The Loss

John was a half hour late, and not surprisingly, he smelled of liquor - nonetheless his preferred coping method of choice, Captain Morgan’s. After recovery he used to say, “If I can’t use, I’ll sure as hell booze.” Says it makes him feel like more of a man, though I wouldn’t describe his current state as macho. As he leans against the door frame, he appears as though he’s trying to pick himself up and failing; a shell of his usual self shattered on the floor, and his attempts to collect himself only leave him bloody-fingered.

I want to be infuriated with him, but I say, “Come in,” in the most patient voice I can muster, pretending as if I hadn’t notice him stumble on the doorstep.

Someone’s gotta have their head on straight today, I think.

“Nice day for this sorta thing, I guess,” he utters groggily. We take note of the sunshine weaving through the blooming leaves out on the maple tree. “For now,” I reply, weary of the time, “I wanted to beat the rain this afternoon.”

“We’ll be ffine,” he stammers, (I roll my eyes), “It’s not like she’s got anywhere more important to be.”

I smile, wanting it to be funnier than it is painful. “Right.” Without another word, I leave John in the kitchen, calling from the staircase, “Got your walking shoes?” When he grunts back, I mumble a ‘great’, skipping the top step and into the bedroom. Once I’ve got Mom’s urn, we’re back down and all at the old Buick in less than a minute, (or maybe longer, they tend to blur together these days). I carefully hold her by the side door, watching John grunt his way into the passenger seat, a man too big and uncoordinated when intoxicated. He reminds me of how Dad was in a lot of ways.

Hesitantly, I say, “Will you hold her?” He looks at me with a sort of fierce gaze, as if to pierce through me, then silently takes her, and hugs her close to his chest. I think about making some kind of joke about dropping her, but the way his knuckles turn white around the container... I decide against it and close the door. Once I get in the car, the engine whirs awake, and we are gone.

The road to Long Pond isn’t an unpleasant one, quiet and serene, with pine trees on either side, letting their needles float down in the breeze. It’s said there are 1,000 trees for every resident in Maine, and when John and I were kids I used to say that every single one of mine were along this road. It bends and winds further away from the city, occasionally revealing part of a house or someone’s old shed to passersby. The seclusion is a welcome escape for both traveller and resident alike.

I find myself glancing from the road to John, whose eyes glaze over the melting snow banks, looking but not seeing; his thumb rubs the ridges of the urn mindlessly. It takes a few minutes of silence to find the words I want to say, wanting to penetrate that thick skull of his, prod him for something, anything. “A lot of people came to the wake. I thought that was really kind of them.” “Yeah. I heard.”

“They asked about you. How you’ve been holdin’ up and all that.”

“Sure.” He’s curling into himself, digging a burrow, in the deepest recesses of his mind, where no light can reach. Slowly but surely he’ll retract, and what I see will soon be nothing more than a paper thin exterior, the glass containing the sharks within the tank. It’s easier to be alone than to be lonely. When Mom’s doctor told us the news, something about him disintegrated; the color left his rosy skin. I even thought I heard the sound an old computer makes when it’s powered down, like he just turned off. He’s always been the colorful one, the rocket of energy not even Mom or Dad could wrangle. I’d never seen a man become that

grey so quickly.

John’s absence from the wake put more than one anxious knot in my stomach the day of. For one, I knew if he wasn’t there with us, he was several layers of blankets deep into his bed, maybe reading or crying, trying to be anywhere but the world he was in. For another, some of the mourners that came are the type to talk, and what they say may not always be in the most flattering light, especially regarding someone with his sort of history. It was just as possible that if he wasn’t wallowing in bed, he was using again, and that thought nearly had me in the car to find him for every hour he didn’t show.

“You know, she was my mom too; it’s not like I don’t know what you’re going through.”

He gives a combined snort and grunt.

I sigh, “You can talk to me.”

“About what?” he mumbles, “I’m fine.”

“Seriously? If anything, you’re a child, or at least acting like one.”

This gets him to turn his head, “Excuse me?”

Albeit, it was harsh, but I don’t apologize, “I know she was important to you, I get it. I’m there with you. But, being like this, so distant, it’s not what she would’ve wanted for you. You know that.”

“What do you want me to do about it? Can’t a guy grieve without being expected to be himself?!” His voice cracks in the way it would after just waking up in the morning. It’s 2pm.

