The Counting-Downers

by A. J. Compton

  Previously, we were only Matilda and Oscar to our parents when we were in trouble. What I wouldn’t give for my dad to come back and tell me off for something trivial.

  Though having said that, he was never the disciplinarian, always the good cop to Mom’s bad. Instead, his method of expressing disappointment was far more effective than punishment, at least for me.

  But sometimes Mom gave him a practiced look of silent communication that all the best soulmates use. One that said ‘we’re a team and you need to back me up.’ He’d reluctantly tell me off, then wink behind my mom’s back if he thought she was overreacting and slip me some chocolate when she wasn’t looking.

  We were the real team, he and I. I guess it’s true what they say about there being no ‘I’ in team, because I’ve never been more alone than I am without my former teammate.

  Turning toward me, Mom takes in my appearance as I take in hers. I realize to my distress that I have been looking at her for the past week without seeing her current state.

  Looking at everything without seeing. Eating without tasting. Hearing without listening. Breathing without living. Senses dulled, feelings numbed.

  My timelessly beautiful mother has aged over the past seven days. Lived and died a thousand lifetimes. She’s grown world-weary, with the wrinkles of the civil wars she’s fought written across her skin, and reflected in her soul-sapped eyes.

  “Oh, Matilda, you’re not wearing that are you? You look like you’re going to a rock concert rather than your father’s funeral,” she says with exasperation, referring to my flowing black dress, floral DMs, and black leather jacket, accessorized with my signature messy blonde braid full of daisies.

  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? It’s black.” I’m trying not to become frustrated with my mom because my heart is filled with nothing but empathy for her. If my father was the air I breathed, he was the blood in her veins.

  Neither of us could live without him. Yet, here we both are. Deadly alive.

  Even though I’d always been a Daddy’s Girl, we were all as close as a family can be. I love my mother, even if I often don’t understand her, and I know she feels the same about me. Without my dad to be the bridge between our two different approaches to life, and translate the words we do and don’t say to the other, I’m afraid we’ll have one breakdown in communication too many.

  My mom gives a heavy sigh, letting go of a wriggling Oscar who is wearing the premade bow tie as a hairband. Mom is famous for her ‘speaking sighs’ as Dad called them; sighs that say it all without words. This one explains that on the second worst day of her life, the last thing she needs is me making it more difficult.

  A tremendous amount of guilt hits me at that sigh. She needs me to be strong for her, and for Oscar. She needs us to be together as a family today, what’s left of it anyway.

  At four, Oscar is still too young to understand the implications or importance of today. He knows in theory that Daddy is no longer with us and has become an angel in the sky, but I wonder if in practice he still thinks Dad is just away on some kind of extended business trip and will be bringing him back a souvenir. In many ways, I’m jealous of his youthful ignorance and trouble-free approach to life. He is the ultimate example of going with the flow and moving with the tide.

  Letting my stubborn scowl soften in apology, I calm my frustration and prepare to explain my choice of funeral outfit to my straight-laced, untied mother. She, of course, looks impeccable in a knee-length, form-fitting, black dress, sensible kitten heels, and a black headband. Outwardly, not a strand of sleek blonde hair is out of place, but I know internally is a different story.

  She won’t want anyone else to know this though. No, she’ll do her grieving in private.

  In the lonely midnight hours, lying on his side of the bed they’d shared for over twenty years, which is starting to lose his scent, she lets the tears fall in silence as she mourns the loss of her life and love. Something about the nighttime invites soliloquies of the soul. Midnight confessions spoken into the silent darkness, free of judgment and the observations which come with light.

  She thinks I can’t hear her nightly cries and prayers. At the mercy of paper-thin walls, I’m an unwelcome intruder in her most private moments. She doesn’t know I also lost the ability to sleep at exactly the same time my father lost his life.

