Proper Goodbye

by Connie Chappell

  She returned the receiver to its hook, then looked over at the kitchen table. The family Bible and several picture albums lay there. None opened. She felt she needed their contents in order to complete the task of writing the obituary.

  She searched out the books earlier when she dared become reacquainted with the house. After climbing the carpeted stairs, she entered her parents’ room at the end of the hall. She doubted her father, driven by routine, moved the Bible and albums from the bottom drawer in her mother’s dresser. Abigail kept them under her best tablecloth for gatherings around the dining room table and a couple of pairs of summer pajamas.

  Beebe knelt and pulled open the drawer. The Bible and albums stared her in the face. The cushion of family dinners and warm fragrant nights with the windows up vanished. Quickly, she slid two more drawers out. Just a hodgepodge of objects remained. Why?

  Oh, the lap quilt.

  The lap quilt Callie MacCallum promised to sew with the articles of clothing Vincent talked Cliff into parting with. Beebe tried to imagine the two men here in this room with cardboard containers on the bed, boxing up her mother’s clothes. How awkward and difficult that must have been. She hoped the awkwardness shared by the men lessened the difficulty. They did that for her so she might have a keepsake. She viewed firsthand Callie’s many quilted keepsakes, each sewed together with clothes belonging to the dear departed. They were all treasures.

  Numbly, she hoisted the books up in her arms and carried them to the kitchen. The image of the nearly empty drawers stayed with her when she sat down at the table with a tablet of paper and a pen. The scanty belongings left behind in those drawers visibly represented the holes in her life after her mother’s departure. The missing clothes, shipped away for a time—for alterations, let’s say—would come back, just as her mother had left home, then rather unceremoniously returned. The altered clothes would reenter Beebe’s life in the form of a quilt with all her memories pleasingly arranged when, in reality, they were not. Not now, anyway.

  Suddenly, she didn’t feel a standard obit could be pried out of her. These were not standard times. Despite her father’s pretense, these were not days of routine. If her mother’s obituary printed in the local paper would shock the townspeople, then Beebe must write a distinctive one. The composition poured out with ease. Like a child who completed a book report, she went to read it to her mother.

  She stood at the foot of the grave, her gray eyes latched to the rough stone marker. “Mother, you’re going to hear this before Daddy. We both miss you. We have for a long, long time. I put my best words into this.”

  She held the freshly recopied tablet page in both hands, cleared her throat, and spoke aloud.

  Abigail Marie Walker died in the early morning on a day in March that woke to greet a dawn saddened by the knowledge that one less soul existed in its midst.

  Abigail’s trek through life was no different than most. She chose a loving husband in Clifford Walker, and she blessed her daughter, Beebe Walker, with her open heart, her values, and ever-emerging examples of her influence on the lives of others. Those blessings live on, although Abigail’s physical presence is lost. They are her legacy.

  Abigail rose from despair and claimed her place on this earth. She lived with fear, but was not overpowered by it. She fought addiction and won. She gave her life in defense of another. The giving of that life, in the world she knew, the sacrifice that came later, touches her family and friends.

  Her life inspired many who remain unknown. But those who step forward and speak of their unique friendship with Abigail tell a story of kindness and redemption, of generosity and humility, of selflessness and love.

  When her memory passes through our hearts, multiply that number tenfold and know there are those unaware of her passing and yet they live each day stronger for the moment her life crossed theirs.

  With the rising sun, Abigail Marie Walker shall be interred in Larkspur Cemetery with private services.

  When the tribute was read, tears rolled off Beebe’s cheeks. “Mother,” she cried. “Mommy. I am so glad you came back.”

  Letting herself become lost in grief for a moment, she released a pair of heart-wrenching sobs. She slogged back to the house, then couldn’t stand to be there. Nothing felt right. Not her silent mother. Not the confusing mix of her mother’s absolute closeness, while at the same time, the estrangement swelled to gigantic proportion.

  Beebe drove to town for groceries. Upon her return, she sifted her lingering emotions into the ingredients for the applesauce cake she baked.

