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I wasn’t just welcomed, I was wanted.
Every choice I’d ever made had led me to this moment, and I wasn’t going to let Gus push me away anymore. Especially not for my own good.Thiswas my own good.
Here was where I had a role to fill. A role Jim and I had planned for.
I could do nothing about the fact that I hadn’t been there to hug my husband when the hospice nurse told Raynie these were Jim’s final hours, or hold Sofia’s hand as George and Bethany finished up the last of their business matters, diverting calls to other funeral homes. Hopefully, I’d make things a little better now.
Raynie seemed to be fighting with someone on the phone in the kitchen when we came in. Bethany took the phone from her and took care of whatever emergency was on the other end. In the Blue Room, Waylon sat on one end of the loveseat, Athena sprawled over his arm, fast asleep. Yia-Yiá was on the other end.
“They’re upstairs,” Waylon said, standing up and laying his daughter down next to her great-great-grandmother, who smiled down at her and gently brushed the hair off her forehead. Waylon reached out to squeeze my shoulder.
The upstairs was too bright for Jim’s eyes. I flicked off some of the lights.
Jim was already in a deep, deep sleep he wouldn’t wake from. The sleep before death.
Soula lay curled on her side in the bed next to him. Her eyes were closed, but I knew she probably wasn’t sleeping, just processing this by shutting everything out. George sat motionless in one of the chairs from the mauve roomdownstairs—the chairs Bethany hated and desperately wanted to recover—his arms and legs crossed as he stared sightlessly down at his father.
Where was Gus? I looked around.
From the dark corner stepped my husband, coming forward and wrapping me in his arms, telling me with his touch what he couldn’t say—couldn’t think—in words.
We held each other forever, sharing this moment. For once, I didn’t have to fight him. He was letting me in.
“The hospice nurse told Raynie this morning. I didn’t believe it. He was up and walking a few days ago.”
“Fast is nice, sometimes. Maybe not for us, but for him.”
Slowly, he pulled back, but he kept his hand linked with mine.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“Gus, now’s not the time. Let’s just be here for each other.”
When I pulled back from his embrace, his eyes were soft, with a resigned sadness.
“Let’s wish Jim a happy journey.”
I may have only known Jim for a short while, but his love resonated with me. The impact of his death would leave behind a crater in my life.
In all my grief, all the people I’d known who’d , I never really shared the experience with anyone. When my mom died, I was young. My grandmother was already in her sixties.
The loss of a mother felt different from the loss of a daughter. Plus, Granny’d had to put her feelings aside to deal with the logistics of me. There was paperwork, weeks spent in foster care, and finally, moving to Middle Tennessee, which had felt like an entirely new world.
Neither of us had talked much about Mama until a year after, once everything had been settled. We talked about her in thegarden. Toiling with our hands to work out our grief. But for me, it had already been dulled.
This was a bright grief, sharp and stinging. But it was so much better with all of us sharing it together.
Gus
Dad died quickly.
Almost like a movie.
Somehow we’d turned on every light in the house.
It wasn’t a decision any of us had consciously made. It just happened. As if the incandescent glow would drive off a spiritual darkness that would infest the house and our very souls.
The hall scones had come on first, before he’d passed. Then the big chandelier over the round table in the foyer. But they only chased the shadows into the corners of the other rooms. Soon every lamp in the mauve room and the blue room, the office and family rooms had been flicked on, one by one, their electric vigil heralding the separation of a soul from its body.
