The Counting-Downers

by A. J. Compton

  The dead aren’t lost; they’re gone. So don’t apologize for deeds not done.

  It’s okay to say nothing. It’s okay to say something other than sorry. And it’s okay to show your sympathy in ways other than redundant words. A fridge full of casseroles means more than an earful of apologies.

  Priding myself on a lack of hypocrisy, I make a mid-year resolution never to apologize the next time I’m speaking to a loved one of someone who has died.

  Looking around at all of the people around me and how much time they each have left, that day may come sooner rather than later.

  Mrs. Pierce, my dad’s elderly ex-secretary, who is currently apologizing to my mom, sadly has just 8 months, 9 days, 12 hours, 6 minutes, and 54 seconds left. Excluding the malevolent, it’s never cause for celebration when anyone dies. Nevertheless, when an old person dies, there tends to be a feeling of ‘well, at least they had a good run.’ At almost eighty, Mrs. Pierce has had a good run.

  Alex Ramirez, my dad’s childhood neighbor, who I can see through the window smoking outside on our front lawn, has 1 year, 11 months, 3 days, 19 hours, and 2 seconds left. But from the way he wheezed his apology, burning my nostrils with nicotine, that’s no real shock. Still, he might be run over by a car instead of the obvious way it seems he’ll die. If I’ve learned anything over my nineteen years, it’s that life is full of surprises and death has a great sense of humor.

  Cindy Meyer, the mystery woman who claimed to know me as a baby as she squeezed my cheeks between her fingers earlier and waxed poetic about how much I’d grown, has 2 years, 1 month, 27 days, 59 minutes, and 38 seconds left. I never did find out how my family supposedly knew her.

  At least one person always comes up to you at these types of things and claims to have made your acquaintance before you even started to recognize the faces of your parents. To your embarrassment, they ask if you remember them, which you almost never do, and appear offended when you give a truthful answer.

  Or, like the illusive Cindy, they seem bewildered by the unstoppable and universal phenomenon of growing up. Despite witnessing their personal progression of time in the mirror over the years, they cannot comprehend how you are no longer the image in their heads, young and frozen in time.

  Although we are all constantly surrounded by death, something about being at a funeral makes your own mortality more pronounced. Those who have lulled themselves into a false sense of security are once again reminded of the truth of time. Funerals make everyone more aware of how little time they have left and make them question what they’re going to do with it.

  All day, I’ve noticed people looking above the heads of others, furtively watching their counting clocks with morbid fascination. The people here today have barely made eye contact with each other.

  I wonder how many people will leave here today with a sense of renewed purpose and vitality. How many will vow to do whatever it is they’ve been meaning to do, to say whatever it is they’ve been meaning to say, be whoever it is they’ve been meaning to be?

  Moreover, how many of those will actually do it, say it, be it? Will they be changed after today, or will they forget their good intentions and own ticking clocks once life, yet again, gets in the way?

  I wonder if life is what gets in the way of our hopes and goals, or is it we, as people, who get in our own way. The unforeseen does prevent plans and delay dreams, so maybe it’s a bit of both. It just seems strange for life to be an obstacle to living.

  Finally alone, and enjoying a brief respite from the chorus of apologies, I decide to take a break from philosophical thoughts and seize upon the solitude. I avoid eye contact as I sneak my way out of the living room where some of my dad’s friends are reminiscing over their missing member through eyes glassy with cigar smoke, whisky, and nostalgia. Weaving through the long hallway, I reach my destination and slide along the white walls and exposed brick of our large, open-plan family kitchen where most people are gathered.

  Successful in my unseen escape, I make it out the back door to the wide wooden porch, breathing a sigh of relief that only a few other people are out here. The unfamiliar couple sitting on our double-seated porch swing receive a polite nod, before I continue down the white steps to our back yard. I say back yard, but it’s more like a meadow. As well as my dad’s high-powered job, both of my parents are fortunate to have come from money.

