Sketches of a Story about Death

My mom let me wear roller skates to my uncle’s wake. She carried me and my feet dangled there past her hips, the wheels, glitter-red and heavy. I wouldn’t look at him. I pushed my face into my mom’s neck and closed my eyes because I was seven or eight. Or maybe I was six.

What matters is my mom let me wear my skates. What matters is my uncle wouldn’t stop doing drugs. And one night he got so wasted, he passed out on the railroad tracks and his friends left him there. Because there are people who will leave you on the railroad tracks and there are people who would never do something like that. Not to a friend, not to a stranger, not to an animal, not to a leaf.

When my grandma died, I was sad because my mom was sad. My dad bought me a cheeseburger on the way back from the funeral home. For some time after, cheeseburgers wrapped in pale orange paper reminded me of funerals. I stopped eating cheeseburgers but that wasn’t why. I can’t remember why. Maybe that was why. I didn’t know my grandma very well and she ignored me most of the time. But I remember when her dog bit her and she cried on the phone. She was wearing a red leather jacket. What matters is she was the only one who could get me to eat eggs because she put cheese in them and I didn’t even know they were eggs.

When my grandpa died, I was too young to remember. What matters is people tell me he was crazy about me. What matters is he had a big pickup truck, gold like bourbon. You can die when you’re in your early fifties because you work too hard and you don’t take care of yourself and you don’t stand up for yourself or teach your children the right things or learn the right things.

When my grandma died, I was sad because I look just like her. And she liked to recite poetry from memory. Lines and lines and lines as she looked out of the car window. We would drive from home to Alabama. From Alabama back home. What matters is when she went to Detroit we’d go pick her up from the bus station and my dad would give me quarters so I could watch the little black and white TV they had bolted to the seat. And when the time was up, the TV would go off automatically. It scared me every time. What matters is I miss my grandma and how she had those poems memorized and how she’d look out of the car window and how she always wore navy blue skirts.

When my grandpa died, my dad found him. I remember sitting in his garage with the door open when it was raining. And the time he put a fish sandwich in the kitchen drawer. What matters is one night my dad and I found him wandering the streets and he said the moon was chasing him. And the time when he pulled out a shotgun and shot through the ceiling, my brother cried. What matters is when they buried my grandpa, the ground was frozen. Too frozen. It took them a long time to dig the hole.

What matters is that you talk to your kid and let them wear their skates to a funeral home and feed them and realize they get sad when you get sad.

And what matters is that the moon is chasing us all.