“It's
for you,” Megan's mom said as she passed the phone to me over
the breakfast table. The cord stretched and uncoiled, bouncing
lightly off the stack of pancakes. My grandfather had been in the
hospital for a week, unresponsive after a stroke-- a reality that
didn't quite sink in until I heard my mom sobbing through the
receiver.
“Is
it grandpa?” I asked, sure of the answer.
“No,”
she said, “It's George. He's been hit by a car. I'm coming to pick
you up.”
I
saw him right away when we pulled into the driveway, wrapped neatly
in a paper bag, resting motionless on the picnic table. I had been
crying since the phone call, but a new and overwhelming sadness
choked me as I opened the car door.
“Don't
open the bag,” my mom warned, “You don't want to see him like
that.”
I
did open the bag, but I didn't look. I slipped my hand inside and
squeezed his paw. I held him to my chest and rocked him back and
forth for an hour, in a way that's not so different from how I have
rocked babies to sleep since. Later that night, I buried him in the
garden, lacing the soil with wildflower seeds.
Penelope,
George's mom, sat beside the door late into the night, waiting for
him to return home. Even at 13-years old, my empathy was crippling,
so I scooped her up and brought her to bed with me, crying for both
her sadness and mine. I held her close and kissed her head,
whispering “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry” into her ears until we both
fell asleep.
A
few weeks later, the wildflowers erupted into patches of fiery reds,
yellows, and purples. We kept a vase of them, freshly cut, on the
dining room table. In the late mornings, as the sun grew fierce and
blistering, Penelope took to laying belly-up in the garden, as if she
knew she could find him there. On breezy days, the daisies and
coneflowers rocked back and forth, nudging, cradling, and purring her
to sleep.
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