  Or I guess I should say were. I need to get used to speaking the past tense when I talk about my dad. But when I speak about both of my parents, do I speak in the past or present tense? No one ever talks about the linguistic issues that come with death.

  Our property sits on four acres of land. The bit I’m walking through now is my mother’s landscape garden. She wanted something ‘presentable’ for guests to see when they looked out of the windows of the house so she hired a landscape architect to create a garden oasis worthy of a luxury magazine.

  My mom wanted to channel an English country garden in the heart of California. Despite the logistical issues, anything can happen with enough money, so we have roses, delphiniums, and lilies of the valley, all obediently growing within their designated sections. It’s without a doubt beautiful, but it’s not where I like to spend most of my time.

  I keep walking along the cobbled path until I pass through an arch of blossom trees, signaling the end of mom’s garden, and the start of mine, Oscar’s, and Dad’s garden. I guess it’s just Oscar’s and mine now, but this place will always connect me with my dad.

  In stark contrast to my mom’s perfect, manicured, and controlled version of nature, my dad gave control of ‘our’ garden over to Mother Nature.

  There are no flowers growing in artificial swirls and circles here. Instead, grass tickles your knees and tangles around your ankles as you wade through it to reach a meadow decorated with haphazard weeds and wildflowers.

  In place of a controlled color palette is a sensory assault of whites, purples, reds, blues, yellows, and greens. Scattered sporadically like my father’s ashes, there are huckleberry bushes and old oaks, fairy lanterns and golden stars, blazing stars and baby blue eyes, wild poppies and farewell-to-springs. A disarray of flawless harmony. Our perfectly imperfect heaven on earth.

  I’m so grateful to have grown up here and that my little brother will be able to do the same. I had an idyllic childhood straight out of the pages of an Enid Blyton novel, full of searching for fairies, family picnics, treasure hunts, cloud watching, fruit picking, and garden camping.

  Pausing for a moment by one of my favorite sections, my daisy field, I bend down to pluck one and push it into my braid to replace one of the ones that were lost in the sea earlier. The rain has stopped but the stubborn droplets remain.

  My dad planted my daisy garden following our ‘go with the flow’ conversation all those years ago after he saw how much I loved having a flower in my hair. It took a while for them to grow, but ever since, I’ve had a daily supply. Although weeds, they remind me of a time of happiness and innocence.

  And most of all, they remind me of my dad. Sometimes I’ll substitute my daily daisies for one of the many other flowers that grow in our garden, but they never have the same significance.

  Walking on through the meadow, relief settles over me once I reach my destination. I climb up the wooden rope ladder of my treehouse, grateful no one is behind me to look up my dress. I’m almost at the top when instead of the ledge, my hand grabs onto a pair of dirty, untied black Chuck Taylors.

  As any Converse fan will know, you can tell a lot about a person by the state of their Chucks. The color, the cleanliness, the position and style of the laces, and the visibility of the logo tell you everything you need to know about their owner and the life they lead.

  As a rule, I don’t trust anyone with pristine Chucks. Dirty, scuffed, holey and with the All Star logo smudged from use is a sign of a life well lived. So at least this guy receives points for that. He loses them, however, for being in my treehouse in my meadow, uninvited.

&n
bsp; Still trying to comprehend the fact that someone has entered my safe haven, my eyes work their way up a pair of slim black suit pants, to an open black suit jacket with a plain white dress shirt and black tie underneath. For a second, I’m too distracted to remember what I’m supposed to be doing before my eyes make it to a familiar smiling face.

  I struggle to place this interloper as I stare up at him, enquiring emerald eyes to smiling sapphires. Then it hits me why I recognize the dimpled grin.

  He’s made me laugh once before today. It’s my partner in crime, the laughing Norwegian cousin from the funeral.

