by Tina Chaulk
“Sure.” Even as I say it, I know I wouldn’t mind talking to him again, if he drifted back into my life somehow, but that I’ll never reach out to him. “Thank you.”
“I’ll keep you in my prayers. And the garden and the Challenger too.” He smiles and walks out the door, leaving the room much emptier than when he walked in.
17
WITH CARL LONG gone, I sit back in the chair and drift off to sleep again, my mind full of cars and flowers. I try to think about the garden — Nan’s, with Dad’s car in the corner of it, far enough away that Nan won’t get mad about the fumes or the sound of the engine, but close enough that Dad can see Nan and the flowers.
I don’t intend to go to sleep. I just find myself losing consciousness and drifting into a peaceful state, carried off by exhaustion. Carl left at 10:30 and I see 11:15 on my watch. But in what feels like the instant between closing my eyes and opening them again, Nan’s room transforms.
I wake to a sound, a gasp that is loud enough to echo around the room although I’m not sure that the sound was ever made. With half-open eyes, I see an image of someone sitting up in bed. The cobwebs in my head dissipate as I realize this figure is Nan. She is sitting, ramrod straight, her arms outstretched in front of her, her face reflecting something I can’t see. I look at the wall where she stares, just to make sure there is nothing remarkable there. Her face remains slack but her eyes are as full of life and wonder as the day she got on the motorcycle.
“Nan, what is it?” I whisper, looking from her to the wall, where I hope I will see what she sees.
As if my words have broken a spell, Nan falls back down in her bed with the small thump of a ninety-pound woman on a mattress.
I stand and watch her. Two deep breaths. Two more shallower. Then nothing. The silence of her not breathing fills the room and I hold my own breath as long as I can, until I gasp and touch her, knowing she should have breathed again now. I know what is happening despite resisting it. A certainty made of absence.
I touch her wrist, searching for a pulse. The lack of one tells me this is not a dream. I run out to the hall and scream for help.
It’s not like the movies. No drama or paddles or crash cart or CPR. A life has passed and it is accepted. Quietly. Respectfully even, but I remember more of a drama when we put our dog Twinkle to sleep. It is me, a nurse, and a shell that once carried a woman I loved. There is no doctor. No one looks at the clock and pronounces the time. I glance at it and see it’s 11:48. I was asleep for maybe thirty minutes and now Nan is gone.
I’m quietly crying, the tears spilling in silence down my cheeks. The nurse asks if I need to call anyone and when I answer yes, she guides me to a family room.
Halfway down the hall I stop. “Will she still be there when I go back? Can I go back?”
“Yes. She’ll be there for a while. You can go back.”
The family room is empty and when the nurse shuts the door, it’s the loneliest feeling I have ever had. In every way, I am alone.
I dial Mom’s number. When her voice answers, I don’t speak. I cry, sobs overtaking me.
“Is she gone?” Mom’s voice is a whisper.
I nod then realize I’m on the phone. “Yes.” My voice is low and thick.
“Is there anyone else there with you?”
I shake my head, unable to speak.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can get there. And I’ll call Henrietta.”
“Okay.” I want her there now. I want her shoulder to cry on and her presence to make me feel less lonely.
I call Jamie and repeat the non-conversation. He will be here soon too.
I sit in the room, afraid to go back and afraid to stay. Which is lonelier? I wonder. To stay here in a place her life never was or to go back to a place where it existed but does no more.
A man comes in the family room with a small, crying boy of maybe five or six. I put my head down, wiping my face with my palms, get up, and walk out without meeting either of their eyes. I don’t need to know what pain lies there.
On the way back to Nan’s room, I stop crying. I feel like I’m returning to an empty room, a place where there is no Nan. And I can’t find a tear now because I know what happened when she died. When she passed. Once that phrase seemed too easy to me, not enough to say about a death, but I felt her pass and the word seems perfect now.
Walking into Nan’s room, I see Carl standing next to the bed. He looks at me with a peaceful sadness.
