A Black Monday

Sitting in the passenger seat, sipping coffee, I thought about my day working, but kept being interrupted by other thoughts. He’ll be there in a casket. Mark, who was driving, put his hand on mine. “I know this will be hard for you,” he said.

“Well, he was old. I mean it has to happen eventually. And I know he’s in heaven, and he had a good life.” I say this because it’s true, it’s not a tragedy. Still my words sound repetitive and annoying.

“Yea, but you’ve never really been to a funeral with a close family member.”

“I guess we weren’t that close . . . I mean I loved him, but I didn’t see him all that often.”

But with each new turn, I knew we were getting closer. I looked at the clock. Okay, forty minutes left, thirty minutes left, twenty minutes left. I braced my hands on the side of the car. Maybe the casket will be in a different room. Then I can just not go in there. My throat was tightening up. Hearing the car engine running made me think of the “click, click, click” sounds made while slowly going up the Wild Thing Rollercoaster. With each click I’d always think why can’t the wait just be over yet? Then I can go rushing down, yelling, rather than concentrating on the deep pit feeling in my stomach. It won’t be that bad; he’s 81-years-old; you’ve got to die someday. It’s no real tragedy. Remember the obits you use to write. And I recall a 24-year-old mom, who died in a car crash leaving two boys, and a husband behind, and the 19-year-old Iraq veteran who committed suicide, leaving one wife and a one-year-old boy behind. Those were tragedies.

Walking in to the visitation room, I’m greeted by my sister and cousin. They’re both smiling, and asking about the drive, and saying how long they’ve been there. Looking across the room, I see about thirty people scattered throughout the room in groups of two or three. Then there is the casket open. I can see Grandpa’s profile peeking out. I look at him, look away, look at him, look away. Every time I look away, I feel compelled to look again. I’m murmuring,  Oh, there he is. He’s there. Oh, he’s not suppose to be like this. Tears roll down my cheeks, and neck. I rub my sleeved arm across it as I sniffle. My cousin walks lightly away, returning in a moment with a pile of tissues to hand to me. “It’s so hard to see him this way.”

“Yes, I felt the same way when I saw him an hour ago,” my cousin said.

It’s as if just for being old, he received the punishment of a mass murderer. Life was stolen out of his body, and his body was jailed up in something so small.

“I wish we had spent more Christmases with them,” my cousin said, which is what I had been thinking earlier. Grandma and Grandpa were in Arizona about half the year, so we missed many of our celebrations with them. But yet at the same point, what did it matter? He was dead. Would I have kept those memories safely with me if I had experienced him being at Christmases, Thanksgivings, Birthday parties, and my Wedding? Or would it have been mucked up, blended with all those other blurred memories? Even if I had kept them real, it wouldn’t make him less dead. For once, my memories seemed stupid. Death seemed to overtake the importance of anything and anyone here.

Tears kept streaming down my face. (I’ve turned into an expert crier over the years.) Mom walks over to me. “You want to come see him?”

“No, it’s hard enough from over here.”

“Honey, come over and look at him.”

Walking over there, I stare down at him. It doesn’t even look like him. He’s much too thin, his face lost most his wrinkles, and he looks serious and tight lipped. The real him was always smiling, showing off gold teeth. The real him was chubby, and had wrinkle creases across his eyes and mouth. The real him always shouted out a hello when he saw me, followed by a hug and laugher. His soul—his personality—bubbled over with life, not his body. No wonder that’s what God would have wanted to take up, leaving that old body behind. God could put Grandpa’s eternal soul in a far better body suit to live in. His body was old and dense and dull now, reminding me of the waxed replicas of the Presidents at the Smithsonian Museum.  

Dad, Mom, and Caroline, and Caroline were all standing beside me. We put our arms around one another, swaying back and forth. All of us with tears in our eyes—all of us wanting the real him there. Dad said, “I wonder what he’s doing right now.”

Caroline said, “Bet he’s visiting his parents.”

Mom said, “He has a lot of siblings there too.”

“Probably having a picnic with them,” I said because that’s what I would want to do if I was there. He’d probably choose golfing instead.

Still I felt empty and icky. His dead body made it seem like he wasn’t anywhere. I thought loudly in prayer form. “Praise you dear God that he’s in Heaven. Thank you that he believed in Jesus, so he was saved.” I think it loudly, again, again until liquid warmness pours through me, starting above and behind my heart, and flooding all the way down me. Everything about that feeling was opposite from the black emptiness I felt walking into the room. I wish I could take a picture of it, just like Grandpa’s soul.  

