by Kris Radish
“It is always like this,” Ben says. “I thought I would hate this musty, humid part of the world but it is breathtaking. It’s a marriage of earth and water here. Absolutely stunning every single moment.”
They pause to watch the fading edges of the day come together into the darkness of the horizon. Laura raises her hands because she thinks she can touch it. She places one hand out to the right, the other to the left and it looks as if she is pushing the sky into place. Everyone watches her and forgets about the skyline.
She dances in place, closes her eyes and she imagines—without speaking—the spirit of Annie moving like a fine piece of silk in a breeze above the top of the ocean. She imagines Annie turning into the wind and grazing her fingers across the waves and smiling as she feels the air lift her and carry her further out to sea. She imagines Annie singing softly as the cool night air moves against her skin and the sun dances eagerly on the other side of the world. She imagines Annie at peace and never wondering if she did the right thing as she flows into the next world on the wings of her own angels and under the power of her own beautiful energy.
Everyone else somehow knows what Laura must be thinking. They think of Annie—each thought a secret that captivates them so deeply that no one can speak, no one can move anything but their eyes as Laura’s hands grow closer and closer together while the sun’s last few pieces of light disintegrate in between her fingers.
Everyone knows that every single person there—even Balinda, who only knows Annie through the words of her best friend Laura—loves Annie in ways that no one else did or even could and they know, too, that Annie loved them in return uniquely. They know that sometimes Annie was a shit but so were they. They realize that Annie gifted them with each other and with this moment and with a life that not only inspired but transformed them. And they know, too, that they will never forget her or each other or this brilliant sunset that has wrapped itself around Laura’s fingers and is now making its way across the entire world.
They know.
“Hey,” Katherine says to snap them out of a trance that threatens to make them all plunge naked into the ocean so they can swim after the sun. “What do you think?”
John steps forward. He says that he’d like to say something. He wants everyone to be a part of the entire ceremony and he asks if that is okay.
The women all look at him as they have been looking at him ever since they realized his history with Annie. And they know why she loved him so. They know that even as he could not love her the way she wanted, no one could ever love her the way he did. They know that he is kind and generous and considerate and bold and graceful and each one of them feels as if they have won the lottery to now have John and Ben in their lives.
Yes. They all say yes.
First they take off their shoes and they place them in a neat row above the row of rocks that sit above the tide line. Then Katherine takes the shoes out of the box and she carries them and walks to stand among her friends. Everyone holds hands and then walks into the water.
They walk into the water until their knees are covered and they can feel the wind on their faces and they can see why Annie would have wanted to stay on Islamorada with John. No one is ready. No one would ever be ready for this, but they all take great courage in the presence of one another, in realizing for the first time that they will do this again for maybe Laura or Katherine or Ben.
Katherine cannot stop crying but she keeps the funeral in motion. She is strong and she knows that this is exactly what Annie would have wanted of her. She is also crying because something has without warning shifted inside of her. Something that has been pushed unexpectedly out of place and that needs immediate attention and is now lashing against her lungs hard enough to make her cry—it is her own life, her very own life. She knows this and she does not repress it and she embraces the moment, which she will later discover is the first step in a whole new journey.
“I’m going to step in front of each one of you and have you take some ashes. And then I want you to hold them in your hand and when I am back in place, whenever you are ready, throw them, place them gently into the water, do whatever you want with them. And when you are done squeeze the hand of the person to the right of you and when my hand is squeezed I will know that we are done.”
The hush of this night is stunning. A mischievous wind kicks up the scents and sounds from the day and blends them into a soft hum that sounds like someone is singing. They all hear it and they smile, thinking, of course, that Annie had something to do with it.
One by one Katherine distributes the ashes.
The ashes.
They are impossibly soft. Pieces of silk that touch their skin like wands of elegance.
One by one, they let the ashes sift from their hands. It is not possible to see where the ashes land and it does not matter.
It doesn’t matter where they land or how they are released. It doesn’t matter that each one of them loved Annie in a unique and glorious way that has branded each of them for the rest of their lives. It doesn’t matter that their sadness and their joy mingle in such interesting ways that they all feel as if they are stoned. It doesn’t matter that every single one of them is crying and deeply grateful to have known Annie G. Freeman and to be holding the hands of someone else who knew her and loved her.
And when they turn to grab their red shoes something happens that is astonishing and wild . . . and surprising to absolutely no one.
A shooting star moves from left to right, dipping once, like a woman might dip her head if she saw someone she loved and it was not the right moment to say “I love you.”
The shooting star dips and then it disappears and at that exact moment in California, Marie puts her hand on her heart, feels a surge of movement—swift and sharp—and says, “Oh, sweet Annie,” and then turns toward her east window, opens her arms and embraces the invisible sunset she imagines is crossing toward her at that very moment.
20
* * *
There are clues everywhere.
