The Wake

The living room fan turns on the ceiling. It’s all I can sense from here, lying on my back on a hard, cold surface, as cold and lifeless as my body.

My hands rest one over the other on my stomach. My eyes are closed, and yet something still lets me perceive everything around me, in a way that goes beyond the senses, a way I understand only now.

The room smells of flowers. So many have arrived. People I haven’t seen in years have remembered me and sent the usual phrases. They probably asked the AI which condolences suited their relationship with me.

Someone has come in. I can’t see him, but I feel his energy and the emotions it stirs in me, emotions I felt many years ago, when I met him, when we fell in love.

I feel him approach the coffin, and suddenly there is a sharp pain, his pain becoming mine. The pain of no more time together.

He cries silently. If I could, I would cry too.

“Dad!” A young woman’s voice fills the emptiness of the room.

I feel her impulse to run to him and throw her arms around him. Now their pain joins and grows stronger, but another emotion follows close behind: love.

“I came as fast as I could! It all happened so quickly. I still can’t believe it. Has Violet gotten here yet?”

“Iris!” Another wave of pain and love sweeps the room. It’s Violet.

They embrace again, all three of them this time.

“It was all my fault,” Roy says. “I shouldn’t have extended that work trip into the weekend. If I’d been home, your mother wouldn’t have gone hiking alone. If we’d gone together, she’d still be alive.”

Dear Roy, if it weren’t for you, I’d never have made it to that mountain trail at all. I never told you I was deeply depressed before I met you. But that day I decided to leave the house, just for a coffee. I decided that if someone spoke to me, life was worth living, and if no one noticed me, if I stayed invisible, maybe it wasn’t. And you spoke to me. “This coffee’s a bit too bitter, what do you think?” you asked, and you gave me back the hope that someone cared what I thought. You never knew it, but you saved my life. You gave me another one.

And no, you couldn’t have saved me this time. Even if you’d been home, I would have wanted to walk alone. The voice that told me to leave the house for a coffee, the voice that told me to give this life another chance, told me the other day to go walk in the mountains. Maybe some things can’t be avoided. We humans always think we can control everything, but some things are stronger than we are.

“Dad, what are you saying? It’s not your fault at all. She always went hiking alone. It was an accident,” Violet says.

“I’m sorry it took Mom’s death to bring us together after a year. I should have come sooner,” Iris says, her voice breaking. “I should have come and told Mom how much I loved her, and that I was sorry I’d chosen to live so far away, chasing a career that never came.”

Iris, my love, I always knew you loved me, even if you never said those three words, even if you weren’t the daughter who came for lunch every Sunday. I didn’t have children to keep them close. I had them so I could be close to them for as long as they needed me, to hand down the little I’ve understood about life, so that they, in turn, could hand it on to as many people as possible.

And what do I care about your career, anyway? I’m not your boss! You played your cards. We’d still be lighting fires with two stones if everyone had stayed in their own village.

“Iris, love, Mom knew you loved her, and we’ve always been proud of you,” Roy answers, as if he had heard what I can no longer say.

“I can still hear her laugh, and see her eyes shining from laughing. Hardly anyone laughs like she did,” Violet says.

“You’re right. I thought every family laughed the way we did, that it was normal. But since I left, I laugh a lot less, we were special” Iris says.

My girls, how could I not laugh, with all the happiness that came into my life once you arrived? Every mishap became a reason to laugh, because I had suffered too much before I met your father, and that laughter was my way of chasing off my demons.

Suddenly I feel a new energy, different, smaller, but just as intense. Has someone else come into the room? No new voice.

“Are you all right, Violet?” Iris asks. “You look pale.”

“Yes, I think I just need some water. It’s too much, all of it.”

But I know there’s something more. A mother always knows.

“Actually, no. These flowers are only making my morning sickness worse. I don’t think I can stay here all day,” Violet sighs.

“Your morning sickness?” Roy and Iris ask in unison.

Your morning sickness?

“I wanted to wait to tell you, but I’m here now, and maybe some good news is exactly what we need. I’m pregnant.”

Roy, why didn’t you come walking with me that morning? What was so important in Detroit that weekend?

“Mom will never meet my daughter. She would have been such a great grandmother!” Violet breaks into sobs so violent that I want to tear myself out of this coffin, to smash it to pieces just to hold her and tell her it will be all right. That it’s okay, that she’ll be a wonderful mother. Even though I wanted to be there too, to hold my granddaughter as a newborn, to hear her soft cries, her tantrums, to watch her end-of-year recital.

Or maybe I will be there.