We Find Ourselves Alone Together for the Last Time

Tiny Moments, Volume IV, 2024

The unsmiling expression of the funeral director met my puffy, grief-strained face at the door. She knew I was coming. I’d just called about my forgotten diaper bag. She quickly closed the door behind me, reducing the smack of November chill. 

“Please,” she said, one extended hand gesturing into the hall. 

Please. This was a word I assumed funeral people said a lot, and by itself. I understood this to be a profession marked by restraint, knowing just what to say or not say, simple, direct pleases. She pointed to my light blue - polka dotted bag slouched on the floor beside a grandfather clock, then disappeared without seeing me out, like a ghost. I guessed she was tired. She probably wanted to go home, eat dinner with her family, get on with living. My brother Donny’s wake had attracted over 700 mourners, a long night for everyone, closing time.

The double doors to the room which held my brother’s body were wide open, exposing his splayed coffin. Like a light turned off or a chair moved, I supposed opening his coffin was just another closing- time task. Still, I was surprised. After all, it had been so ceremoniously closed just an hour before, after the viewing. The dimmed lights evoking a classy, somber mood were now snapped to a nasty brightness. The harp musak Donny would have mocked switched off, the room held its breath in a stiff, overwhelming silence. I could not ignore his presence. I could not believe, in that moment, he was not really there. I could not stop myself from inching in, coming closer.

There he lay, ready for the next day I supposed, when family would gather again to say our final goodbyes. I lingered there beside him, of course I did, studying him, my friend, our lives together speeding through my mind: riding bikes to the pool, watching Gidget reruns, laughing at the breakfast table. Answering his phone with fake surprise and interest, “Maggie…my fourth favorite sister,”  always the teasing older brother, humor his shield. More recently, the two of us standing in our parents’ living room, watching my son struggle to walk. Donny was 51 and dying and I was a 43 year old new mom.  “You will say and do things as a parent that will shock and surprise you,” he said, wisdom and regret hovering in the air, fading in the moment.

I knew I had to go. I had to leave him there with all the other furniture and non-living things in this sad, strange place. I willed my body to move, feeling like a traitor, hearing Donny’s voice.

“Don’t leave me here, Mag. Take me with you. Let’s go home.”

There was no other choice but to take what I needed, abandon the undertaker air, escape to the car, humming in the bracing cold.