All I can do is shake my head, “This isn’t grieving. This is falling. It’s collapsing in on yourself, and it’s like you don’t even care.”

“You think I want to be this way?!” he attempts to speak up, though can’t seem to find the energy, “I haven’t seen you eat in days, but you’re accusing me of giving up? How pretentious of you.”

Although this is true, I deliberately ignore it, “You don’t need to fight with me, I’m on your side!”

“Then why are you yelling?”

“I’m not--!” I stop. My voice rings through the car. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”

In the symphony of silence that follows, instead of the heart pounding in my head I focus on the road. I’d never noticed before how smooth it is. There’s relatively no potholes, though an occasional pinecone might fall on the other side of the white line. Streams of water trickle down the shoulder of the road; there’s a humidity to Spring, refreshing in light of the dry wintry gloom proceeding it.

One of my favorite smells, water on pavement, floats in through the window. Childhood memories of sunny afternoons in dewy grass, rubbing chalk into the hot driveway, strife not yet in my vocabulary; Mom standing on the stoop with a coffee mug in her hands. There’s music playing somewhere, maybe everywhere.

It’s not until John starts talking that I return to the car. “I think the shittiest thing

about this is, ya know,” he sighs, “there’s so much she’ll miss.”

I’m not sure how to respond. So I don’t.

“My graduation, your wedding, grandchildren, she’ll never see any of that.”

I’m glad he’s talking, so I try encourage more, “You’re right, it is shitty. All

of this is shitty.”

He breathes, defeated. “I just can’t believe she’s just gone... just the other day she was walking around the hospital telling me how when she gets back she’d need to start gardening soon.” He chuckles for the first time, maybe forced, maybe to cheer himself up, as if to prove that he could feel something pleasant.

“And she gave the doctors such a hard time about it too.” I add, grinning,

“She’d sass them about taking too long to cure her,” - I falsetto my voice - “If I don’t get to plant my tomatoes this year because of those bastards they better go do it themselves, I tell you what!”

“All the money I’m payin’ ‘em better pay for the good mulch this year!”

We laugh a long, rejuvenating while.

“She was a fiesty one,” he grins, “Still is, I bet. Wherever she is.”

For moment, it’s quiet, the hushhhh of tires over wet road is all that’s

audible. “Ya know, I can’t agree with what you said earlier,” I finally say.

“Hm?”

“She’s not missing anything. She’s got whole new adventures to deal with, trouble to get into. The graduations, the children, I think they’re the ones that are gonna miss her.”

John ponders this a moment, looking down at the urn in his arms, “I guess.”

I reach my hand onto his thigh, “We’ll be okay.” And for the rest of the way, we sit like this, looking at the road and truly seeing it. Seeing the pine needles drift down, the sun shining on the snow. It’s the first time I notice how vibrant the purple lupins are, the yellow flourish of dandelions; how color maybe once left us, but it didn’t leave the rest world.

We pull up to the dirt path a little past 3pm. I offer to carry Mom and, hesitantly, John hands her over. The breeze washes through the trees, distant birds chirp high above our heads. The world goes on around us, we simply are emerged in it. John stumbles a bit, the buzz still working it’s wonders, but he’s a bit different now. His back isn’t slumped, his eyes are on the path ahead of him rather than at his feet. He’s more of a person.

The path through the woods soon opens into the expanse of Long Pond. Some camps poke out on any side of the lake, but no one seems to have disturbed the water today; the only ripples come from the waves softly lapping at the sand.

We leave our shoes at the mouth of the path. “Ready?” I ask.

He drops his jacket by his sneakers, “Ready.”

We wade into the water bit by bit, the last of winter still nipping at our toes. Soon our hips are submerged, a few loons float out in the distance. The urn grows heavier in my arms, and I tell John this is as good a spot as any. He comes over, puts a hand on the urn and watches as our mother pours out of it. How all of her person, her love, her personality fit into such a small thing, I’ll never know.

Her ashes dance in the waves, some sink to the bottom. The weak current eventually takes her out to the rest of the pond. She’ll wash up on other banks, become the sand; maybe someone’s child will build her into a sandcastle. She’ll become the waves, the hushed sound that lulls campers to sleep in summer evenings. She’ll reflect the sunlight off the water’s surface, a beautiful reminder of just how much light there is.

She will go on. And so will we.