“I’m so glad he was saved,” I whisper. Suddenly that’s the only thing that mattered, not that I didn’t visit him more, or that we missed holidays with him—although more time with him would have been nice. I was just so glad he went in the right direction—too bad I couldn’t just grab onto his soul’s hand and follow him there, escaping from all other funerals and dead bodies.

Sitting at a Desk I Stole

Sitting at a desk in a library that’s the size of an apartment living room, I’m approached by an old man. He’s coughing heavy; his eyes are squinted and wrinkled. Finally he clears his throat. “I need help wit citing.” His voice is slurred, sounding like a drunk who froze off part of his tongue.

                “I can help with that,” I say, rather too eagerly. I’m doing anything to not lose my job here. I’m hoping they won’t remember that I’m getting paid twenty bucks an hour to sit by people and slowly talk them out of their minuscule writing troubles.

I walk over and sit next to him. “Yes, you just need to find your source first for us to cite it. Otherwise we won’t know who the author is.”

                “But I don’t know where the sources is,” he says, half angrily, half like he wants to cry.

                 Are, I think. “Okay, well let’s go to your flash drive first.”

                “How do I do that?”

                Seriously, he doesn’t know, or is he just trying to humor me? I mean how did he open five documents from it? But I say, “Okay, let’s go to my computer, then you go to whichever folder you saved it in and open it up.”

                “I don’t know which folder I saved it in?” Then he randomly clicks on one and looks at me. “That folder?” he asks, like I’m an all knowing, all encompassing being, who could see him as he created and named his folder a year ago.

                After numerous attempts we manage to open the correct folder and document, which lead us to the sources, and to me pointing out the authors’ names, and bending over the keyboard to type in the information. I continue to point at an MLA sheet to show him why I am typing in the order I am. “I’m following MLA formatting,” I say.

                “But where did my sources go?”

                “We minimized them so they’re temporarily at the bottom of the screen.”

                “Where, huh?” he says.

 What would it be like to be him, old, confused, slurry—not half a wit left, not even enough to bathe regularly. Somehow he decided to attend this expensive College, priced four hundred something a credit, probably after seeing some cheesy commercial about it. He probably has dreams of walking across the platform on his graduation day, getting a diploma handed to him by a smiling professor, who proudly shakes his hand. Likely he expects applause from the audience, and to then walk off to gain the career of his dreams. When in reality, if he does graduate, he’ll be going to interviews slurring, and answering their questions with unrelated questions and answers, only to go back home and wait for a rejection letter in the mail. I mean, if I have a master’s degree, with a 3.91 GPA, and speak “slur-lessly,” and I still have to grovel for a part-time position, what kind of chance does he have?

Later I sit back at my desk, rather I should say Jill’s desk. It has her name on it and eighty percent of the questions I answer are, “Nope, Jill’s not here yet. She comes in at eleven, but I’m sure I can help you.”

                Generally they look at me accusingly, like I killed Jill, threw her under the desk, and am now sitting above it, pretending to have some position there. “I guess, maybe you can help,” they say reluctantly. I wish I had a name tag that said, “MA in English and know ninety percent of what Jill knows.”

A few hours go by, and I’m looking over a paper with a student, one who I had talked into being my regular client. His breath smells like he eats poop for breakfast—which makes me more amazed than disgusted. I mean seriously does he somehow eat poop? Like the saying goes, if it looks like a horse, sounds like a horse, acts like a horse, then it’s a horse. So yes, he must eat poop. And if so, is someone sabotaging him by sneaking it secretly into his food. Perhaps they inject it into his candy bars or slather it on his burgers. 

Then Jill walks in smiling and humming, like usual. She sets a Christmas card on my desk. Shit, I didn’t think of getting a card for her. I smile an overly large smile to make up for it. “Thank you, Jill!”

“Yes and there’s something in it,” she says. “Oh, and remember to come to the little holiday party,” she says, always remembering to be PC enough to say holiday, not Christmas. Then she hums her way out the door, to get set-up for the party.  

Finally I finish looking over the paper with the student. I grab the card and rip it open. It reads, “Happy Holidays! The students and I have enjoyed working with you.” I read over, “Enjoyed” past tense. Why, why is it in past tense? I mean I should have been asked earlier this week about my available hours for next quarter, but figured they were being slow. No news is good news, right? No, no, that saying is bullshit. It’s never good news. No news means someone is avoiding telling you the bad news, leaving someone else to accidentally leak it through a Christmas card. I tilt the card up again, and a five dollar gift card to Starbuck’s falls out. Well at least I have a five dollar gift card—I’m sure that makes up for my eight hundred monthly pay cut.