  Or maybe she does. How sad that we both lie awake at night, each cascading silent tears and whispering our pointless pleas in isolation. I don’t go to her and she doesn’t come to me. Instead, we lay separated by brick and plaster, drowning in our own grief until the dawning of another day without him.

  I know I can go to her, but her tears will dry in an instant. She’ll need to be strong for me, instead of allowing us to be weak together. My father taught me that you need to be able to be weak so that you can continue being strong. Everyone needs something or someone they can reveal their weaknesses to. For my mother, it was always and only ever him.

  It’s a poor substitute, but now she can only be weak and vulnerable when the lights are off and she’s alone. I know she needs it in order to keep breathing and moving for my sake and my brother’s. So I let her have midnight. And solitude.

  The daytime, however, belongs to everyone else. Today belongs to everyone else. My mom knows it, and so do I.

  Clearing my throat, I give my own brief eulogy to an audience of one and a half. “Dad taught me to be an individual. He told me happiness lay in finding yourself, expressing yourself, and always trusting and staying true to the person you discovered.

  “I know you don’t always appreciate my style, but this is who I am, Mom. The boots, the braids, the flowers. Daddy helped me find and express this person, and now I have to do the final part and stay true to it. It’s what he would want. To do otherwise and pretend to be someone else, even just for a day, would go against his wishes. In being me, I’m honoring him.”

  Something that looks a lot like comprehension and sadness lights up her dim jade eyes for a brief second before fading out just as fast. “I understand, he’d be proud.”

  Before she excuses herself for a final appearance check in the bathroom that I know is just a reason to collect herself, she asks me to try to wrestle a defiant Oscar into the bow tie one last time.

  And I wonder if she understood at all.

  SITTING ON THE beach my father loved so much, with a fidgeting, bow tie-less Oscar in my lap and my stoic mother next to me clutching the urn to her chest, I draw my gaze away from the magnificent ocean to look around at the people who are gathered here to say goodbye.

  I’ve never even said ‘hello’ to most of these people.

  I think a funeral is the ultimate testament to how you lived your life. Although I was only little, I remember that when my great aunt Mara died, the people who had come to mourn had to stand on the steps and street as the church was at full capacity.

  Can you imagine filling out a church? That’s a sign of a life well lived, when there’s no sitting room at your funeral.

  No spare seats are available today either.

  I wonder how many seats would fill at my funeral if I were to die tomorrow. My family would come, but who else?

  Would some of the many people who’d made it their job to ignore me in high school show up out of guilt, or the need to keep up appearances? Would they talk to people about how wonderful I was, even though they never talked to me when I was alive?

  I hate that, don’t you? When people die, those who never knew them at all are always the ones who seem to take it the hardest. Something strange happens to people when their acquaintances die, infusing their brains with a misplaced sense of nostalgia and closeness which never existed.

  They’re the ones who can be found bawling graveside, while the family is sitting dry-eyed and unimpressed, or who come up with the most poetic words and falsified memories about the character of a virtual stranger.

  I’m not saying you can’t experience sadness when someone dies. I�
�d worry about someone’s sociopathic tendencies if they didn’t feel even a hint of sympathy when they heard about the tragic passing of a good person.

  But you know the ones I mean; those who had every opportunity to become genuine mourners had they taken the chance to get to know and spend time with the deceased while they were still breathing.

  The type who learn more about a person they saw every day at their funeral, knowing them infinitely better dead than alive.

  You’d think these people would feel guilty. They would realize the shame and regret in opportunities missed and chances lost to make a friend. But they feel grief, not guilt. Genuine over-the-top, all-consuming grief.

  I don’t understand it. I can’t bear the hypocrisy that comes with death. Just be honest, for goodness sake.

  Grief for family and friends, sadness for acquaintances, sympathy for strangers, ambivalence and relief for enemies.

  As in life, so in death. You can’t befriend the dead, and you can’t rewrite history. But still, they try.

  Looking around at all of these people who have come to see the sun set on my father’s life, I wonder about the ratio of false to genuine grievers here today.

