Destination

“So, are you coming tonight?”

    Jill, well meaning older sister type, who certainly fits that role, all brows furrowed in concern and hands red from palms rubbing together, stands in the doorway. She’s been there for at least five minutes, shifting her weight, unsure of how to begin. I could feel her before I saw her, and the weight of her body shifting the density of space. 

“I don’t know.”

I’m standing with my tie in front of the dingy full length mirror tacked crookedly to the back of the bedroom door. Every day I look in that mirror, decide I need to rehang it, and promptly forget it exists.I consider for a moment feeling embarrassed, Jill here, the bed unmade, dirty boxers and socks littering the floor. Decide to split the difference and kick some under the bed. 

    She doesn’t offer to help with the tie, even though she could, she knows I wouldn’t accept. Couldn’t. 

    She debates in the door frame, big green eyes and musty rose perfume, the same as her mother wore, vaguely floral but sweeter, cloying. She’s going for nonchalant, but her shoulders betray her, climbing to her ears. She clears her throat, begins, stumbles, gathers herself. Her eyes, so much like her mothers, in turn, so much like our grandmothers’. 

“Well, if you are, we’re leaving in ten minutes.”

    She turns and walks out before I have a chance to respond. I haven’t taken my eyes from the mirror although I don’t see myself. I’m a blur, with the room around in sharp focus. Who the fuck wants to go to a funeral anyway. 

    Okay, so it’s my grandmother, although she was really more like a mother or a “fun” aunt, someone who cared for me but didn’t judge. Tall, wiry, strong, she had always looked older than her age but moved as if she were much younger. She loved carnival glass and it cluttered the small ranch house, clustered in corners and climbing the walls on shelves. When my parents passed, she scooped me into her arms and carried me into her glittering, warm home and we never looked back. She gave me a world I hadn’t known, a safe space, a place that somehow always seemed to smell of lilac, even in the dead of winter.

    I know I should remember deep conversations, those that made lasting impressions because of their ability to spark introspection and connection with the universe, but mostly I remember our everyday - baking and watching her cracked and vein-lined hands mold pie dough, digging through her jewelry box for “treasure,” picking raspberries while she sang Old Home Place, forgetting half the words and making them up. She was a bright burning fire. She was comfort. She was a reason to breathe deep. And now she was gone. 

    She wanted to leave. Not to disappear completely, not from granddad or me or Jill, when she was around. But she longed to wander. She was never settled, her body always a bit tense, shoulders set somewhat like Jill’s this evening. Ready to run, ready for adventure, tethered to the home and a family she fell slowly into until the only escape meant more pain than she could bear. 

    I stare into the blur of the mirror. Finally gotten this tie right, almost, although it's twisted just a bit. I smooth down the bottom, line up my shirt buttons, as much order as I can manage.  Closed casket. It wasn’t exactly a peaceful death, but then again, who knows. Certainly not the coroner who marked it down as “undetermined.” She wandered into the woods in late November, in a night dress, wax coat, and slippers. She had a book in the pocket of her coat, a ratty paperback she’d been reading in the weeks prior, something innocuous, unremarkable. There were no marks to indicate anyone else was involved; she bore the usual scratches and nicks expected from someone clambering through the brush. It was likely a death by exposure - she was confused, drifted outside rather than into the tiny four poster that sagged on the left. Which is the excuse you give when a person of a certain age ends up in this situation. I rather think she decided to go out on her own terms. She left, trekked out into the forest to see how far she could get, didn’t quite make it to wherever that was. No one found her for nearly two weeks, despite many people looking, hence the closed casket. There’s a lot of animals in those woods. 

    The car is idling outside. Jill and her partner Paul waiting an extra few minutes in the hopes I will make an appearance. The car chuffs a stream of white smoke in the air, the kind of cold that will take your breath away. I turn and grab my bag, my coat, the ancient houndstooth one that was left here by some relative and somehow materialized in the back of my closet. I wait in the hallway until Jill finally admits defeat and Paul shifts the car into gear, careful of black ice. Paul, nothing if not careful, always. 

    And where do I find myself, but breathing in the cold evening air - barely six at night and already full dark, a heavy moon hanging above. I don’t start out with a destination in mind, not really, just needing to move my body, muscles spring loaded. The funeral will continue on without me, the body that was once Edith Mae closed up tight in that box. There is nothing left of her, the woman I knew and loved, in there. And as I paraphrased before, as Edith herself said when her husband of fifty-two years died, who on earth wants to go to a funeral? Jill will be furious in her quiet way, tuck away that big emotion for hundreds of smaller passive aggressive actions. No one else will much notice, which is fine by me as well. I don’t think Edith will miss me; more than likely, if she has her way, she’d be up there with that gorgeous swollen moon than trapped in an overheated parlor listening to relatives make small talk. 

    And where do I find myself? Well maybe I’m paying tribute to my grandmother in my own way. The air is somehow harder up on the train platform and I breathe it deep. I breathe it until my lungs burn and I’m coughing and then also crying. A release. I imagine her near me, giving me the comfort only she was capable of, but the space feels empty. She is finally free to wander and of course she will. I am not quite as untethered as she, but the first arriving train seems like a good a start as any. What will come next? I have no earthly idea. I’ve only taken my wallet and phone, not even the charger. I keep breathing that deep night air, the kind of air that has a weight and color, it is so cold. This seems like just about a good a tribute to Edith as I can manage. And I know that even if she isn’t here with me now, she’d approve. I can hear the whistle, low and hollow, sound absorbed by the endless tunnel of trees. Next stop, adventure.