Listen

        “Listen- if you’re quiet enough, you can hear the earth breathe.” That’s what Dad would say to me at summer camp-outs. He would wait until I was tired enough to stop making any sound, all nestled into my sleeping bag. I would strain my ears over the din of crickets to hear the world inhale. Exhale. Maybe I just fooled myself into hearing it. Maybe I was just tired. But I swore that on those nights in woods so secluded it seemed like we were the only people on the face of the planet, I could feel the earth’s chest rise and fall beneath me as it breathed.

              But that was years ago, and I haven’t heard it breathe since. Especially since Dad died. Now, standing over his casket, the only breath I can hear is my own, hot and course against my throat like I’ve been running and running.

              In a way, I think I have been. Running, that is.  Running from the reality of it all. The diagnosis only sunk in when I saw the heart monitor go flat. Maybe it was hopeless naivety on my part, thinking that the cancer would leave. Maybe it was Dad’s fault, acting like everything was fine; acting like plenty of time outside would cure everything.

              Now look at us.

              Next to me, Mama’s eyes are just as dead as Dad’s were as the light left them. She stares at him in the casket like she wishes she could join him. A sheen of sweat has formed on her tan face. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Dad’s about to be put six feet under. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the sun is unthinkably bright today. Funerals are supposed to be sad and rainy, right? Gray skies with an appropriate amount of rain. For how much he loved the Earth and all the good he did for her, I’d have thought that she could show some respect, too. Maybe not rain, but at least some shade.

              The funeral finishes eventually. Mama says some words. So do I. I don’t really understand them and don’t think anybody else does, but I don’t care. It’s not their dad that’s dead.

              I get home, somehow. I know I had to fight through mountains of mourners and well-wishers to get here, but I make it.

              Somebody puts food in front of me. Eventually.

              “You need to eat,” Mama says, her voice raw and scratchy like she’s been running, too.

              The sandwich looks as appetizing as sewage. Pain gnaws so sharply all over me that I can’t tell what’s grief and what’s hunger. I don’t think it really matters.

              I eat, if only to placate Mama. It tastes like sand.

              “You need to shower,” Mama says.

              I don’t tell her that I can’t shower because it would distract me from tracing the shapes the light from the windows makes on the ceiling with my mind for the millionth time.

              I’m eventually coaxed into the shower. I’m still sitting on the floor, the hot water long gone, when Mama comes to check on me.

              “You need to go outside,” Mama says.

              I look up at her from my seat at the table across from her. She made fettuccini alfredo for dinner. Dad’s favorite.

              I’ve humored her requests. I’ve brushed my teeth and combed my hair and let relatives coddle me and tell me it will turn out okay, but this is something I can’t do. The woods are more a grave than the cold slab of rock that marks Dad’s place in the earth. That’s why I can’t go near them.

              “What are you talking about?” Mama says. “You think he’d want to see you like this, wasting away inside? Do you think I want to see you like this?”

              “You watched him waste away. You can do the same for me.”

              It’s like I slapped her. The same look of pain is stretched across her face, pooling in her eyes, as it was when she watched them lower him. She’s probably still wondering if it’s too late to join him.

              “Get out,” she says.

              “What?”

              “Get out,” she repeats. Her voice is harsh and grating, like these last months of lethargy have been her saving enough energy just to curse me. “GET OUT!” She slams her hands down on the table, the slap echoing through the house like a shotgun ringing through the valley.

              I do exactly as she tells me. With strength I didn’t know I have, I slam the door behind me.

              Outside, there is no escaping his presence. Everywhere I look, there’s something to remind me that dad’s dead. There’s the tree stump we shot arrows at for hours. On the back, I had carved I ♡ Dad with my first pocket knife. There’s the pile of dried sticks and trees that we collected for making the biggest, hottest bonfires there ever were. There’s the little cross that marks the spot Dad helped me bury my first dog after it got sick.

              I didn’t bother putting on shoes before I ran out. It doesn’t really matter. The way sticks and burs bear into my skin is the least of my worries as race for the woods.

              I don’t know why I do. It’s like I’m possessed. If the memories were strong near the house, they’re unbearable out here. Every tree looks like Dad’s gonna pop out from behind it. Every animal sound is another creature that Dad would watch, very quiet and very still, until he would lunge out, grab it, and hold it close for me to see before releasing it. The smell of sap and dirt tells me that he’s close, just downwind of me. I just have to look around a little more before he’ll come out of a copse and show me the arrowheads he found.

              But he won’t. I can search and search until my feet are worn to nubs and the sun goes dim but I won’t find him. He’s gone. Gone, gone, gone.

              I think that’s when the realization finally hits. I fall to the earth. Every particle of emotion I delayed makes its debut in waves of pain. There’s not enough of me to hold it all. It comes pouring out of me in hot, caustic tears that turn the ground beneath me to mud. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I clutch at the dust of the ground like I’m God creating Adam, creating life where there was none.

              My cries melt to a rhythmic whine, beating against my chest like the engine of an old truck that’s about to give up the ghost. And it eventually does give out. There’s not enough energy left in me to do anything but lie and whimper in the dirt, my ear against the ground.

              And then I hear it. For the first time in a very long time, I feel the world take breath and hear her breathe out. A slow, deep sigh, like she’s sleeping and nothing could rouse her.

              The sound of it stops me in my tracks. My breathing catches in my throat. Why now, after everything?

              I draw myself to my knees, wiping mud off my face. Nothing around me has changed, but it seems quieter, somehow. Like the world has a heart, beating down deep below, that informs the rhythm of everything above it. A body. A tomb.

              I don’t know how much longer I spend out there, soaking up as much of Dad as I can. Mama comes looking for me, distraught. She sits down next to me once we’ve both calmed down some.

              “He adored you. I hope you know that. He would come back from those camping trips happier than he’d ever been. Every time, without fail.”

               “Tell me more stories about Dad,” I say. It’s self-indulgent of me to ask. It will feel nice now, remembering him, and then I’ll turn to ask him about his side of the story and he won’t be there. Rip the bandage off again. Pull off the scab. Go back to the first stage of grief.

              But Mama appeases me. She goes on and on, recounting every story she can think of, from the time she met him until his death. My heart burns, knowing that there will be no more stories for him.

              But there will be stories for me.

              So, fourteen years later, when I have my own kid, we get in the car and drive. Her wide eyes take in everything. To her, every cow passed, every bend in the road, every street sign is a novelty.

              I show her how to pitch a tent, start a fire and keep it going, orient herself by the stars, and how to cuddle close for warmth when the sun has gone down and we’ve stamped out the coals of our fire.

              And I show her how to hear it. “Listen,” I say. “If you’re quiet enough, you can hear the Earth breathe.”