after Casimir Pulaski Day
“Goldenrod and the 4H Stone: the things I brought you when I found out you had cancer of the bone.”
I am staring at a body at my first funeral. She was my great aunt, Shirley, and she lived three houses away from my grandfather and her hair has remained curled. I stand, thinking about all of the cow trinkets within her house. I wonder why there aren’t any cows at the funeral or in her casket. Didn’t Ancient Egyptians bury the dead with their favorite things? I feel a hand on my shoulder and convince myself it’s Shirley agreeing.
“Your father cried on the telephone and he drove his car to the navy yard, just to prove that he was sorry.”
I sit on my friend’s back patio as he tells me about the days his mother snuck into the movie theaters with him. The way he and his mom mixed milk duds with popcorn and he’d stick some in her hair as they left. He tells me about the day he found her hanging and I want to know if there was any popcorn left in her hair when he did.
“In the morning, through the window shade, when the light pressed up against your shoulder blade and I could see what you were reading.”
My grandmother touches my shoulder as we stare at Shirley’s corpse. She brushes my hair with her fingers and asks if I want to touch Shirley. She tells me every funeral she’s ever been to, she finds herself always wanting to touch the body. I realize the reason she’s brushing my hair now.
“All the glory that the Lord has made”
I spend most nights grieving. Grieving the versions of me that never got to exist, grieving the ideas I never got to see. Some part of me wants to be immortal, to stay forever, to only grieve and never be grieved. But I think about how many more winters I’d have to go through, how many more corpses I’d try to touch. I’d like to believe I’d never get used to that amount of death.
“and the complications that you could do without when I kissed you on the mouth.”
My grandmother tells me not to.
“Tuesday nights at the Bible study we lift our hands and pray over your body”
I sit with a man who tells his hospice nurse that he doesn’t want to die. He says he doesn’t care about heaven or if God is waiting for him, he says he wants to know what will happen here. Less than a week later, his skin turns blue and he stops. I wonder if he really did stop believing, or if abandonment still meant repentance.
“but nothing ever happens.”
“She’ll be cold,” is what my grandmother says, “every memory you have of her will be consumed by ice.” I remember how cold my hands are. I think about how if Shirley were surrounded by all her favorite things, then they’d all be cold too.
“I remember at Michael’s house when you kissed my neck and I almost touched your blouse”
When my father left, he moved to Florida. He worked on an orange farm and never bought a coat.
“In the morning at the top of the stairs when your father found out what we did that night and you told me you were scared.”
I have been to four funerals, all for people I never knew. I have no hold on grief and yet it is the only word I can think of for those who have disappeared. I keep waiting for them to come back and that’s when I mourn, is when I realize winter will always return.
“All the glory when you ran outside”
The day I was born there was supposed to be a blizzard but instead it was 70 degrees and sunny.
“with your shirt tucked in and your shoes untied”
We drive for six hours for the hour-long service for a man I barely know. The music is terrible and my sweater is itchy. I spend the rest of the night sitting in the hotel hot tub, waiting for someone to come in to tell me my ride left without me.
“and you told me not to follow you.”
I kick my ankles against the patio and tell my friend about the day my father left. He asks if it’s worse to have dead parents or shitty parents. I ask him if there should be a distinction between different types of gone — whether there’s really a difference between snow and ice.
“Sunday night when I clean the house, I find the card where you wrote it out”
It sounds like a prediction doesn’t it? He always sings like he’s mourning, even when he’s worshiping.
“on the floor at the great divide”
My mother’s church has services for the dead. She would take me the first Sunday of every month and we would pray for those who left. We were the only family dressed in all black but she would tell me it was the only way to show any real respect for those who passed. I asked her about the living and she said every other day was for us, it’s selfish to ask for more than we already had. I prayed for my father to appear in the newspaper with a bullet wound in January and then called it repentance.
“with my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied”
Whenever I lose someone, I search for meaning or maybe beauty in it but I’m beginning to think it’s better there never was.
“I am crying in the bathroom.”
I tell my friend about when I used to pray. He says he prays for necromancy and climate change.
“In the mourning”
My mother tells me about the day I was born. She says my first breath took away all the cool air at midnight in January and that’s what made the day so warm.
“when you finally let go”
Some people say that in order to become something new, you need to leave everything else behind. That abandonment is its own form of creation, maybe renewal.
“and the nurse runs in with her head held low”
I’m at a funeral for a woman at my mother’s church and the priest says her laugh sounded like her favorite drink. Rock & Rye Faygo with ice on a beach in the middle of the summer. The priest says her laugh was the best part of her, he says she kept laughing, even after the hypothermia.
“and the cardinal hits the window.”
My grandmother says she envies the freedom birds have. The way they can fly away from wherever they find themselves without remorse or apology. She says she feels too guilty to do it herself.
“In the morning in the winter shade”
At her funeral, I wore a dress with music notes on it. I said it was a birds’ song.
“on the first of March, on the holiday”
I wish I could say I’ve lost and then kept living but I didn’t. I was born on a sunny day in January already having lost someone and then survived. I feel like the distinction is significant.
“I thought I saw you breathing.”
Taking my first breath turned my lungs into ice and I’ve had asthma since. I’d like to think when I take my last, I’ll breathe the ice back out. Instead of ice being internal, it will cover my entire body and that will be why I won’t be able to move.
“All the glory that the Lord has made”
My mother’s phone rings with a number from Florida and I answer it. He says his mom has died and I am invited to the funeral. He says he’s grateful I never answer any of his messages because it’d only make him even more guilty. He says he’s sick of the constant heat. I hang up and make a snow angel, claiming winter for myself.
“and the complications when I see His face in the window in the morning.”
Do you think when he disappeared he froze over too?
“All the glory when He took our place”
Every time I try to conjure a version of my funeral, the only thing I can think of is the child whose grandmother will speak to them about my corpse, where the ice has consumed me.
“but He took my shoulders and He shook my face”
I just keep waiting for it to sublime.
“and He takes and He takes and He takes.”
Kaydance Rice is a writer from Grand Rapids, Michigan and currently attending Interlochen Arts Academy. She is the recipient of several regional and national awards from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in the Taco Bell Quarterly, YoungArts Anthology, Cargoes, voicemail poems, and Full Mood Magazine. In her free time, Kaydance enjoys playing the viola, rambling about existentialism, and spending time with her plants.