have their way, no way, they would have cremations. He said he wanted his ashes to be spread on the ocean then jested about being rocketed into space while we watched Star Trek, probably.
In the end she requested a very traditional service with open casket viewing and the strong smell of embalming in Jim’s funeral parlor where all the staff were people who used to drive the school bus or work at the business office. There was a mass and a eulogy delivered by a family friend and choked readings and beautiful songs surrounded and voiced by people we had always known and a reception at the pavilion by the little league field, homemade sandwiches and cookies individually wrapped against the plague.
We went with her to the cemetery the next day to situate where the grave was since the stone would come later. She said she picked a place with a view through two columns of trees where, she tried to break her thoughts before they came out, he would be for a while. The grass was sparse but wild thyme was everywhere, scenting our steps as we walked. Yeats’ father and a famous Gibson girl are also there, and the veterans of all of America’s wars, it being that sort of town.
They couldn’t figure out the cable remote and she was going to have to get a mechanic. Automated calls came to remind him of his appointments. She was supposed to wake up to this tomorrow and the next day, and it wasn’t at all clear how.
