THIRTY
eternity
ansley
I don’t remember my mother’s funeral. I’m told it was beautiful, and I know that was true because I checked the flowers before I took enough of Caroline’s in-case-of-plane-flight Valium to get through the church and the handshaking and the stories about my mother with some sense of composure. Caroline informed me I even made a little joke. The mayor had had the hots for my mom for as long as I could remember, so when things got really rough with my former neighbor Mr. Solomon—like the time he said my grass seed had blown into his yard and was now growing there—Bob always took my side. When Mayor Bob came up, blotting his eyes, and hugged me, I evidently said, “Thank God Mr. Solomon went first.” I was funny.
My memory kicks in—hazily, more like I’m watching it all play out on video than actually living it—after the funeral, about the time I put on yoga pants and a sweatshirt. It was 75 degrees, but I wanted to feel cozy. I remember my brother Scott knocking on my door. I remember crying on his shoulder and begging him to come home in one piece. I remember John telling me he knew the spreading of our mother’s ashes was something he didn’t deserve. I remember telling him lightly that I agreed. He laughed, but we both knew I meant it wholeheartedly. And then I said, “You should come, John.”
He had looked up at me tentatively, contritely. “I’d like to have this time with you, Ans. I really would.”
I smiled. I thought I might like that too.
The girls and I sat around the living room and told stories about my mother. We laughed and cried.
Jack appeared in the living room, and when I saw him, I quit feeling so alone. When he hugged me, I knew I had someone. Though our skiff would have been more appropriate, Jack took our sad and poorly dressed brigade on his boat to Starlite Island. Well, poorly dressed except for Caroline, who looked impeccable in a white shift with a pale blue cardigan draped across her delicate shoulders. “Grammy would roll over in her grave if she saw the motley crew of the four of you,” she told us, looking John up and down in his shorts and T-shirt.
“And that,” Sloane said, “is why you were her favorite.” I saw a sadness pass through her eyes with the mere mention of the word were. It was a hard pill to swallow.
After he helped each of us out, Jack started to climb back into the boat when Caroline said, “You come too, Jack. You’re family.”
He looked at me tentatively. I smiled. He was. More than she even knew. Whether we were ever together again, Jack was the father of my two eldest girls. Whether they ever knew that was irrelevant, though I did, as I had for years, intend to tell them. He would always, always be family.
I took comfort in knowing my mother would be here forever, across from the home that had been in our family for generations, and that she could rest peacefully on the island where she had spent her childhood summers, raised her children, and then formed a deep and irreversible bond with her grandchildren. It made me happy that I could always look out my window and know she and my dad were here. Of course, for a little while, it would be too painful to look out the window. But, little by little, the pain would ease until, one day, I would look out, think of my mother resting here, and smile. That day, I would know I was healed.
Each of the girls, John, and I had a jar of ashes. Not a fancy urn or beautiful container, but a plain, glass Ball jar containing what was left of the woman I loved most. Scott had claimed he needed to get to the airport, but I knew it was simply too hard for him to stay. He had said good-bye to Mom in spirit at the church, but to say good-bye to her in the flesh was too much. May as well move on to something where he might be able to help. I thought his Iraqi quest was silly at best, terribly risky at worst. But, as I have known from that moment as a teenager when Jack told me he never wanted children, you cannot change a man. It was fruitless to try.
Sloane opened her jar first and said, “Grammy, we miss you so much already, but we know you are happy here. You are at peace.”
We all wiped our eyes as the ashes blew into the wind, mingling into the sand, being swept out into the water, and catching on the blades of marsh grass. My mother was a part of Starlite Island now, as much as the waves and the wind and the tide. It was just as she had always wanted it to be.
“Mom,” John said, his voice catching in his throat. I took his hand and nodded at him to go on. “I know I didn’t always make you proud, but I promise you that I’m here now. I will watch over your family. I promise you I will make it right.”
I hoped with all my heart that was true. I didn’t say it then, but I would tell my brother later that, for me, it wasn’t about making anything right. It was what we did now, how we came back together that mattered.
We all took turns saying our piece about how much my mother had meant to us, and even as we were saying our final good-byes, it was incomprehensible to think she was gone. I went last, and when it was my turn, so much that I had wanted to say to my mother had already been said. Jack put his arm around me, squeezing me to his side. “Mom,” I started, “I am so happy you get to be here, at our favorite place, with Daddy, for eternity. The two of you together forever was the way it was always meant to be.”
Jack looked down at me. I looked up at him. And I wondered if maybe the same couldn’t be said for the two of us.