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Our Lady of Hope Cemetery baked under an unforgiving July sun, while a thin film of dust settled on our hair and foreheads almost unnoticed. Joanna, Jason, Olivia, and I stood close. I squeezed the hand of each daughter and made eye contact with Jason, hoping to reaffirm what each needed to know, that the bond of family still held.
Joanna, my older daughter, stepped forward and dropped a yellow rose on Gloria's coffin. The physical resemblance to her mother forced a sharp blade into my chest. Curly dark hair, as always untamed, surrounded a face with deep brown eyes and a full mouth that - on other days - smiled at the slightest provocation. Like Gloria, Joanna had a scholarly bent. She held a position as Economics Professor at the University of New Mexico.
Joanna stepped back and stood with an arm around each college-age daughter. Her husband, Roger, looked helpless. She talked quietly. I strained to hear as she reassured the girls and commiserated with her brother and sister. I sensed a slight tremor in her voice.
I squeezed my eyes closed for a moment and prayed for my daughter.
Jason, my son, bent to his sister. When his jaw clenched, an already solid chin became comic-book heroic. High cheekbones cast shadows on his face. He raised his eyes to engage mine, and I saw the ten-year-old boy, rather than the successful thirty-something housing contractor. He nodded at me.
I thought about how Gloria had wanted to see him married to the right girl. Yet, for Jason, women provided escape, not commitment. The right kind of woman would never have recognized my son as the right kind of man. I watched him hug Joanna. His head bent down to her shoulder, and calloused hands pressed flat against her back. When he turned to his younger sister, Olivia, both cheeks were wet. He lifted Livvie's petite form in a bear hug, an embrace that overpowered her fragile frame.
My youngest, Livvie, wasn't like the rest of us. Combat-style boots anchored her too-thin form when Jason placed her back on the ground. Turquoise wisps peeked through her black hair, dyed back to its natural color for the funeral. A long-sleeved blouse hid the dragon tattoo that encircled her upper arm like a bracelet, and the visible portions of her slender, multi-pierced body sported only an elegant pair of pearl earrings - courtesies that touched me.
Livvie's thin shoulders shook, but her musician's eyes burned with the heat I sometimes found scary. Livvie was the one, I felt sure, who would one day do something memorable. First, though, there were devils to vanquish. In the face of her incandescence, I knew she battled doubt. I watched as she leaned her head against Jason's upper arm, her slim fingers barely visible in his large hand.
My children embraced me, one by one. Joanna whispered something in my ear, but my mind would not translate her words into meaningful thoughts. I glanced around the cemetery, trying to see a future alone - and saw only the coffin that held my wife.
*
A God-fearing man, I believed that this tragedy must somehow be meaningful. However, no explanation emerged. I examined my options, anguishing over where my life might lead. But I'm old. My daughters and son, their lives stretching far out into the future, faced the larger challenge. And their mother's absence left them vulnerable in unexpected ways. She was their safety net. They still had me, of course, and I know that helped. But I couldn't pretend to understand a child's bond to his mother, that fierce unreasonable love, and I wasn't fool enough to believe I could make up for their loss.
Without Gloria the structure of our lives shifted, exposing doubts. We scrambled up new foothills and slid down new slopes struggling to reach stasis. Finally, we pitched and settled, adjusting our individual directions to suit the altered terrain.
The flashes of change I observed in my three children were sometimes alarming. Thoughts of intervention tugged at me. But how? We each see the world through a unique lens, a perspective shaped by the circumstances of our lives. When focused on another's life, that lens distorts. It can be disastrous. Sometimes letting go is the most courageous act of a parent.
So I held back. I trusted in their judgment. I waited.
It wasn't easy. They stood on a precipice, staring down into shifting sands. I held my breath and said a prayer, watching as my three children discovered new strengths in what was once uncharted territory.
1
Joanna
~~~~~~~~~~
Landslide
My sister, Livvie, backed down the drive, her green Cougar moving way too fast. Spiky turquoise hair glinted crazily through the dust-spotted windshield. I bit my thumb when she didn't stop to look for traffic at the base of the drive, knowing I couldn't face the loss of my kooky sister - not then, not ever. When she turned safely onto the road, I waved from the open dining room window.
Alone, I picked up the long painter's pole with the rag tied at one end. Since Mother's death they'd been everywhere - the spider webs. I spied one in the corner of the living room, spanning beams four feet above my head. For a moment my breath came in short gasps. The spiders were winning. Everything slid out of control. Then I gritted my teeth, steadied the pole, and totaled the web with my makeshift tool.
