A bank of trees, as my sister called them, staged the road and grew in numbers. Have you ever seen something, someone, someplace, and thought show stopper could only describe it? That's what those trees were. I tried drinking the woods of Wisconsin yesterday. I tried but I couldn't. You can't capture a show stopper, it captures you. Where the line ends.
Do you see all of them? How tall they are? Snow giants. The sun cutting in, the enormity of the light, the pines, the blue burden in the sky. The enormity of a burdened heart finds solace in nature where dormant tears may peel away from quiet caves. My sister and I drove across iced roads to a memorial service at a church in the woods.
I saw beauty along the way. When you see beauty, you see more beauty. Does that make sense? You notice one beautiful thing, and suddenly there is another, too. And another.
"Look," finger pointing at the tree tops.
"Listen," rolling rising resounding voices singing on a spinning cd.
"Here," I'll hold your hand.
My sister puts her hand on my knee, palm up.
The service begins.
The service has ended. But is there ever really an end of a service after a death? Don't we all just go on having our own unique memorials in our own unique ways? 10 years later, humming a eulogy still?
My dress is crinkled black fabric. Sitting crisscrossed on the church floor, my friend's baby is scooped into my lap. I hold his bottle, milk rolling down his throat. He gently thumps one small moccasin foot against my legs. "You have a good mama," I tell him. "You have a good mama."
A few months ago, it was not a friend telling me "my sister died", it was her. A stranger with necklaces hanging on her neck, afro textured hair and eyes that were all there. We met by heaps of laundry.
CLink CLink CLink CLink CLink CLink CLink. Eighty quarters CLink CLank down the tin chute.
She comes right up beside me and puts a bill in the machine, too.
"Hi"
"Hello"
"How are you?" she asks.
"Good, how are you?" I say.
"Sad."
Dryers roll around and around and shirt sleeves wave and disappear from circle windows.
"You're sad?"
"Yes I'm sad."
My sister just died."
None of the machines are working as hard as she is to keep it together. "Different country. . . body. . . travel. . . sister. . ." hard, hard, crying.
CLINK CLINK CLINK BREAK BREAK BREAK FALL FALL FALL GONE GONE GONE
All I can think to offer her, what she might want. . ."Do you want a hug?"
"Yes," Yes yes yes her body says.
The sound of crashing quarters is a backdrop of a weeping stranger clinging to me like no one ever has. It was something desperate. Shakingshakingshaking my body is shaking from it too. A rattling cry, a rattling cry. I feel her breath hot on my shoulder. Her tears her hands her arms her sister.
Sisters, sisters.
We stand for what feels like a long time like this because she holds on for a while. Her long dress spills to the floor.
She raises her head at last, stands tall and leans back slightly.
"I'm- I'm sorry"
"No, no, it's okay. I'm so sorry"
Her hands brush her face. Sisters, sisters, sisters. I leave to go find her some tissues.
When I return, more people are there, folding, loading, unloading. She's folding too. And when she looks up at me across the room, across the lines of dryers and washers, she looks at me across and through her loss. Her hand clutches her chest. "Thank you for the hug," she mouths.
I'm as tossed and wet and spun and wrung out as the clothes.
My eyes scan the walking hugging talking crying smiling people for her. For my friend. After the service. After the songs and sharing when you didn't know if you could and praying and reading and slideshow and silence and music.
Once again, all there is to offer is a crying hug.
The drive back through Wisconsin is dark. The trees look bony and omnivize (because I can't think of a real word that means what I want it to mean, and it reminds me that grief can make you forget simple words like "apple" and "chair" and "branch" and your mind draws a blank page across the easy things like knowing what you did yesterday or how to spell "was").
The windows froze over. We took turns scrapping the ice off.
The frost came back.
We scrapped.
It came.
We scratched.
It came.
We wiped our bare hands over the glass.
It came again.
We tried to see the forest beyond the frosted windows. We saw blurs of light. Many mirages of trees through the frost that never left.
"Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything." C.S. Lewis
Crisp arrows of light spin about. Before he says anymore he walks away from the podium, away from giving the eulogy for his daughter and opens the shades.
The dim room grows gradually brighter.
"I need this, too." he says.
His arms stretch out, palms open.
Towards the sun.
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