  Most of the time, we live our lives on autopilot rather than as active participants. We hear people, but we don’t listen to them. We look at things, but we don’t see them. We do things, but we don’t participate in them. We’re so busy trying to go from A to B that we forget to stop and look around, to capture the moment.

  That’s the way with most moments in life. It’s only looking back that we realize that was the moment things changed, came together, or fell apart. Moments we lived through become second-hand memories with primary significance.

  Then, there are living memories. The rare moments that you somehow just know are going to change your life as they are happening. You don’t know why or how, but the moment somehow buzzes with an inspiring untapped energy out of the ordinary. It’s not a word or a thought, but a feeling.

  Like the few seconds before the headlining act takes the stage, a certain magic in the air promises you something monumental is about to take place. Something so big, you better pay attention and capture it for future reference. A seemingly mundane moment, one that should be forgettable, will take on a significance beyond logic or imagination. A moment in a million.

  Somehow, I just know.

  That this is one of those moments. That I am about to create a memory. That this unknown boy is anything but ordinary. He is extraordinary. And for better or worse, he is going to change my life.

  Go with the flow, Tilly girl, I swear I hear my dad whisper in my ear, relax, and let the tide take you on a journey to the inevitable.

  With that thought, I take his proffered hand and let him pull me up to take a place by his side.

  “HI,” I SAY, all of a sudden shy as I sit beside him, our legs dangling out above the meadow below like wind chimes on the breeze.

  “Hey,” is all he says back, and for a brief moment I think that maybe the feeling I just had about him being extraordinary was wrong and this life-changing moment is destined to be nothing other than an awkward encounter.

  Then he smiles. And I know my first thought about him was right.

  It sounds crazy, but his smile speaks to my soul. Like a baby learning interactions by mirroring facial expressions when he smiles, I want to smile too.

  So we sit there in my childhood treehouse, just staring and smiling at each other for several seconds more than is appropriate.

  After a while, he breaks the eye contact with a light chuckle. Bending his head so his wavy blond hair flops onto his forehead, he raises his cerulean eyes and looks at me as if he’s known me his whole life, something at odds with the words that follow. “I’m Tristan.”

  “Matilda.”

  For some strange reason this causes him to smile, though I’m not quite sure why.

  “Nice to meet you properly,” he says in reference to our brief laughing connection earlier.

  “You, too.” I smile. “But since we have just met, do you want to tell me what you’re doing in my treehouse, Goldilocks?” I nudge his shoulder so he knows I’m joking. I don’t know why I’m so at ease with someone I’ve just met. Somehow, my instincts know what his limits are and that he can handle my teasing.

  He laughs out loud at the Goldilocks nickname, a rambunctious, infectious, addictively raspy sound, which echoes through my senses and around the treehouse walls. “Your treehouse?”

  “My treehouse,” I confirm with a mockingly petulant nod.

  “Well, sorry for trespassing without permission, but I just needed to get away from all the death and doom for a bit. I went outside to take in some fresh air and kept walking once I realized it was the never-ending garden. I’ve never seen anything like this. The garden at the front is lovely, but this is out of this world.” He gestures his arm out and around at the meadow. “It’s nature at its purest, wildest, and most beautiful. Once I spotted the treehouse, I climbed up here to have a better view of it all. You’re so lucky to have a place like this.”

  For a moment, I’m speechless at his perceptive description. I shift my body away from him to face the meadow straight on and clear my throat. “I know,” I tell him, my voice soft as I look out at the meadow. “It’s my favorite place on earth.”

  “I can see why.”

  We’re both quiet for a moment, each reflecting on the untamed beauty of the magical world around us. Once we’ve taken it all in, I break the silence.

  “Well, although trespassers are normally prosecuted, I’ll allow you to share it with me.”

  “Thank you for your generosity, Baby Bear.”

  “You’re welcome, Goldilocks.” I play along while a secret thrill runs through my body from his nickname for me. I hope it sticks.