  She heard her father’s truck pull into the drive at half past six. After her return from shopping, she made a point of opening the front door and leaving it wide. The welcoming gesture would greet Cliff at the end of his workday, and it would direct his path through the house. If he sought her out upon his arrival, he would pass by the dining room table on his way to the kitchen. Abigail’s obituary lay within easy sight on the table.

  At the stove, Beebe felt the vibrations of Cliff’s passage along the old homestead’s floorboards cease. She heard the crackle of paper. Wooden spoon in hand, held aloft over a pot of homemade vegetable soup, she awaited his approval or his grumbling disgust because she had the day and wasted it by not following protocol.

  “Have you forgiven her?” His voice startled her. He was suddenly inside the kitchen. He used a level tone for his simple inquiry.

  The spoon she held jerked on its way to the spoon rest. That he blindsided her with that particular question caused her head to cloud with something akin to the steam rising from the simmering soup.

  She must have space, she thought, not the closed walls of the kitchen where she spent the afternoon, mixing dry ingredients with wet for the cake, chopping vegetables, and keeping company with memories of her mother completing the same tasks. Mechanically, she turned the flame down on the soup, all the while mulling over an offshoot of her father’s question. Was it ever about forgiveness?

  “By reading this,” he said, “it sounds like you have.”

  She turned to go outside. Her father followed on her heels. She stopped at the edge of the side porch and inhaled deeply. Finally, she faced him. “Let’s sit on the glider.” She forced a smile to cap this emotional day.

  “No,” he said firmly.

  Her smile dissolved. Again, he tipped the scales.

  He walked instead to the picnic table positioned a few yards away, at the corner of the house.

  When they were seated, he asked again, “Have you forgiven her?”

  She made a quick study of his hazel eyes and concluded he really wanted to express himself, but she didn’t mind going first.

  “I guess my forgiveness came gradually without even realizing it. I was so focused on myself and my failures that I could barely let the knowledge Vincent brought register. It was there, hanging out in the ether, but I didn’t think about it. And Vincent kept asking me to come home, then he switched my focus to the job he lined up. In reaching that decision, I accepted Mother’s part, her place in that, meaning her death.” Up in the sky, patches of clouds passed behind Cliff’s head of salt-and-pepper hair. “My life was such a mess. Mother did very little to add to my depression. There wasn’t that much room left. She took only a small part.” She produced a weak smile. “When I began to consider returning, the thought of home, and you, Vincent and the job, still took the largest part of my concentration. Mother had her share, but not a crowding share. I’m sorry I took the last five months to come to terms with everything, and now it’s come down on you without warning.”

  Cliff listened intently. He held his right fist to his mouth, the bend of his thumb hooked on his lower lip. He dropped that hand to overlap the other at the table’s edge when he spoke. “How
could there be warning? No one is prepared for this. I always thought that because she’d been gone so long, with time and distance as cushions, I’d barely feel the blow. You’re a cushion, Beebe. All day, knowing you’d be here when I got home, knowing I wouldn’t go through this alone, got me through.”

  Beebe leaned into the table so her outstretched hand could pat her father’s to convey how truly touched she was by his words.

  “You will stay, won’t you? Work with Vincent. Be here.” He raised a finger to point back toward town, then to the house.

  “I’m staying, Daddy. That part feels right.”

  “What doesn’t feel right?”

  “I guess right isn’t the best word on the negative side. The negative side is that we’re not going through this in a vacuum. There’s human nature to consider and acceptance. People are going to be people, and those people who remember Mother and our problems are going to talk. These people on a smaller scale must come to terms with her death themselves. When they talk to each other, whether gossipy talk or concerned words for us, that’s them also dealing with Mother’s passing. Their grief, their knowledge of our grief—” She broke off to arch one eyebrow. As she did, she slipped into counselor mode. “Well, let’s just say, people don’t deal well with grief. They don’t know what to do. Most people give a heartfelt attempt to express kindness and sympathy. Some seem unfeeling. We must send our focus solely inside ourselves, our hearts, our minds, our memories of Mother. Tune everyone else out. Listen with half an ear at best. Then look inside yourself and find a measure of solace. As each day passes, that measure will increase. Maybe a day or two for backsliding, but each day gets us closer to the people we’ll be at the other end. We won’t be the same. I’m not the same person I was when I passed the new school at the edge of town. I know I’m not. The key is, we need to talk, you and I.”

