Gen

She’s asking me about work. About how my young students are doing… if they’re learning Spanish as quickly as they are English. I tell her that they are. That they know how to count, recite the alphabet, and name shapes in both languages. I’m talking to her. And she is responding. I can see her. She is in front of me.

With her short salt and peppered hair that’s more salt now than pepper. Her undeniably brown eyes. Her skin, always tanner than mine. Moles. Freckles. Slightly crooked nose. I’m looking down at her 4’11 stature to my 5’2. I grab onto her aged hand; her veins look as if they’re trying to escape her skin. And her nails are as perfect as ever.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Gen. I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you… that I didn’t call 911 in time.”

She grins. Like super grins. Teeth visible, “It’s okay, Vivi. I know you did your best.” 

Shit. The spell has been broken. The dream version of myself remembered that Aunt Gen is dead. That I failed to save her. And then I wake up. 

Every few months, her memory likes to visit me—more like haunt me—while I sleep. My brain likes to tease me… make me believe that Aunt Gen is alive. It likes to pretend that I didn’t see her ashy-white lifeless body on a stretcher in a hospital room, while I’m unable to speak at the horrors of an unexpected death. My brain thinks it’s funny to make me forget about watching her collapse, racing to her fallen body to perform CPR that I barely learned in my high school health class that ultimately wouldn’t save her life just to relive that fucking experience all over again when my dream self remembers that Aunt Gen hasn’t been alive for almost seven years. The worst dreams are the ones that make me wake up sobbing like I did the morning of her funeral. 

At least this time, I know why my brain decided to torture me. Today is a total solar eclipse—a phenomenon my Aunt Gen adored. 

When I was a kid, she told me about her road trip from Minnesota to Florida for spring break with her two best friends. It was early March of 1970 and they wanted to have a little fun on the beaches of Florida before graduating onto the next stages of life. They didn’t know that there would be an eclipse until they overheard some people talking about it at a beachside restaurant. At lunch that day, Aunt Gen and her friends asked for a table on the patio to watch the eclipse. It only lasted a couple of minutes, but Aunt Gen was awestruck by the experience. 

“The darkness crept up and drifted away. I felt like I should’ve been afraid, but I was too in awe to be frightened,” Aunt Gen described, “And just as quickly as it came, it faded.”

I’ve never seen an eclipse myself. I was supposed to in 2017. Aunt Gen and I were going to drive the few hours down to Iowa to see it. But then my friend asked if I wanted to go up to her cabin as a big hoorah before senior year. I thought that sounded like more fun than seeing the sun disappear for a few moments in funky sun-protective glasses. I had fun swimming, chatting by the bonfire, and reading on the lakeside shore, but I do wish I would’ve taken my aunt to see the eclipse. I would’ve if I had known she wasn’t going to live to see Christmas that year. But how could I have known?

Today, I’ll be able to see a full solar eclipse. I’m renting a Ford Focus to drive from my one-bedroom apartment in Pittsburgh to Jamestown, New York—Aunt Gen’s ashes as my passenger seat partner. There is supposed to be a better view there than here in Pittsburgh. And I want the best viewing spot for her. I found a random park on Google Maps that I can park and watch the eclipse from. I’m making this happen, Aunt Gen.

On the drive up, I listen to her favorite artists: Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash. The song “Crazy by Patsy Cline is strung through the playlist I made because that was one of her favorite songs. I also brought goldfish to snack on, which she ate nearly everyday, insisting they weren’t for kids. This day is for her, even if she can’t be here. 

I was at her apartment when it happened. I was waiting for my mom to get off of work and pick me up from the apartment. It was a five minute walk from school and an easy place to spend my time between 3:00 and 6:00. Usually, I didn’t even see Aunt Gen because she was still at work herself, but my mom was working late, so she offered to make me baked potatoes. I love potatoes.

It all happened so fast. The look of pain and shock on her face. The inability to say anything. The gurgling sound as she tumbled to the ground. I knew I had to do CPR, but my efforts were to no avail. I mustn't be strong enough to start her heart again. I was supposed to keep doing CPR, but I had to call 911. I wasn’t saving her, maybe they could? But they couldn’t either. She was on a stretcher and out the door. I don’t really remember the ambulance ride, but they let me go with. That I know. My mind went blank. All I remember is seeing her body at the apartment, in the ambulance, in the hospital. Her body. Her body. When did it become her body and no longer Aunt Gen? When did she end? Before CPR? During it? On the ride to the hospital? On the stretcher under the fluorescent clinic lights? When did the light in her eyes fade? 

“Say goodbye to her,” my mom requested after she had arrived at the hospital. 

Why should I talk to a body? She can’t hear me, so what does it matter?

I look ridiculous in these solar-viewing glasses, holding the ashes of my aunt. No one else is holding their relatives in their arms—well at least not their dead ones. 

The moon hoovers the sun, slowly engulfing the light until the sun spews its last bit of shine before the moon covers it completely. The world becomes dark and silent. No one speaks or moves. It’s dark and it's… peaceful? Almost soothing. A moment of reflection on the fleetingness of light—of life. And before I can soak the culminating darkness, the moon shifts away, revealing that there is light at the end of the tunnel. That it will be okay. This must be what Aunt Gen felt in Florida all those years ago. 

I wonder if that’s what she felt in her apartment that day. The fear of the darkness overcoming her, and then peace. peace. peace. before the darkness fades into light again. I hope that it wasn’t scary passing away, as it seemed on the outside. Maybe that moment that we do ultimately die, we pass like the eclipse. The peace of the overwhelming darkness is outweighed by the fear of the unknown. Maybe there wasn’t a precise moment that she switched from Aunt Gen to her body. Perhaps it was more of a drifting fade into the peace of nonexistence… of going back to where she came from. Into the arms of the earth mother. I didn’t see that transition the day she died, but I saw it in the sky today.