  The length of time you know someone doesn’t make your grief more valid than somebody else’s. You can meet someone once and leave such a life-changing impact on them that they will never forget you. Or you can work side-by-side with someone every day for years and they’ll struggle to remember your name.

  My father was the sort of person you only needed to meet once to be changed for good.

  I think, in a way, each of us leave pieces of ourselves with the people we know and love, like we’re all composed of a million-piece jigsaw puzzle and we give one bit or more to everyone we meet.

  Some of these people have pieces of my father that I never will. They knew him as the guy who had a dirty sense of humor, the heartbreaking womanizer in his college days, or the naughty little boy next door who smashed their windows with a football.

  But I have pieces they don’t. I knew the guy who gave amazing cuddles and made even better pancakes. The one who taught me with patience to read, and ride, and swim, and love, and live. I will always hold pieces of the man who comforted me after my first heartbreak, and taught me to go with the flow.

  If we all came together, you’d see the whole picture. But maybe that’s not the point.

  All of us are, and mean, different things to different people. We’re one person, but a million people. Fractured, but whole. All giving out puzzle pieces and carrying around a bag full of the ones given to us by everyone we’ve ever met.

  I read once that the Japanese believe you have three faces: The first, you show to the world. The second, to your close friends and family. The third, you never show anyone and it’s the truest reflection of yourself.

  I think a lot of truth lies in that. For as many puzzle pieces as everyone here today holds of my father, there will always be some missing. Secrets of his self, he’s taken to the grave.

  We knew a lot about him, but we never knew all.

  I zone back into reality as the minister shouts over the wind about God having a plan for each of us. “Erik Evans was taken too soon,” he says, “but even though we may not understand it, we need to trust that it was God’s plan for him.”

  That doesn’t even make sense. He can’t have been taken too soon. If it was ‘God’s Plan,’ it figures that he was taken right on time.

  From the moment he was born, his dismayed parents and the hospital staff saw the clock start ticking down from 46 years, 2 months, 18 days, 25 hours, and 2 seconds.

  On March 14, 2016, that time ran out without a second to spare.

  Say what you want about death, but at least it’s punctual.

  Sitting to the right of me, my Norwegian grandmother, or Farmor, Ingrid holds my spare hand for dear life. Life is dear indeed.

  At sixty-five, my paternal grandmother still has 19 years, 8 months, 12 days, 9 hours, 38 minutes, and 4 seconds left in this lifetime. How terrible it must be to outlive your children.

  Whether you know it’s coming or not, whether it’s God’s ‘plan’ or not, I can imagine few things worse than the unfair overthrow of the cosmic order. No parent should have to attend his or her child’s funeral, whether that child is four or forty.

  The minister calls up my dad’s best friend, Uncle Dan, to give the eulogy. My mom had asked if I wanted to do it, but I declined.

  For once, she understood.

  I don’t need to stand up in front of all of these strangers and familiars and convince them why my dad was so special. If they don’t know, they don’t deserve to find out.

  It’s like I told my mother this morning, the best way to honor my father, is by becoming his living legacy. My true tribute to his life is to live mine the way he taught me.

  I untangle my hand from my grandmother’s and trace the still-healing tattoo that wraps around my wrist. Live true. Live deep. Live free.

  That’s what he taught me and that’s what I’m going to do.

  He wouldn’t want me to live for him. He’d want me to live for me. I’m going to do both.

  We owe it to the dead to do what they can’t:

  Live.

  Truly. Deeply. Freely.

  Besides, my dad isn’t dead in the truest sense of the word.