This from Balinda the newcomer as the station wagon taxi, stuffed with perhaps the first and largest traveling funeral this city has ever seen, makes its way through a snarl of traffic that appears to stretch all the way back to the Florida Keys. A flight delay from a lovely late storm that kicked up tornadoes along the east coast has landed them in New York City’s rush hour traffic and they are still without Marie.
Five days into the traveling funeral, two legs of the trip and twelve funeral-book pages later, close to half the ashes flung, secrets flying as if there has been a massive explosion, enough tears to float a good-sized speedboat, dozens of phone calls from Marie, lots of phone calls home, and with two stops left after the New York funeral, Annie Freeman’s traveling funeral is focused on what their newest member has to say.
“She’s left you clues everywhere, you know that, don’t you?”
This from Balinda who came to them for a small slice of salvation and who has ended up being a feisty, open, exhausted, and wonderful new addition to Annie’s funeral brigade. Her petite frame is a lovely camouflage for the rods of steel that hold up her spine. Balinda, who has shelved her own life and the dream of moving to a small town and opening up her own restaurant using recipes that she has been collecting for twenty-three years from women she meets who are above the age of sixty, has dropped into their lives and this funeral adventure as if she has been scheming to come along since the moment she was born.
And her stories of caring for her mother, of watching her own life stand at attention while the rest of the world marches past, have given their own aching hearts permission to focus on the greater world of sorrow and a wiser role model.
“You don’t plan on putting your life on hold, especially when you are in what the rest of the world considers the prime of life,” she told them. “But is there a choice really? And did my mother plan on becoming so ill, of having me care for her as if she were the infant and I were the mother? Did she know that h
er mind would slip just a bit every day until it wandered so far from home it became totally lost? Did she sit and plan for me to give up all my months and years? How could any single person ever wish to be so ill that their own daughter has to empty their bedpan, pick their legs up off the floor so they can roll into bed, remind them of their last name and tie them to the goddamn bed so they do not walk out the front door and into the headlights of an oncoming bus?”
Sometimes, Balinda told them, she wished for her mother to die. She told them this as she struggled with her emotions so she would not weep, sitting with her hands in her lap at the Miami airport when the plane was delayed. She told them that caregiving made her at first hard and angry and hateful, and then how it changed her.
“Once, before this happened, I was in a huge park in northern Illinois and I was hiking,” she told them, closing her eyes to remember, to feel something that was lost the instant it began. “I felt free and light and as if I knew exactly who I was and where I was going and what was going to happen every moment for the next fifty years. I stopped with that thought in my head. I stopped as if I had hit a brick wall and I dropped to my knees, closed my eyes and rolled over into the grass.”
She rolled over, she told them, and opened her mind to look into her own future, thinking she would see brilliant lights, a stairway to success, the bright blue eyes of her lover and the footprints of tomorrow running up and down the side of her left leg. She did see a swirl of light and a parade of dreams marching to the tunes of soft Hawaiian music and the melodies of old Broadway show tunes. She also saw shadowy figures, faces that she could not quite discern, and colors—deep shades of blue—that seemed to get deeper and darker as they got closer, just the opposite of what she expected to see.
Lying in the grass that day she never saw her mother crawling through the living room on her hands and knees at two A.M. because she could not find her way to the bathroom and was lost. She never saw her boyfriend standing in the driveway with his hands on his trunk as he told her it was too much and that he could no longer deal with a half-ass girlfriend who spent more time with her hands on a bedpan and not on him and he was sorry but he could never see her again. She never saw one year turn into the next as her mother’s needs swelled and her own desires folded their hands into submission and agreed to be led around by the familial bonds of life that tied her right in one place so she could no longer move.
“I’m so tired,” she shared with the traveling funeral brigade. “I need for just this little slice of time to bury my own story in the middle of someone else’s.”
This is the place to do that, they almost all say at once. This is the place to watch us mourn and to prepare to do that yourself, but in a new way. This is also the place, they remind her, to toss back a glass of wine before noon and to laugh all afternoon and just be—just be. It is possible, they insist, because after a few days they feel like letting-go experts. Let go. Stand at ease. Let someone else cut into the dance.
“Annie didn’t have many rules for the traveling funeral but we know for sure she wanted us to celebrate her life more than to mourn the loss of it,” Laura explained as they inched along in traffic. “We can only talk about the bad stuff for a few hours every day, otherwise the ashes blow up or something.”
And there is Marie, they tell Balinda, Marie who is always helping mothers die, Marie who can talk to you on the phone and then who you’ll meet in person. Kindred spirits. Shared lives. Just you wait, they tell her.
Laughter propels them through the tunnels and around stalled cars and so many honking horns they all quickly realize that the horns are totally useless because after a while their chorus of beeps blends in with every other noise in the city and they become indistinguishable from the hum of life that in New York is really a roar.
New York.
