Sweet Reverent: A Stream of Conscious Mourning

On January 16, 2018, I got a phone call from my dad telling me that my sister had passed away. This is what I do next:

• Cry

• Be grateful that my mom was at her side when it happened.

• Wish I could be at my mom's side because my sister's wish is for me to take care of mom. And I couldn't be there for mom. When it happened.

• Text Brian

• Text Katie

• Text Mandi

• Text Jenn

• Text Maddie

• Cry some more

• Look at the clock. Wonder what the time of death was. Wonder what the time was when my father told me.

• For some reason, knowing these things feels important.

• Check my phone to see when dad called--7:08 pm. Time of death must have been around 7 because dad said she had just passed away. That her heart had been pounding all day because he had checked. And when mom felt that she heard Mandy's two last breaths [fish out of water just like the Little Blue Book (of death) says?], she must have called upon my dad who was surely sitting in his recliner in the living room watching something mundane and too loud on TV. He must have come up the stairs and checked for a pulse that wasn't there. I wonder what his heart was doing under its covers.

• Wonder if mom was in hysterics during all of that. When she heard the first last breath and then the last last breath (because dad had said that mom heard Mandy's two last breaths). And then the nothing that will last forever. And then mom must have had to remind herself to breathe so that she could call for my father because he can't hear that well due to Tinnitus. Plus he always has the TV so damn loud down there in the living room. And then she had to wait for him to pull his body out of the recliner, come up the creaky, carpeted steps, and approach his wife who may or may not have been in hysterics.

• I can't imagine her being in hysterics.

• Think of the word "hysterics". It derives from women who would act out of line--hysterical--and only a--hysterectomy--could take care of it.

• Remember that mom was definitely crying when dad called me. Because I asked dad where mom was. She was still there with Mandy. Aside from crying, she might have been holding Mandy's thin bird wing of a hand. Or crying into Mandy's gaunt face, her tears collecting in the hollows above Mandy's clavicles. Or gently washing Mandy's face with a warm, wet rag like I had watched her to do many times. So many times I have seen my mother's hurting body bending over my sister's dying body. My new iconography. Or maybe she was in too much shock to touch her daughter, everything still sinking in. But that's probably not the case.

• Respond to texts, condolences, etc., from the few people I texted. Everyone is asking me if I'm going home but I'm at a job I can't quite leave because it's a caregiving gig. And there's a snowstorm. Dad told me not to come home tonight in the snow. These questions from my friends feel like accusations. I feel guilty that I'm not with my family. That I'm not high-tailing my orange blaze of a jalopy through the snowy mountains. That I'm thinking about work and that there is so much I have to do by Friday.

• Not know how to respond to friends asking me if I'm going home. I guess I'll go home tomorrow? Or wait until the weekend? I feel I can't make this decision without talking to mom.

• Pick up my phone to be mindless.

• Notice that my good friend Jeanette posted a quote by Mary Oliver: "Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually./Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us."

• Realize that I didn't text Jeanette my bad news. And I don't want to because I'm hoping that she's warm in her beautiful home in the snowy country, with her burly husband and her children, one that has snowy hair. I want for her to be peaceful. She's obviously peaceful--she's reading Mary Oliver. Or she's not peaceful, so she's reading Mary Oliver in order to become peaceful. I leave her be.

• I wait. I am at work, watching Yuri, a gentleman who has autism, while his parents are out bowling. I don't have the heart to call them and tell them to come home sooner because what am I going to do? Cry alone in my apartment sooner?

• Realize that I was watching Yuri when I found out my Aunt Linda died of ALS last year.

• Realize that both my aunt and sister died on a Tuesday.

• Wonder if I'll have a certain feeling about Tuesdays from now on.

• Now that I think of it, Tuesday does feel more death-ier than the other days of the week. Saturday would be next.

• Remember one of Michael Scott's hilarious quotes: "I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious."

• Feel a little guilty for laughing.

• Come across a picture of a mountain in Alaska while browsing a hiking group on Facebook. A beautiful, snow-covered road is in the foreground as the mountain looms in the distance, only slightly beyond some coniferous trees.

• Question the picture's authenticity. It looks photoshopped to me. That's a high, abrupt mountain and those trees look too tall and robust to be at such an elevation. And is that a small mountain in front of the large mountain or is that an alluvial fan? Is that what it's called?An alluvial fan?

• Text Brian the photograph of the mountain and ask him if it looks real to him. Never respond when he asks where it was taken.

• Google "alluvial fan". I feel like I'm correct, however there is also something called a colluvial fan and I don't know what that is. But I feel like alluvial fan is correct.

• Look at images upon images of alluvial fans.

• How comfortable and soft they look. Like something I can cry into or cover myself in. It just spreads like arms and gently slopes downwards. Like a mother over her dying child.

• Refuse to look up colluvial fan because I'm too satisfied in the alluvial's softness and gentleness.

• Realize that there's most likely nothing soft or gentle about the creation of an alluvial fan.

• Learn that a group of narwhals is called a "blessing".

• Remember that yesterday I learned that pumpkins used to be nicknamed "millions" because of all the seeds that they contain.

• Think about all my millions.

• Like Brian and how lucky I am to have him and hope that he drives home safe from work.

• Think about my family's and my misfortunes the past year.

• I go check on Yuri who re-watches the same six seconds of a M*A*S*H episode.

• Remember that my father told me not to cry in front of him.

• Think that maybe my dad is autistic.

• Go into another room to cry some more.

• Think about my sister.

• Realize that when I think about my sister, she is always sitting in a chair. Always aloof and quiet.

• Realize that she was always just legs and arms to me. And a tummy. A tummy is a skinny belly. She was never large. Not until the edema.

• Yuri's parents come home and they talk about how terrible they are at bowling.

• Yuri's mom is digging around in her purse for my payment, asking me if I'm going home this weekend to see my sister.

• I tell her that I just found out that Mandy had passed away.

• Realize that even though they were the first people I said that aloud to, it wasn't the first time I said it aloud. I repeated it aloud over and over while thinking about narwhals and pumpkins.

• Yuri's mother hugs me and I wonder what I feel like in her arms. I pat her on the back.

• I say goodbye to Yuri. He gives me a simple "bye".

• I go to my car and pull out my broken ice scraper that dad gave to me and I start up my car. The scraper part is broken and jagged and so I make clear scribbles in the one on my windshield until there's at lest some visibility.

• Briefly think of the irony of me getting into an accident and dying on the way home.

• Is that irony?

• I drive the long, flatter way home while listening to Gregory Alan Isakov's "The Stable Song" on repeat:

Come down, come down sweet reverent

unto my simple house and ring,

and ring.

#essay #personal #family