That damn van

My sister and I pull up to the church in the minivan Mom bought for the grandkids she saw twice a year.

My phone is set to silent, tucked away in my pocket, but I'm well aware of the notifications flinging themselves across the screen. Every email is marked ! despite my out-of-office warning.

I am away from the office until Monday, August 31. If your inquiry is urgent, please contact Acting Director Gemma Rhodes. Otherwise, I'll reply to your email when I return.

Of course, a solid handful of the emails (and texts, and voicemails) flying in are from said Gemma Rhodes, panicked and paralyzed without guidance.

Perhaps a more candid out-of-office would have been more effective.

My mother died while I was knee-deep in Outlook. My husband left because I prioritized Teams over him. I need therapy and a fucking break, but I'll be back Monday anyways.

Neglected between baptisms and burials, the church looks as tired as I feel. Its grey bones peer out from under the peeling flesh of weathered white paint. Its cedar shingles suffer a rash of lichen, their blistered faces split and curling under the eye of the leaning steeple.

I blink furiously against a memory of two-year-old Willa sitting in Mom’s lap. Mom’s sun-spotted fingers wiggling. Willa’s tiny voice giggling.

“This is the church, this is the steeple, open the doors, and see all the people!”

Mourners’ murmurs spill from the front doors, joining the wind’s chorus in our ears.

We usher everyone out of the van. Caroline hoists her two-year-old, Maggie, to her hip.

“Caro…”

She gives me a hard glare and turns away.

I reach for Willa, but she’s taken hold of Maggie’s slightly older siblings, Gretchen in one hand and Tripp in the other. Tripp stumbles over the crumbling curb and she pulls him upright.

They march on ahead to the steps, and we join the rest of the family in the foyer.

Uncle Kit gives us each a one-armed side squeeze. Auntie Jo hands us wads of crumpled tissues from her red pleather purse. Our cousins, childhood confidants long-since abated to awkward acquaintances, lean in for light-armed hugs. Other generic, geriatric relatives remind us of who they are and offer obligatory condolences.

No one asks about our absent spouses, and I make a mental note in my undying to-do list to thank Auntie Jo later.

Willa and her cousins grimace through a barrage of exclamations: “You’ve grown so tall!” and “Last time I saw you, you were this high!” and “Your Grandma talked about you all the time!”

They bear it stoically, unaware that the remarks are like barbs dipped in shame, pointed at me and Caroline.

We were here. Where were you?

Mom smiles mischievously from the little square programs stacked on a table cloaked in yellowed lace.

She never begrudged me for moving to the other side of the country to chase a career in marketing. She never sought my guilt for building a family a thousand miles away in Toronto. She never accused me of inspiring Caroline to do the same when she packed her bags to marry a doctor in Chicago.

We were never made to feel like Mom’s life was lacking in our absence.

Over weekly Facetime calls we heard about her Friday hair appointments, her Wednesday knitting club, and the state of the strawberries in her garden. She told us about her Saturday brunch orders at Ollie’s and when Pam overcooked the asparagus at their Tuesday dinners. We were up-to-date on the community theatre musicals she directed and the romance books she read and the new cocktail recipes enjoyed on her front porch in the evenings.

Every year, we visited at Christmas and at her birthday in July. She was always thrilled to have us but never reluctant to let us go.

“I feel like we don’t see you enough,” I’d said the last time, suddenly uneasy about her thin face and slow pace. “We should come home more often.”

“Pah!” she’d waved away my guilt like a gnat. “You’re busy. The kids are busy. I’m busy. Besides, I enjoy having my own space.”

And, yet. She’d bought that damn van.

We’re about to proceed into the sanctuary when Maggie clocks a cardboard box of plastic toys sitting above the coat rack. A rainbow stack of rings. A dump truck with three wheels. A naked doll with one blue eye staring heavenward.

