This morning I put mason jars with my mother’s black raspberry jam and maple syrup and spaghetti sauce in my backpack. Then I biked down the hill and around the corner, ditched the bike at the bottom of the driveway, walked past the dogwood saplings, past the front garden overgrown with milkweed husks and fading wildflowers. Took a deep breath. Knocked on the red front door and sat on the steps for a minute.
An old friend opens the door. He’s just barely awake, even though it’s about five minutes to noon. Up all night gaming with The Boys, most likely. He’s smiling.
It’s more or less the same smile that it used to be. Almost nine years ago, now. In some ways he hasn’t changed much in the intervening decade. In other ways he has grown. He’s no longer the small and vulnerable child who used to fall asleep with his legs stretched across the center aisle at the back of the schoolbus, the child that a younger version of me instinctively needed to watch over and care for, the child who could make me laugh until I couldn’t breathe without thinking about it.
It’s the same smile that danced across the face of the old friend sitting across from me at the pizza place – the one across from the waterfall on main street in town. We used to go for months without talking to each other, then each remember the other existed for long enough to reach out and say hello, and then it was always a good time.
A little while ago I reached out a hand to steady him, or maybe I was the one who needed steadying, and he took it, and neither of us wanted to let go.
I’ve been knitting a sweater. Carefully. In the last four years he is one of the very few people worth thinking of knitting a sweater for.
This morning we sat side by side on the front porch, eating bread and jam and visiting with the bees, talking about nothing in particular, talking about bad movies and the gaps in the trees.
The air is cold. This is the last day on earth for a loved one, and some of the family has gone to say goodbye. He’s stayed home with the dogs, with The Boys at the other end of the line, and with me. The last time he saw her, they got their toenails painted. Shades of sparkly pink. For fun. As you do. A twentysomething year old man, and a woman much older than dirt.
He asks me if I’ll help him paint his nails in those same colors, again. In her honor.
When people are dying, the thing to do is cook. We made soup – garlic, onions, celery, carrots, potatoes, rice, sausage, parsley, sage, rosemary, not enough time, and too much salt. His brother stops at the store for some bread. We sat with the dogs on the back porch in the chilly air and ate large bowls of hot soup and torn off strips of ciabatta.
He learned that she’d passed on when he got back from driving me home, because his family wouldn’t let him let me ride my bike home alone in the dark.
The lady picked a good time to go – the veil is thin, and whatnot. But the reaper must have had his hands full, this time around, because by all accounts she was nothing if not stubborn.
I hope it was a smooth transition to whatever happens next.
And I hope it’s a good night.