“I’m sorry.” His words are soft.
“She’s gone,” I whisper.
“I was still on the floor. Another loss. I wondered if I could be of some help. Would you like me to say a prayer?”
Another loss. I think about the man and child in the family room.
“Yes.”
“Would you like to join me?” He places his hand out, inviting me to take it. I don’t hesitate. I want to touch someone alive and feel connected. I hold his hand as he prays.
“Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world in the name of God the Father Almighty who created you, in the name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you in the name of the Holy Spirit who sanctified you. May your rest this day be in peace and your dwelling place the paradise of God.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures …”
Carl continues to say the Twenty-third Psalm, Nan’s favourite, and all I can think of is her in a green pasture, in the garden she had imagined. Peaceful, still waters nearby.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me …”
Something comforted her, something she saw made her face light up in wonder in the moment before she left what surely was her valley of the shadow of death.
Carl finishes his prayer, opens his eyes, looks to me. Closes them again.
“Dear Lord, please grant a peace that only you can give to the family of Laura, who are left here mourning her loss. Let them be comforted by memories of her. Comfort them with your love. We pray this in your name. Amen.”
I keep my hand in Carl’s and keep looking down at what was Nan.
“I think she saw the garden.”
“I hope so.”
“No, I think she saw it right here. I think I watched her see it. She sat up in bed. Sat up straight and reached her arms out to something. Her eyes were focussed on something that seemed to fill her with amazement. Like it was the most wondrous thing she’d ever seen. There was no fear there at all.” I shake my head. “Whatever she saw must have been beautiful. I could almost see it myself in her eyes and I kept looking where she was looking to try to see it for real. And then she was gone. Just gone. And I knew. It was like I felt her …” I take a deep, gasping breath, gulping in air to fill the empty lungs I feel I have. “…leave,” I whisper. “There was Nan and then there was nothing.” I point to her with my free hand. “Like this is a container, drained of her. This is not Nan.”
I look at him, searching for something. “I felt the instant she left, the moment this body became empty. Her breath stopped only a second after she did.”
“I know.”
“Have you felt that before?”
He nods.
“With Dad it was so sudden and so much going on. It felt violent somehow, chaotic. But this was so peaceful. Like she just quietly slipped away.” I raise my voice. “And she sat up, Carl. She was paralysed and she sat up and saw something. I so wanted to see what she saw.”
He squeezes my hand.
“Jen?” Jamie is standing in the doorway and I’m holding hands with this man wearing a wrinkled blue shirt, standing over Nan’s body. I let Carl’s hand go. I walk toward Jamie and him toward me, meeting halfway.
He holds me and whispers, “I’m sorry.”
I tuck my head under his chin, against his chest. His hands smooth my hair. I feel his tension, know he’s waiting for my sobbing tears but I don’t have them.
“I’m okay,” I say.
I don’t move. Something wet falls on me, dampening my hair. I realize I’m the lucky one to have gotten to be in the presence of Nan’s change from life to death. I hear Jamie sniff.
Lifting my head up, I pull close to Jamie’s ear and whisper. “Nan is okay now too.”
18
“SHE’S BEEN LIKE a rock,” I hear Mom say to someone at the funeral home.
“She was there when she died?” asks the woman Mom is talking to. I walk away, not hearing her answer.
I have spent over forty-eight hours coming to grips with it all. I’ve told the story of Nan sitting up so many times that I tell people I won’t tell it anymore.
“Another stroke,” the doctor explained to Henrietta about Nan’s sitting up. She most likely had another stroke when I saw her sitting up, her electrified brain seeing who knows what psychedelic trip. A nice, scientific answer to a question I never felt I had to ask.
This room is filled with family and friends and neighbours. Voices meld into one large blanket of sound. I’ve been here for four hours now so far today and six hours yesterday. I’ve smiled at everyone who said they were sorry. I’ve listened to stories about Nan, about Dad, about me as a precocious child. My hand has been shaken by dozens of people, my shoulder patted a hundred times.
