My life divides on the date June 18, 2015. The date mom died. All the details fall into categories of before and after. The photo above is a before. A photo from mom's iphone which she took on our last outing before she flew away.
See, when your mother flies to Amsterdam to see her niece's art exhibit- the niece she loved and wanted to support- and then dies overseas, it is as if she flew away. Boarded a plane and never flew back.
When the coffin arrives on a plane one week later, it's not a return flight. The body does not return smelling of apples and fresh-washed linen. The body does not return to smother you with smoochy kisses.
What comes back is a box you will never open. A story you don't want to read. A story whose text tells you nothing about the protagonist. Not one ounce of her life embalmed in that body that people want to see.
The life is divided. There is before.
And there is after. And after. And after.
And the after never ends.
There is a hike somewhere above Dillon, Colorado where all you can see is her bright blonde bob just over the next hill. Because she hiked faster. And you can't keep up.
There is a thunderstorm on the horizon and it is not a source of awe or beauty. You can't see it that way anymore. It is simply this: the promise of a downpour. A weather in which you can cry without being noticed.
There is Gnome's first tennis lessons. Because Bunica wanted them to play tennis. Because she loved tennis and you love her and them but it doesn't make sense to keep on loving if she has left. The other mothers crack jokes about bikini waxes and you try to make cheering sounds but the sun is too bright. And she is not here. To make you behave better.
There is a game that the girls teach Isla. A game which involves jumping over a rope held by others. You are sure the game has a name but all you hear is Isla's laugh when you look at the photos. All you hear is how they taught her to jump.
All you see are the sunglasses she insisted on wearing through every leapy attempt. All you know is that she felt a connection between sunglasses and jumping. There could be no other option. And you know mom would be proud. But your heart breaks anyway.
There is a note in her trail book about a hike you took together last year. But she wrote the date down wrong. The date she recorded is tomorrow. A day that has not happened. Your son says it is a sign that Bunica wants us to hike it tomorrow. You hug him tighter than a cobra and he wonders when you will stop crying. You cry together. You don't think it will ever stop. But you will lace your boots and bite your lip and make what folks call "the best of it". Are they joking? What's happening right now is the worst of shit. Not the best of it.
There is, indeed, the hike you took to Lily Pad Lake with her last year. There is the hike you take again. This time, you call it a pilgrimage. This time you fold a boat to set loose in the lake where she smiled 1,000 times brighter than Colorado sun. You don't want to leave. You tell the kids descent is more difficult than ascent. You don't tell them why. You don't tell them that you can never go back to a place where she is with you.
There are structures you climb just to move away from the chatter. You are scared of heights but you keep climbing things that put you out of reach. If you get high enough, then maybe no one will need you to tie a shoe or resolve a conflict over lollipops. The people you love are below. They won't climb this high. And so you cry because no one asks if a woman who climbs is crying. They only say, wow, that looks high.
There are books you read- Russian Nights by Vladimir F. Odoevsky- which make awkward promises about time. You feel yourself flushing. There are new forms of anger you have never encountered. Sudden comets of anger that blaze across your face. There are no unpoetic moments in the life of a poet. You'll take his statement and clarify: There is nothing poetic in the death of a poet. There is no poetry in a heart that stops. There is no beauty in this endless silence.
There is only the impossible, insoluble longing. And the destruction of present tense. This after and after and after. Nothing blessed.
