After awhile the others arrived. My parents. My other brother. One of my sisters. They refused to let us in to see him. Something about people making a ruckus and causing problems in this situation. We looked at each other in disgust, deeply offended that they would assume, because We aren't those kind of people. My sister even produced her badge in an effort to show them. But they refused. We would not leave him there alone a moment longer. The six people who were not there when he shut his eyes because it happened so fast. So we sat lined up on folding chairs, for two hours, in the hall, refusing to budge until they told us his body had been removed and was in transit. Going Home. Close enough anyway. We stood as a group and filed out, dispersing momentarily to travel the three hours back, knowing without arrangement where we would land.
We had been staying at my husbands parents house, bringing both vehicles so that he could go to work. After we drove back to collect our children and our things we separated and I said I wished to drive alone. After we hit town I followed his truck until he passed the road to my parents house, where I turned off without even thinking. He would figure it out. And when he called I would tell him to stay home. I would be fine. Because even after eleven years he wasn't completely one of us. We were a self contained unit and he really didn't get us. He wouldn't understand that day, just as he didn't a few days later, after the funeral. The food, the stories, my brother having a beer, the smoking. I had to be a part of them right now. And they were all there, as I knew they would be. Like homing pigeons the cars were parked out front and they had all gathered in the coop of my parents living room. Where we would wait until the funeral home called to let us know that our brother, our son, our husband, belonged to us again and we could claim him and see for ourselves. It isn't real until you can touch them and know they have gone from that shell. I began that day to count us in the back of my mind when we gathered as a group. Without consciously realizing it. 5...6...someone is missing. Someone isn't here. Oh yes. That's right.
At one point I met her eyes again and rose to go to the door. She followed. A different case. Blood from the beginning, though no connected drop flowed in her veins. We sat on the porch, removed from the voices and bodies crammed around the dining room. We sat silently, the common denominator in our three way family inner circle, the quiet ones. My brother by birth. My sister by nature, his chosen. She said, "I have these. I keep them in the car because he was only allowed to have them in the visiting room." And matches, lighters weren't allowed. She would bring them when she would visit and then stow them away for next time. Babies had induced us both to quit but there it sat in the palm of her hand. There were three left. I reached out and we sat on the top step, in the quiet comraderie of our grief, potted plants at our feet, staring out at the trees as afternoon dimmed the view. The smoke acrid but longingly familiar resting on our tongues, swirling about our heads.
We saved the third. Like a Chinese tribute to the beloved dead. She nodded as I held up the pack and I tucked it in my purse, all I had left that he had recently touched. When I came home I tucked it in my trunk, among my wedding memories, post cards from travel, baby announcements...and soon, the first of the funeral announcements too, sixteen years ago today.
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