Two people I’ve never seen before are in front of the condolences book for Nan. Henrietta is in a corner, dabbing her eyes as she talks to Mrs. Wells, who lived next door to Nan and Pop. Mom and Bryce are standing near the casket, she talking to someone, he close by. But not too close.
The casket is open. Nan is wearing the powder-blue dress she has kept in a garment bag, ready for her funeral, since before Pop died. The pearls around her neck are fake. Henrietta has had the real ones for years. Nan never planned on getting buried in the good stuff. Sarah has Nan’s engagement ring and I have her wedding ring, although I know I’ll rarely wear it.
Rings and mechanics don’t go well together. I learned that when I was eight years old and saw Harold Winter get his wedding ring caught on the edge of the garage door as it was being raised. He couldn’t get the ring untangled from the door. The garage door kept going up, taking the ring with it, finger and all.
But I’m wearing Nan’s ring today and I twist it around my left middle finger as I wonder what the point of this whole thing is. Is all this smiling, shaking hands, small talk, and reminiscing about comforting us or about comforting the people who walk in to sign the book or is it just obligation for them? Are people happy to have this duty done when they leave here? Do they go for fish and chips and talk about how thin Nan looked? At how she looked so good in the dress? Do they notice how the dress is pulled back, the extra material gathered underneath her, having been bought and zippered into a garment bag when she was forty-odd pounds heavier? Do they talk about how Henrietta’s hair looks like a poodle’s, her stylist going overboard on the tight curls? Do they see the looks between Mom and Bryce? The way they look at each other but try to pretend they don’t?
The last time I slept was before Nan died. My eyelids are like lead weights and I’m exhausted, but whenever I’ve had the opportunity to lie down, sleep has eluded me. Nothing helps, not even the wine I’ve had the past couple of nights. I don’t like wine but I wanted something that might help me sleep but wouldn’t make me lose myself. Also, I’ve noticed that Jamie doesn’t bug me about wine. He and I have shared a glass before bed, before the time when he sleeps and I stare at the ceiling, thinking of things I wish I could get out of my mind.
I lean against a wall. I feel myself wavering. Desperate to rest. Needing to escape this place. Wanting so much not to be a rock.
“I’m going to go home and get showered. Maybe change my clothes,” I tell Mom. “I’m really tired.”
“I know.” She touches my shoulder gently. “You don’t have to come back this evening if you don’t want to.”
“No. I’ll be back. I just need to get freshened up.”
On the way home I pause to turn into a parking lot. I get out, walk in the store and make my purchase. No need for perusing or hesitation. Take it off the shelf. Bring it to the counter. Pay my money. A cheap price for sleep.
I crack the bottle in the car, taking several gulps, enjoying the warmth. I turn the air conditioner up on bust. The air outside is sweltering. I continue to drink, sitting in the car in the parking lot, the urge to move, the desire to sleep suddenly replaced by the joy of numbing.
A woman walks by, stops, and looks at me, letting me know that she sees I’m drinking in my car. I raise the bottle to her in the sign of a toast and nod. Then I drink some more.
I move the car, not because I’ve already thought of where I want to be. I haven’t gone now in over a week, after months of going every day. I continue to take long swigs from the bottle as I drive there, unconcerned by the presence of people in other cars who might see me. By the time I reach the cemetery, the bottle is half gone.
I drive through the cemetery, down the small lanes that permit me to get close to Dad’s grave and stop next to Dad’s row. From where I am I can see the place where Nan will rest tomorrow, or what was Nan, next to Pop’s grave.
I feel no connection to the place anymore. The only thing in here, I now know, are the empty cases of the people who once existed. Dad and Nan and Pop are no more here than they are in my car. They are more likely in my car. Is Dad here with me now? Nan? Pop?