  “Don’t you worry about me, I’ll live forever, Tilly girl.” “No you won’t, Daddy.” I squeeze him tighter. “Sarah at school says that when people die they disappear forever and you never see them again.” He lifted my burrowed head so he could look straight into my eyes, olive to emerald. “That’s where you’re wrong, angel. As long as your heart beats, as long as your brother breathes, as long as your mother smiles, I’ll live on. I’ll live on inside of you”—he pats the space above my heart at my confused expression—“every time you remember something we did together and smile, or repeat one of my phrases or jokes and laugh, or tell your children about me and cry, I’m alive. You feel; I live. If you always do that, I’ll live on long after I die.”

  Shaking my head back to the present, I realize that the random flashback is a perfect example of how he lives on. He’s the voice inside my head, and the emotions in my heart. And he lives.

  I smile small for the second time that day, causing my grandmother to shoot me a reprimanding look. “Funerals are not the place for smiles, Matilda,” she whispers, chastising me in Norwegian.

  “You’re wrong, Farmor,” I whisper back, “they’re the perfect place.”

  She tuts and rolls her eyes in dismissal. I smile medium. No wonder she gets on so well with my mother.

  I hear an ill-disguised coughing snort behind me, and glance back at the row behind me to find a boy around my age grinning back at me as if he understood the conversation my grandmother and I just had.

  I give a tentative, conspiring smile back, which only serves to irritate my formality-loving Farmor further. She gives me a sharp slap on the hand, causing me to turn back around and sit forward, away from the mystery man. Maybe he’s some distant Norwegian cousin.

  “Tilly, I bored,” Oscar declares in a loud voice from his seat on my lap.

  This time I’m giving the ill-disguised coughing snort at the horrified gasps, which reach my ears on both sides, from my mother and grandmother.

  I’d wondered how long he’d be able to stay quiet and on his best behavior like Mom had instructed him to be before we left the house in exchange for not wearing the bow tie.

  Lesson learned: never enter hostile negotiations with a wily four-year old. You’ll lose. Every time.

  Leaning down, I whisper in his ear, hoping he’ll take the hint and lower the volume, “Sssh, Osky. We have to be quiet.”

  “Wanna play?” He continues to shout over Uncle Dan’s eulogy, “Me sooo bored.”

  At this point, I can’t keep the laughter in.

  I laugh. Loudly.

  For the first time since my father died nine days ago, I laugh. An
d laugh. And laugh some more.

  This sets off the boy behind me, who I can’t bring myself to look at for fear of becoming even more inappropriate than we’re being right now. Even Oscar seems to find my laughter funny and starts giggling, despite not getting the joke at his expense.

  At this point, my mother is magenta with mortification. And my grandmother is giving me a look that threatens to turn this into a double funeral, but I just can’t stop. I laugh until my stomach hurts and I’m drinking tears.

  It takes me a while to notice that Uncle Dan has paused his poetic words, and the eyes and mouths of everyone gathered are wide with what they consider the wrong kind of tears streaming down my make-up free face.

  Tough crowd.

  “Matilda,” my mom whisper-shouts in horror. “Control yourself, and take Oscar away. Both of you need to calm down. I cannot believe you right now. Your behavior is appalling. Your father would be so disappointed.”

  At the mention of my father’s hypothetical disappointment, I sober. Standing up with a still giggling Oscar in my arms, I kiss him on the head, which he rushes to scrub away, causing me to smile yet again.

  I gaze down at my mother and lock eyes with the potential cousin from Norway. He stares back with a strange intensity, still shaking with the after-shocks of laughter, as if wondering what I’m going to do next.

  Good question. What am I going to do next? I don’t know, but I do know that I’ve felt more connected to my father, more alive, in the last two minutes than two days.

  Not bothering to whisper anymore, I face my mother. “You’re wrong,” I tell her and anybody who agrees with her. “You’re so wrong. Daddy wouldn’t be disappointed; he’d be proud. If he was here, which I believe he is, he’d be laughing along with us.”

  With that, I turn around, still carrying my brother, and walk down to the beach without a backward glance.

  “Where we go, Tilly?” he asks after a few minutes, resting his platinum blond head on my shoulder.