by Kris Radish
Katherine can tell Marie is thinking. She gives her the moment, waiting for the release of a breath, the voice she will hear for all the days of the traveling funeral on the end of the cell phone.
“It’s who I am,” Marie tells her. “It’s what I am supposed to do. Every night, just like this, I sit in my chair and I release my sorrow into the arms of the tree outside of the window. Annie knew this. I told her everything, and except for the funeral she was planning without me, I imagine she told me pretty much everything also.”
Katherine knows Annie must have shared all the corners of her world with Marie or she would not be invited to the funeral. She runs her eyes down the list of women—Jill, Laura, Rebecca, herself, Marie. All women who had somehow earned and maintained a special place in Annie’s life and heart. Katherine, because of the suicide attempt and the bond only youth and beginnings can command. Jill, from the university, and because she was the professional center and mentor of Annie’s world. Laura, who at first was the voice on the phone during the attack and then later the steady arm of friendship and support through dozens of causes and concerns. Rebecca the neighbor, the family, the unending light of calmness in the window. Of course, Katherine tells herself, Marie would have to be invited on the funeral trip. Marie was the gatekeeper. The one who held her hand until the very last moment. The fresh and kind face of trust that helped ease Annie through a tornado of pain and sorrow and to the moments just before her death.
“She talked about you,” Katherine tells Marie. “I know she told you what you meant to her but she told me, too, and I am sure she told the others who were invited to the funeral also.”
“She was very grateful. Not all of them are. Some of them are so scared and angry they cannot let go. It makes it harder but Annie was not hard.”
Marie starts to cry. She doesn’t want to cry. But she cannot stop herself. She does not cry easily and her tears are always genuine, always deep, always filled with the salty realness of a heart that knows only one true direction.
“I miss her, Katherine. I miss her.”
“I know. We all miss her and she’s giving us this one last gift. I keep thinking about funerals. How we all have them and we hate them and how for years Annie and I have talked about throwing some kind of big party or doing something to honor a life and not mourn it.”
“That’s tough because look at us,” Marie said, wiping her hand across her nose. “We are mourning. Because it’s sad. Loss is sad, but I see where she might be taking this.”
“She so lived. Do you know?”
“Yes. I knew it right away.”
“Marie?”
“Yes?”
“Are you okay?”
“Sure. But maybe I should come for part of the funeral. Maybe I can make it a few days. Arrange someone to fill in for just a few treatments, for two days or something. I should try and make this happen for Annie.”
Katherine thinks that already some kind of traveling funeral magic has taken hold and she looks up toward the sky, where most people believe that souls float and linger before flying on to the next realm, where she imagines Annie smiling like crazy at the notion of her own traveling funeral and what will happen now that it has begun.
“She’d like that. She probably knew you could work something out, that you’d try.”
“You know, in some countries they mourn for weeks and months. They hold lavish ceremonies and they keep the bodies propped up in living rooms. Tradition. But maybe there is something to that. Maybe celebrating with a fine mixture of tears and laughter is the way to go. Maybe what you said is true, Katherine.”
“What? Did I say something meaningful?”
“Funerals are for the living.”
“That’s probably the whole point of this. It’s a funeral. A traveling funeral, but if we don’t have a hell of a good time mixed in with all the tears, I am sure she’ll rise up and haunt us the rest of our lives.”
“Or until we planned our own traveling funeral,” Marie added, smiling because she is sure that is exactly what Annie would have said.
When they hung up a few moments later Marie and Katherine knew they were already on the traveling funeral. They knew that Annie G. Freeman had planned a party to beat all parties and that in just a few short days when the band of women who had formed a tight ring around Annie’s heart merged into one long hearse at the San Francisco airport the world would move and sway in a way that had never before been seen or felt.
“I’ll make it happen somehow. I will do what I can,” Marie promised. “I owe it to myself, to Annie, to my family—to everyone that is waiting in the wings to hold my hand.”
After Katherine said goodbye, Marie stayed in her chair a long time. She heard one set of footsteps come to her door and then another but no one dared interrupt her time. When she got up to move downstairs, to help finish making dinner, to push back the hair in her daughter’s eyes and to tell all of them she loved them, which was also part of her ritual, she first opened the bedroom window, leaned across the frame and touched the edge of the nearest limb.
“I’m going on a traveling funeral,” she told the tree. “Just for a few days. I’ll be back. Save my spot.”
11
Marie and Annie
Annie’s bedroom, California, 2005
* * *
The light before dawn fades through so many shades of darkness that Annie cannot bear to take her eyes off the horizon.
She has placed her bed against the far wall so that she can look out across the yard, her yard, and into the rolling hills that move like waves toward the Pacific Ocean. She loves the view so much—the way the colors dance against the horizon, the way she can see one time of day turn into the next, the way her already irregular sleeping patterns have been blasted in a thousand directions because the light pours in from every window at brilliant angles and distracts her from necessary sleep. Morning, afternoon, evening—she loves to study this sky, this view, this living palette she calls her personal parade.