A slow search of the living room and dining area revealed three more webs. I annihilated them. Should I check the kitchen? Not now. Marshalling sanity, I turned to the package. It sat on the table, its white exterior smudged, the logo "Gourmet Dream" silk-screened in a flowery script. Today I will open it. It's been a week. I pulled at the packing tape. It didn't give. My hands shook. Buck up, for Chrissake. I found a sharp knife in the kitchen and returned to the dining table, armed.
Carefully I slit the box open and extracted bubble wrap, then some packing tissue, then a springform pan and several elaborately shaped cookie cutters. Two expensive knives - one wide and toothed, one razor-sharp and narrow - sat on the packaging at the bottom of the box.
"Mother would have loved these," I said out loud. Sweat dampened the tissue wadded in my hand. The package, a gift for her, had arrived the day after her death.
I sat and unwrapped each item, examining by touch, letting my mind wander back over the week since Mother's death. The latch on the springform pan snapped open and closed, open and closed in my hands.
My father, a geologist, believed that death could induce strange tremors, seismic activity that changed the shape of your world. He was right. I already felt the topography of my life shearing and buckling. My humdrum existence. Would I still be able to live there?
Heat poured in through the west-facing dining room window. I stood to close the blinds, but couldn't do it. Albuquerque spread before me like a gift, its colors baked clean by the constant sun - the muted brick-red of tile roofs, the patchy blanket of trees deepening to blue-green where it bordered the Rio Grande, the brushed khaki of the West Mesa, the purple bruise of the Native American's sacred mountain, Mount Taylor.
I again sat and reached for the angel-shaped cookie cutter. Sunlight angled off its wings, which were opened in prayer. I lifted it, pressed the warm metal to my cheek. This used to be me, I thought, when Mother was alive. I fought to keep my hands from shaking. New forces pulled at me. My old life no longer fit. Angel? I don't think so.
How could I explain it - this deep restlessness - even to myself? I'd been content, married for twenty-three years, the first three exultant, the next few happy, all the others sliding along amicably under the reliable New Mexico sun. Roger and I. You could call on Roger and Joanna in a pinch. We were steady.
Then Mother fell, and I hadn't managed to save her. And now my world had veered off course, scraping and bouncing its way through the new and alarming territory of discontent.
I repacked the box, feeling each sharp utensil in my hands, thinking of the dulled edges of my cookie cutter life.
Work didn't excite me, but it was acceptable. A full professor at the University of New Mexico, I shaped thousands of minds, as the dean liked to remind me. I had published fourteen articles and one mildly successful book, all dealing with economics. Not life in the fast lane, but not bad.
My private life hadn't changed in eons. Roger was a decent, intelligent husband. Our two daughters, both in college, possessed brains and integrity, with beauty that raised twin flags of pride and alarm. We owned a solid custom house in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, with a God's-eye view of Albuquerque.
Maybe life had been too easy? Whatever the reason, my privileged existence had grown stale, the sense of predictability maddening. And now, just a week after my mother's sudden death, I sensed it: I needed out.
Chill out, Joanna. My sister, Livvie, called me the "pillar-of-the-community" type. How, then, could I have this urge to run, to hide from all that was my normal routine? But Mother's sudden death drove home the fact that life can end precipitously, before you've glimpsed its forbidden underbelly, and maybe before you've really lived.
It was two o'clock on Sunday. I dialed Roger, hoping I wouldn't disturb some meeting to analyze the financial bottom line of the manufacturing company - sporting equipment - where he worked. Guess not. He answered on the first ring.
"I opened the box for Mother today," I told him. "The kitchen stuff. Her gift."
There was a slight hesitation, then, "You girls and your toys." Silence. Was he reading some report while we talked?
"It was difficult, Roger. I miss her so much."
"Honey, I'm going to need to work late tonight. Don't hold dinner."
"Okay, but couldn't you try to get home on time?" Silence. "Roger?"
"It's a new bid. Basketball shoes. I need to crunch the numbers."
"But it's Sunday."
"You know I took time off last week after your mom - "
"Yes. Yes, I know. But I still need you here."
"I'll try, but go ahead and eat dinner without me."
The connection clicked, then hummed. I sighed and studied the backs of my hands. Sunlight cast the veins thick as ropes. The hands were growing old, forty-three already. The gold wedding band and engagement ring had carved a shallow groove.
I glanced at the window again and noticed, from the corner of my eye, a smudge where window met sill. Another web.
___
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