It slaps them upside their heads the minute they focus on where the plane has actually dropped them. It’s no Islamorada, they all agree. It’s so different from Chicago or San Francisco or any other city they ever visit or have lived in that they immediately get sucked into the vortex of its charming madness.
“What is it about this city?” Jill asks them all, pressing her fingers against the window as if she were testing the pulse of something alive. “It’s like being reborn every time I come here.”
They swap New York stories. A quick theater trip. A long layover that turned into a three-day feast of shopping, drinking espresso at sidewalk cafés, and carousing in bars where famous people had kissed their lovers.
“It’s partly the history,” Katherine decides. “Just about every single major event that changed this country and half the world was launched or born or bred within forty miles of where we are sitting right this moment.”
Which leads them back to Annie and wondering what it was she discovered or touched here that was so important to her that she wanted her ashes spread here. They guess.
Love.
Discovery.
Insight.
Wild sex.
A professional milestone.
They are deep in discussion when Katherine suggests it may be a good time to put in the tape from Annie and they might know for certain. The cabdriver warns them that the taxi bill is closing in on fifty bucks, shrugs his shoulders as he gestures at all the traffic, and then slips in the tape for them.
“Hey,” she starts and her voice seems to still the loud rush of sound around them.
Isn’t New York something? The first time I arrived here I was scared shitless. The second time, I remembered where to turn and how to hail the cabbie. Well, I never wanted to live in New York but I visited a lot, especially before my sons were born, and it’s where I not only met the only man I ever dared to marry, it’s the place where I realized a woman like me should probably never be married—especially to a man like that.
So what was it? What happened to me? Why do I want to spread my dusty ashes in a place where most people who slam into you on the sidewalk will keep right on walking?
You could all figure it out, especially after you check into the hotel and see what I have planned for you, but I’ll help you a little bit. Just a little bit.
Think of fun. Think of culture. Think about how our lives are often awash in routine and expectations. Think about making believe you are someone else. Then you’ll know.
And a warning: You had better not be sitting around crying in your white wine for a single second of this trip. This is an adventure, ladies!
So? So knock it off with the Kleenex and tell some dirty jokes.
Be sure and look out the windows. I’ll never forget what it felt like to look out the windows the first time and to feel the rush of the city, its luscious past and the vibrant heart of every thing and person and experience mingled together like a wild, throbbing soul.
There’s more to find. See what you can do.
Go kick up your heels. I’m with you, women. I’m right here.
There is a pause as the tape spits itself out of the cassette player and the women process what they have just heard. It is Rebecca who breaks the silence, with a very soft “Shit,” that makes them all snap to attention and laugh.
“Shit what?” Jill asks.
“Just shit, it looks like we are going to have to celebrate and have another wild night on the town. I was not prepared for all of this vigorous activity. I thought we’d be moping around and crying.”
“I’ve seen more than enough crying to fill up that ocean out there,” Balinda says, gesturing toward the water they have just passed. “Every time I took my mother to the hospital it seemed as if there was a new tragedy, young, old, middle-aged—this dying and grief stuff knows no boundaries.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rebecca responds. “The pain of loss, for a baby, an elderly parent, someone who drops dead at thirty, the sorrow and grief doesn’t change because of age.”
“Once,” Balinda begins softly, “when I was in the emergency room with my mother they brought in a murderer who had b
een shot and was dying, right there in front of us. I watched as the nurse touched his face and reassured him and I could not believe they were being so nice to him.”
“What happened?” Jill asked.
“My mother rose up, took my arm, gripped it as if she was a weight lifter and said, ‘He was a beautiful baby once and his mother loved him.’ ”
There is a second of silence when the women imagine the hospital scene and then Laura brushes it all away by saying, “Somehow the human heart figures out how to move on. It isn’t easy but the alternative is a bit much.”
Laura’s harshness sobers them quickly and no one says anything. There is a tiny rail of tension in the taxi. A bit of tiredness mixed with sadness, that always-present layer of guilt, Katherine’s constant in-charge attitude, Balinda’s poor-me routine, Laura’s impatience, Jill’s ache for a new life, and Rebecca’s barrel of loss could tip them all over.
While they crawl through traffic, the women begin to discuss shifting roles, and daughters becoming the mothers of mothers, and how they see a rotation backwards, like the old days, when aging parents moved in with their adult children. If there’s no money for long-term care, if disability has run out, if you have an ounce of compassion and familial loyalty and love, that’s what you do, they all agree.
The taxi driver points out their hotel, which still looks as if it is in the next state, and says, “It’s an elegant beauty.” Rebecca shares a story about her sister and an aging neighbor woman with a bit of money and the woman’s three children who all lived within a mile of her and would not help their dying mother, who was getting frailer with each passing day.
“Maybe she was a closet bitch or something but they came around only once in the four years that my sister took care of Martha,” Rebecca shares. “My sister did everything for Martha, who had been widowed since she was forty-three and was eighty-one when my sister started taking care of her.”