But it’s twilight that wins her heart. It’s the last hurrah, she calls it, every day no matter how dark or light the sky has become, no matter if it’s raining or cloudy, no matter what has happened in the world—war or peace or another damn election—no matter what it is, there is still this twilight moment of surrender that she has honored her entire life and refuses now to give up even as she lies dying in her own bed.
Marie knows this. Marie, the hospice nurse, who comes every day and sometimes twice a day depending—depending on the pain and the nightmares and Annie’s need to ask for help. Marie knows not to interrupt when Annie lies quietly, which was once a rarity, and watches her sky unfold. Marie knows to step from the room and watch from another window because she has already learned to love the same view, the same daily routine, the same act of contrition and panorama that Annie has cared to share with her during this time of dying.
“It’s my time of dying,” Annie sings to Marie as she gets out of the car and walks toward her house. “It’s my time of dying and I would be lying if I said I was not pissed off.”
Annie sings in a twang. She refuses to close her windows and she can hear Marie drive up every afternoon and she waits—how she waits!—for the sound of her tires on the unpaved highway and then turning into the gravel driveway, and then the footsteps walking toward the house. She sings as loud as she can. She sings to keep, some days, from going insane from the pain and to make Marie hurry.
“Hurry, Marie,” Annie whispers while she hears the door open. “Please hurry.”
Marie always hurries. She knows what Annie needs, why she waits with the window open, why they have this twilight ritual, but she is also waiting for Annie to let go. Anne has to let go. She has not let go yet.
Annie is rarely alone. She has a parade of friends, her sons, her fine neighbor. She has women from the university and at least three thousand friends who would sell everything and move into her garage if they thought they could help her for one momen
t.
But she has only one Marie.
Marie with the wide smile and hands that speak of medicinal things but do so in a way that also offers hope, the promise of something wonderful beyond all the horrible days. Marie, who lines up the photos of her own daughters and cares to share not just her skills and license but also her own self and life. Marie, who will lift a bedpan, dress a seeping wound, wipe something off the inside of a ravaged mouth with the hum of kindness seeping from her pores.
There is only one Marie.
This is the day Annie will tell her. This is the time, during the twilight, when Annie will ask Marie to stay with her and hold her hand and maybe, maybe lie next to her in the bed because she knows there are not so many twilights left.
“Marie,” Annie finally says, firm and bold. “Please now, please, stay with me through the twilight.”
There is a rainbow of light at twilight that not everyone notices. It is the signal of glorious color, of lust and life, the last breath of every day that pushes through clouds and storms and even the darkest day. This rainbow is precious because so few see it. Those who do see it rarely talk about it. Annie sees it and so does Marie and now Annie asks and the asking is surrender. A beautiful, kind-of-soft pause where everyone knows but someone finally has to say it.
Marie stays without saying a word. She sits with her feet propped up on the heater just below the ridge of the rise before the long sill. Annie had windows installed wide and very long so that she could see as much and as often as possible. Marie can tell. Anyone can tell.
“Marie?”
“Yes, Annie.”
“You’ve done this before. How many times?”
“I don’t count, honey.”
“Why not? Really?” Annie is leaning as much as she can, which is not very much anymore, toward the chair where Marie sits with her feet propped on the heater.
“Because each time is important. It’s always the first time. The one. I honor every one, Annie. I can’t, I just can’t keep count.”
Annie laughs. It is not her trademark laugh but a slow and steady line of laughter that would be much, much louder if she were well.
“Marie?”
“Yes, baby?”
“I love it when you call me baby.”
Marie turns and smiles. She calls everyone baby. It’s like Annie’s “sweetheart” or her dad’s “honey.”
“Oh, baby,” Marie asks, “are you okay?”
Marie knows that Annie is not okay. She knows that now is the time for her to come over to Annie’s bed and sit on its edge and take Annie’s hands in hers and listen. Now is the time to listen.
“I’m scared. Marie, I didn’t think of this. This is the one thing that passed me by, that I never embraced, that I could simply not imagine.”
Marie puts her hand to her throat. She pauses. She takes a quick glance out of the window and she asks the God she prays to, she asks this God—whom she has always seen as a fine woman with soft hands and a heart that can be molded to love and honor every single person alive—to help her know what to say.
“Annie . . .”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Annie answers. “I can do this . . .”
Marie stops her by placing her hand across her mouth. She stops her by bending low to show Annie that she means business and that, of course, Marie has something to say. She stops her by moving over an inch on the bed so that their hips are touching through the layers of blankets. She stops her because Annie is now surrendering.
“You can do it,” she tells Annie. “We all know that but you don’t have to. I am not going to leave you, baby. I am going to be here until the end. It is going to hurt like hell but only for a little while and that’s part of what I do, why I am here, what I can do. So stop worrying. I have you covered.”
“You have my sweet ass covered?”
“I had your sweet ass covered from the day you called, baby.”