“I want. I waaant. I WANT!” She screeches, reaching over her mother’s shoulder as we file through doors propped wide by scuffed wooden triangles. Caroline carries her howling daughter down the aisle with as much composure as one can muster with a feral toddler at a funeral. It lightens the somber mood of the room, and chuckles roll through the crowd.

Not so long ago, it was Willa toddling around, tiny ponytail sticking straight up, a charming nuisance in the pews at Dad’s service and a welcome diversion from the frailty I’d seen in Mom for the first time.

She takes a seat beside me. Her long chestnut hair tumbles effortlessly down her back, the whimsical wisps of girlhood curls almost tamed by adolescence. With every other week lost to her dad, she’s slipping through my fingers and suddenly so much older than she has any right to be.

I fumble for my tissues.

Auntie Jo quiets Maggie with chocolates from her garish bag.

Gretchen and Tripp have a silent wrestling match over who gets to sit next to Willa.

Caroline continues to pointedly ignore me.

I briefly wonder whether I will endure her demise or she mine.

The sanctuary groans with the weight of the congregation; its floorboards and hard oak pews mutter weary complaints.

Jesus hangs in agony above the empty choir bench. A crimson tear drips down his cheek. His gaze rests on Mom’s casket, its polished wood laden with the limbs of late-August sunflowers.

My fingers pick at a stinging hangnail as the pastor welcomes us with wide arms. My eyes wander to the ceiling as we pray. Dust tickles my nose as we stand and stumble our way through Amazing Grace, squinting at tiny black stanzas in soft-spined hymn books. I count the colored stained-glass panes in the window behind Uncle Kit's head while he stammers through his eulogy.

17 green in the hills. 14 blue in the sky. 10 yellow in the star.

My fingers drift to my pocket. I slide out my phone as if to check the time.

314 unread emails. 3 new voicemails. 24 unseen texts.

Please deal with…

You’re invited to…

Meet you at the airport to pick up W…

Please review by…

Don’t forget to sign the div…

The showing is sched…

Willa jabs an angry elbow into my ribs. I start and shove my phone back in my pocket.

The slideshow is queued up, and photos slip across the rickety projector screen while Ed Sheeran sings about angels and moms.

She waves at us from the shore at Saunders Beach in a bright red bathing suit.

She jokes at a wedding reception in the church basement in pearls and shoulder pads.

She clutches me and Caroline in our frilly Sunday best on her floral couch.

She dances with Dad in the kitchen with yellow rubber gloves wrapped around his neck.

She cradles a purple-faced squalling Willa who's wrapped in a homemade swaddle.

She serves a pitcher of lemonade to all four sun-kissed kids under the wings of a blue umbrella.

She beams from the driver's seat of that. damn. van.

I feel Caroline's side-eye and turn my attention to counting the belly-up flies that pepper the nearest windowsill. Twelve. I count again. Still twelve. I count over and over until Willa tugs me up to follow Mom out of the building.

We parade back over the faded red foyer carpet that exhales puffs of dust under our shiny black shoes.

We pick our way through the yard of haphazard wooden crosses, squat polished stones, and flat burnished plaques.

We stand around the chosen plot on uneven ground, taking care not to tread over Dad, while the pastor reads from the book of Matthew.

Willa grabs my hand and squeezes it tight, momentarily forgiving my failures as a mother. I marvel at the tears on her cheeks, shed for the grandmother she should have known better but knew enough to love.

Caroline lunges for Maggie, who's made a break for the casket as it's ratcheted into the earth.

I, too, feel the need to fling myself into the hole after Mom. Instead, I toss in another heavy-headed sunflower.

The crowd disperses, most heading back to the church for burnt coffee and suspicious egg salad sandwiches.

Willa retreats once again, disappearing from my side to chase after her cousins.

Caroline and I linger the longest.

I can't help it. Even here, my fingers find my phone.

“The appointment with the lawyer is on Thursday,” I say. “The bank right after. I know you fly home Friday, but we should set up the house for -”

Caroline cuts me off with a crushing hug.

“You can have the damn van,” she whispers, and leaves me to it all alone.