WHEN EVERYONE YOU LOVED IN YOUR LIFE IS GONE, YOU have days when the wind comes into your house like a person. You get so alone the wind sits down at your table and tries to have itself a cup of coffee, but it can’t, there’s no time, it has to move on, it’s the wind.
Don’t think Oh, Ivy’s off her rocker now and believes in ghosts. I’m not saying the wind is a ghost, only that the feeling of the wind, the whole notion of the wind, is different when all the people you ever loved are gone. It’s not fresh air blowing through your hair and airing out your sheets and kitchen. No, sir. It’s company. The wind is company that has to go.
* * *
Not very good company even when it’s there, and neither are the trees, though I always thought I loved trees, and maybe I did. After Brent died I remember they consoled me. I’d walk in the woods and hear Brent’s voice naming the trees and wildflowers.
Now the trees seem too filled up with meaning I don’t have any words for, and the sky’s the same way. All this meaning pressing in on my heart, making it pound like a drum. Maybe I don’t want so much meaning all at once, but it turns out there’s a lot I don’t get to choose.
I go for walks with a cane now, and not because I need the cane for balance. The cane’s just something I like to put before me, to reach into the spot I’m about to enter, like doing that could protect me from surprises.
So Gladys. Since you’ve been dead for only sixth months, I sometimes step into our old house feeling hopeful, as if your death was a bad dream and now we can go back to normal. Twice I even called your name aloud, then had to sit my bones down at the table.
I clean the house, I take walks, I shop for food, I say hello to a number of people, I sometimes put some music on. But mostly what I do is wait.
* * *
I called James right after you died, of course, and he wept without the slightest hesitation. And he couldn’t speak to me, so he cleared his throat and said he’d call back later, which he did, and then we spoke kindly in hushed voices about the weather down there and the weather up here. “I miss the snow,” James said, in his old man voice, husky and tired out. After that was a long pause. He said, “Well, I best be getting some sleep now.” And I said, “And I should do the same.”
I arranged a service for you in the Unitarian church, in the same bright room as the one we had for Wendell. Louis came alone. He’s still not married, and I still see him once or twice a year, and he’s still Louis, a warm and predictable son, but he couldn’t stay for long. Back to sea.
James didn’t make it up.
Raelene didn’t make it either—she has a brand-new husband with an autistic son. Still, when I told her the news she was heartbroken, called me every day for a week. Just last month she sent me a card saying she hoped I was doing all right.
* * *
When they lowered you into the ground, everything in my body pulled up, up, up. I never felt so strong in my life. I thought for a second it would work, that I would pull you back into the world.
It doesn’t have to be cold and rainy like it is today for me to sit at the table and drink tea and know in my heart I finally understand you.
I know now, Gladys.
I know why you couldn’t just pick up the pieces and move on.
A certain kind of loss takes away your one heart and gives you another heart, a heart you hardly recognize.
That you had to die for me to understand you, Gladys.
Your voice, your face.
* * *
You could’ve got yourself a cane to match mine, and down the lane we’d have gone together.
I remember one night when Ann was three she whispered to me, “Sometimes I think we should all just skip in a circle.” Her eyes were shy but shining, it was like she’d found a solution to a big problem.
What I’d like to think is you and Ann are somewhere now, united. I look up at the stars and think, Is it possible?
Wendell’s there too.
I can’t be sure of anything. Nothing. It’s surprising.
I believe in the chills I get when I look at the stars alone at night.
The chills I get.