“Dad, are you here?” I shout. “I love you.” I take another drink. “But I don’t understand. How could you stop me from talking to Mom, how could you lie to me about her not calling? How does a father do that to a little girl? I might not have cried myself to sleep every night, but I thought she didn’t love me. And you could have made that easier on me.”
Thoughts I have been trying to push out of my head keep pushing back. I rub my forehead then hit it against the steering wheel.
“Goddamn it! It was a lie. And it’s your fault. I’ve spent my life thinking she didn’t care enough to call, and she has spent her life thinking I was too angry to speak to her, that if she didn’t return to her miserable life with you, that she’d lose her kid. Well, we know now.” I scream every word until my voice drops to a whisper to say, “But is it too late?”
I look at the verse on his headstone. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. How much joy did she miss? How much weeping had she done? Because of him. Because of me. I gasp for a breath, suddenly feeling like I’m drowning.
I’d looked at that headstone hundreds of times and felt anger every time, at how she could have considered any kind of joy when our world had ended. Now it sears questions into my brain. When will I find joy? How can I help Mom find hers?
“Oh, Mom,” I say out loud.
And my eyes close slowly as I place the bottle firmly between my legs so it won’t fall when I go to sleep.
It takes at least a minute for me to realize where I am when I wake. A cold has settled over me. I left the car running and the air conditioner has done its job too well. The cold only reminds me of the bottle between my legs and the warmth inside it. It’s 7:20. I slept for almost three hours and yet I still feel as tired as I did at the funeral home.
The funeral home. I told Mom I’d come back in the evening. I consider calling a cab, but sitting here, I don’t feel drunk. And it’s been three hours. In the cold. I put the cap back on the bottle and lay it down in the passenger seat.
The parking lot at Carnell’s Funeral Home is full and I circle around a few minutes before a space comes open. After a couple more drinks, I search the glove compartment for gum I know I have there and find it. I put three sticks in my mouth and chew all the way to the funeral home; my feet falter from time to time. Shouldn’t sleep in the car, I tell myself. Now my balance is off as I try to walk again after sleeping in one position too long.
A small group of people are outside the funeral home smoking, and as I approach them I realize I’m no
t walking straight at all. My best attempts to alter my course and keep steady fail. I overcompensate as I try to correct my path, and sway more the harder I try not to.
I slow down. One foot in front of the other. Take your time. Go slow and no one will notice, I tell myself. A man glances at me, nudges a woman next to him and nods. She turns and looks at me too.
“What?” I say louder than intended. They both look away and shake their heads in unison like some choreographed judgement of me.
I slow down even more inside the funeral home. Methodically, I take each step to ensure my feet go the way they’re supposed to go. I don’t recognize the people gathered in the doorway of Nan’s room. I get inside and lean against a wall, knowing I’ll be fine as long as I stay there. Mom isn’t in the room, neither is Bryce or Jamie. Henrietta, Chuck and Sarah are encircled by people. A woman is crying over Nan’s casket. I don’t know her. How could someone care so much about Nan that she would weep over her and I wouldn’t even know her?
A firm hand on my shoulder jolts me. I lose my balance for a second and place my hand on the wall for support.
“How are you?” BJ asks. “Sorry I wasn’t here earlier but I got here as soon as the newscast was over.”
“I nod. “S’okay.”
“Where’s your mom? Is she coming this evening?”
I answer with a shrug.
“I suppose you got Michelle’s email?”
Shaking my head sets me off balance again as I have stepped away from the wall. I start to fall.
BJ grabs my arm to catch me. “Are you drunk?” she whispers, leaning into my ear.
“No,” I say loud enough to make several heads turn.
“Come on, let’s get you home before your mom gets here.” She places her hand firmly on my arm, pulling me away.
“No, I’m fine. I told Mom I’d be here.” More people turn to look at me.
A man I don’t recognize at first walks toward us. As he gets closer, I see that inside the navy-striped suit with the white shirt and navy tie is Carl.