  “I wanted to introduce myself to you earlier today, but I couldn’t find you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I wanted to thank you for a life-changing experience.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever laughed at a funeral before today, but it’s an experience to be recommended and never forgotten.” He smirks, causing his dimples to groove further into his cheeks.

  I laugh at this, both of us reflecting on our momentary loss of propriety earlier. “I can’t say I ever have either; it was a first for me too. I always find humor in the most awkward and serious of situations, but laughing at funerals is a new one. Typical of me that I decide to be inappropriate at my own father’s funeral...”

  “No way, you weren’t inappropriate. The situation was unfortunate but the laughter was appropriate.” He appears to hesitate before he places his hovering hand over mine, which is resting on the floor of the treehouse, squeezing it in solidarity as if sensing my wavering conviction that my impulsivity today was acceptable.

  “Seriously,” he says, bending down to meet my lowered eyes, “you did nothing wrong today and everything right. I thought it was amazing. You were amazing. Your dad would have thought so too. He would have found it hilarious and been laughing along with us.”

  His words strike something deep inside me and resonate throughout my bones. He’s right and reminds me why I did what I did today. I regret embarrassing my mom and grandmother, but I’m not sorry for laughing or taking Oscar away from the situation.

  I’m surprised he’s read the situation so well though, read me so well. His levels of perception extend further than the beauty of nature. For someone I’ve never met before today, he understands the dynamics between all of the people in my family well. Then I’m reminded we’re probably related, something which I’ve conveniently forgotten.

  “Are you…I mean, are we, related?” I ask him, deciding the only way to know for sure is to be blunt.

  My serious question doesn’t have quite the response I was expecting however. He sputters with laughter, choking on air and amusement. “What?”

  “I asked if we were related. Are you a distant cousin or something?”

  At last, he gives me a serious answer once he’s regained his composure. “Um…no.”

  “Oh. I thought you were.”

  “You genuinely thought we were related?”

  “Yeah.” I smile, feeling silly at my assumption. “I thought because you seemed to understand the conversation I had with my grandmother that you must be some sort of distant cousin I’d never met or something.”

  He laughs his contagious laugh again at this, causing me to giggle too.

  “No, Baby Bear, definitely not a cousin,” he tells m
e. I think he whispers something like, “Fate couldn’t be that cruel,” under his breath, but I can’t be sure.

  My smile is perplexed and the air is a bit awkward for a few seconds before another thought occurs to me. “So how did you understand the conversation I had with my grandmother? We were speaking Norwegian. Did you understand us, or did you just get the gist of what was going on?”

  “No, I understood. My mom was Norwegian, so I speak it fluently. My dad was Jewish-American, so he was always left out of our secret conversations.” The corners of his mouth tilt up as he recalls a distant memory of such a time.

  “Was?” I ask him, realizing that he’d referred to his parents in the past tense.

  “Was.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  I remember my resolution from earlier not to apologize next time I meet a loved one of people who have died. Now seems as good a time as any to practice what I preach, so I say the only thing I can think of.

  “Well that sucks.”

  His laughter booms around the meadow, and his expression is relieved, as if he didn’t think that was what I was going to say and he was bracing himself for an apology that wouldn’t make it past my lips.

  Once he quiets, he stares at me with an intensity and tenderness that shouldn’t belong between strangers.

  “Yeah, it does. Sucks about your dad, too.”

  “It does indeed.”

  We smile small with shared understanding, bonding over the absence of sorrys.

  “So what are the chances of two Norwegian families not only living in the same place but running into each other?”

  He has that same look in his eyes when he says, “One in a million.” And I wonder if we’re talking about the same thing.

  Breaking eye contact, before it becomes uncomfortable, I let my gaze wander without seeing around my childhood treehouse and favorite thinking space.

  “So if you’re not a relative, how do you know my dad? I mean how did you know him?” I correct myself. “Sorry, I’m not used to talking in the past tense yet.”