The Night I Died | icanseealotoflifeinyou

Baby Hands

On the night I died, my family said things like: ?Can you ask Bob to pick up Jacey from school tomorrow?? and ?I?m not going to be the one to call the funeral home. I can?t do it.? and ?Are his hands cold? Feel his hands. Fuck. I can?t stand this.? They were already missing me.

They don?t let the dead talk. We?re too tired. But the things I thought of before I died, with my family around me. I don?t know if it was days or hours or minutes. I could smell them. Each of them separate but all together, too. I could smell vanilla and mint and skin and body odor and salt and spices. They smelled like my life which sounds like a small thing. A sentimental thing. But you haven?t smelled your life yet, so you don?t know. You?ll see. I didn?t know my life smelled so good. I wasn?t sad to leave it behind. I was too busy smelling it.

The closer I went to death, the further I went from life. Which is to say, I slipped back and back and back. I thought about the ice cream cones from the creamery we used to get when we were kids. Black and white twists. Grass bent and soft under my feet. Pulling a button through a hook on my overalls.

But I got to take them with me as I slipped and it was a happiness, a real happiness, to take them with me to the creamery and my boyhood bedroom, marbles rolling in the drawer of my nightstand. They didn?t know my mother with rollers all over her head, stirring oatmeal at the stove in the morning, an apron tied over her robe. My mother had the softest face I?ve ever known. So soft it was furry to look at, and that?s not me speaking about her through the lens of death and memory. I?m talking about her softness through life, through her life and mine, too.

I have never seen a thing so pretty as bands of light on the wooden floor of my childhood home. Radiator rattling and pipes banging behind the walls. Water rolling with bubbles in a pot on the stove. Snow falling. God made snow so we?d believe in pretty things.

I got to take my kids with me, walking around in the shoeboxes of my life. I hadn?t ever gotten to put it all together, the way I did when I was dying. All at once, my children?s grownup smells and their laughter that, when they all laughed together, sounded like the pack of them turning in circles around the Christmas tree when they were kids. The hard knot of my mother?s apron, the gummy oatmeal. Everything was blooming, quiet, tender blooms, in the air around me. I was blooming. As I died, I went into full bloom, light passing over me and then lifting me away.

They kept crying, their voices breaking. Like toy airplanes breaking up in the air, pieces falling away. I was okay, I wanted to tell them. And I was. I wished I could tell them. Keep their plastic airplanes afloat.

Death makes us gentle. I feel gentle like I spent a few hours at the VFW bar, like nothing?s going get me down. Walking around town, balls of white filmy air spinning at my elbows and knees and ankles. Loose as a puppet, wide smile to boot. And the kids, they are gentling, too. Growing furrier, like their mother. Long gone. A hollow at her throat where she could have set a nickel and held it there. Her face built from the finest net of bones. Too pretty to touch, like you could knock the whole thing down if you weren?t careful. She held her hands to my face, when she was playful. When she wanted me to know she loved me. The children are growing into her. They?re pulling her up out of themselves, like it is they who are the costumes and she the kernel, the seed.

They are finding ways to speak to one another in kinder ways. They say, ?Is Mike going to talk to the kids or wait for you?? They will pause, their eyes wide, spinning. It is a relief to them, to spin their eyes, the eyes they?ve held stock still for days. Or hours. Or minutes. They spin them to one another and offer them like they are cups of coffee or packages of donuts, wrapped up like hotdogs in buns. ?Maize is wonderful. Really. She is amazing. I?ve never know such a kindheart.? ?Bobby, God. Of course there?s the baseball, but you know me. I don?t give a shit about that. It?s the way he looks after Jason. Always looking, scanning, finding him. Seeing what he needs. Bobby is a prince. He really is.? This is how they say I love you to one another, and I think it?s beautiful. The pictures get prettier and prettier, and the fur along the edges only just blends it together. And the blending is what makes the picture. Death really does soften our voices. It draws our words out like long, narrow canoes swaying on gentle water, and the people the kids talk with, the people can lay out their words into the lengths of the boats, each boat held by one of them. They switch things. One minute, Sharon has the funeral home and Rose is calling the cousins. But then they switch and Rose will talk to the caterer if Molly can run to the house and let out Rosco. Rosco. I will miss Rosco as much as I will miss anyone. There?s time and more than enough room. Time is so finite but so expendable, the way time gets when you have a good reason not to care if your boss is looking for you. The kids are each walking around with canoes on their hands, carrying one another?s words and their sighs and silent whimpers when they lose words. They carefully steer past one another, guiding their words and their quiet, listening to the same thing. Water smacking the boats with the tiniest hands imaginable. Baby hands.

I had the prettiest cat when I was a boy. Gray stripes.

Person with guitar? Reveal each child?s personality in one way or another. Develop each child, their strengths and foibles. Their aches and shames. Maybe build a story like Olive, where father is Olive and children are making small messes, emblematic of bigger ones. Complex relationships between kids.

To be continued?

Source: http://icanseealotoflifeinyou.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/the-night-i-died/

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