Annie smiles. It is a weak smile, but she smiles. She has one more thing to say.
“Marie . . .”
“Yes?”
“Oh, Marie, I’m scared. I’m afraid to say it but I am scared.”
Marie says nothing else. Not a word or a whisper or a false movement. She leans down and scoops Annie into her arms and holds her against her chest. Against any rule of comfort and love that may have been written before she invented her job, she holds Annie G. Freeman. She holds her and she feels Annie’s heart beating and she promises her with just that gesture that no matter how hard and long the next month and the one after that might be that she will be there and that Annie, alone as she may have to be, is really not alone at all.
“Let it go now,” she finally says into Annie’s right ear. “Let it go now.”
And Annie lets it go. She lets it go as the fingers of the day tug at the night sky, stretching it long and hard until there is nothing else to do but let go. Let go.
When Marie leaves, it is way past dark. Hours past dark and Annie is asleep and she is breathing in a way—labored but firm—that will last her about 3.2 months until that one night when the sky coughs up what seems like two sunsets at the same time and she knows at last that she has had enough.
And yes.
Marie will be there.
12
* * *
The proper way to engage a traveling funeral, Katherine decides, is at the airport bar lounge. She has selected the largest bar, the one before Terminal D that fans out into a corral of loose tables where a small funeral procession can gather for its inaugural send-off.
Her lawyer’s eye for detail has thought of just about everything. Jill, Laura and Rebecca have maps of the terminal with a black F for “funeral” in the exact spot of the Capistrano Bar & Lounge that has a lovely view of airplane wings, parents running after screaming toddlers, two drunk salesmen, a kiosk where you can purchase all the junk you forgot to buy on your vacation for the neighbors who are watching the dog, and a bartendress who looks as if she was born to serve five-dollar glasses of beer, four-dollar shots, and advice for everything from an airplane hangover to how to purchase stocks from the fast-rising stars of the business world.
In the past eight days Katherine has been a flurry of activity. Calls to the pallbearers—check. Arrange time off of work—check. Make sure daughter Sonya can stay at her best friend’s house—check. Explain this trip to friends and boyfriend—check. Tell yourself over and over again this is for Annie and it’s totally justified—check. Worry incessantly about what this will do to an already regulated and schedule-driven life that makes no allowances for free time, change or levity—check. Reservations for all the planes and trains and automobiles and hotels and at least two restaurants that probably have never had anyone call and ask if they can make a reservation—check. Pick up a mysterious package from the post office that came from Annie’s boys and that is now riding in the bag next to her at the airport rendezvous—check. Worry about what Annie wanted and didn’t want for the traveling funeral—double check. Convince her boyfriend Alex that she has not lost her mind—sort of check. Allowed herself to fall into the funeral, enjoy it, honor Annie and their friendship—about to check.
While she is running through the real checklist that she has pulled from her backpack, the phone rings. It’s Marie. She’s in between patients and trying out her first call with her fine new telephone. Marie will not make the first leg of the journey. Marie will keep trying to find replacements. Marie hopes to make it to Florida. Marie, the grief counselor, has not even been on the traveling funeral and she is already missed.
“Hey, baby,” Marie tells Katherine, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on Annie’s cell phone that is painted in bright red. It’s nail polish. Little dots here and there. The polish Marie used to put on Annie’s nails when they talked and waited for the medicine to grab hold of her veins and whip them into submission. “Is the funeral procession about to begin?”
“Marie. Where are you?”
&nbs
p; “Somewhere between Jessie Franklin and Bob Greiese.”
Katherine laughs. This is a good start. This is how it’s supposed to be, she thinks. Funerals do not have to be long crying jags and people leaning into walls—well, not all of the time anyway.
“It’s a bit early. I’m having a Bloody Mary, pacing myself you know, and trying to remember what I have probably already forgotten to do. I’m just a little nervous. What if we all get here and there’s a catfight or someone immediately doesn’t like someone else?”
Now Marie laughs. Through several phone calls she has come to understand why Annie picked Katherine to be their Girl Scout leader, the head of the class, the funeral director.
“You kill me, pardon the pun. Baby, it’s women. You won’t ever forget anything because between all of you there will be one of everything in the entire world. And getting along? There will be something. There’s always something, whatever it is won’t last long. I’ve heard Annie talk about all of you. I can’t imagine too many rough spots.”
Marie recounts the time she went on a retreat of hospice workers and all but two were women. “There were almost fifty of us,” she explains to Katherine while she maneuvers down a road that was meant to be driven with two hands and not one. “By the end of the weekend even the men were walking around in their bathrobes asking us if they could borrow deodorant. I have this hysterical photo of one of the women blow-drying this one man’s hair while a woman standing next to him is putting on lip gloss.”
“You’re right, Marie,” Katherine acknowledges. “Once when all the flights in Atlanta were grounded because of a freak snowstorm, I spent two nights in a hotel room with a woman I had never met before in my life and within twenty minutes we felt like twin sisters and I still talk with her a couple times a year.”