  “You changed since yesterday?” he said, baffled.

  She had. Yates Strand and his Terri Miller stories precipitated that change, but she would not mention Yates for two reasons. The first, she thought, was a bit selfish. Her father’s swinging-door disposition found a decently calm plane for thoughtfulness without anger. She wasn’t about to disturb that. Secondly, it would be wrong to prejudice Cliff in any way, give him any precognitions before he met Yates, and they talked.

  She waved away Cliff’s question about change. “Daddy, you talk. Tell me what thoughts keep swimming around in your head. Things that don’t necessarily seem on target with Mother’s death or the arrangements. Don’t think about it. Just spit something out.”

  “The empty grave.” The words fled off his lips with all the force of a pistol shot. “Moving your mother will leave an empty grave. There once was a casket inside, then it’s gone. And I keep thinking about disturbing the graves around hers. It feels insensitive. It feels like I caused it because Abigail was my wife, and she’s the reason for the disruption, so by association, it’s my fault. After the disinterment, what do I do when I come through that section? How do I fill in that spot?” His eyes begged for answers. “There’s no way to bury the memories. I used to say that to surviving family members like it was a good thing. Not this time.”

  “You want to bury Mother’s memories?”

  “There are so many reminders. And the thought of an empty grave out there will not go away.” He caught his head in his hands.

  Beebe knew of his obsession with tidiness when it came to “his” cemetery.

  Quickly calm, he raised his chin. “Your ole dad’s loony, isn’t he?”

  She answered his question with a question. “Daddy, why not the glider?” The empty-grave scenario halfway made sense to her, but his near hatred for the glider stumped her.

  “Huh?”

  “You didn’t want to sit on the glider earlier.”

  He swallowed. “You remember how Mom and I sat there after supper. We talked about everything, or so I thought. But she didn’t talk from her heart. She came back and wouldn’t see me. Begged Vincent not to call. Shot back into town and brought a passel of lies for him to peddle.”

  Within Beebe’s counselor persona, she reasoned that a hurting Cliff fixated on the glider. Instantly, the glider became Beebe’s yardstick by which to measure her father’s progress for his return from grief. Someday, passing the glider without a second thought for its prior significance would be the test of accomplishment. Actually sitting in it would blow his recovery off the charts.

  “That bothered me, too,” she found herself saying.

  He looked over.

  “But I’m glad she came back. I’m glad to have closure.”

  “But we wouldn’t have had closure if Vincent kept his promise.”

  “I think she knew Vincent wouldn’t keep her secret. Deep down, I think she knew.”

  “What was the point?”

  “She couldn’t face you, Daddy. What if you wouldn’t come? All these years, she abandoned us. She couldn’t hope to think you’d come running.”

  “Vincent told her I would.”

  “The fact that Vincent knew enough about you to make that claim probably told her he wouldn’t keep the secret. She couldn’t bear it, knowing she asked, and you refused her offer.”

  “You have a lot of empathy for her.”

  “I have experience with counseling. In that unimpassioned place counselors go, I see the situation from Mother’s side. I could imagine if I asked you to come to my deathbed, and because of the distance built between us, you wouldn’t come.”

  “Don’t think that. I most certainly would.”

  “But I know what that would do, the pain I’d feel if you didn’t. She couldn’t know what you’d do, and she couldn’t take the chance.”

  “Not very brave.”

  Beebe wanted to argue with that all-too-brief summary. Perhaps it was better though if Cliff altered his own conclusion. She hoped he would after he spent some time with Yates. Beebe firmly believed a person shouldn’t be judged by the worst thing she did in her life.

  With Yates back in her thoughts, she wondered how she could get around this moment, this conversation, without leaving Cliff on the edge again, knowing someone was out there, someone close who knew his wife, but who wasn’t quite ready to meet him.

  Neither had she been ready to invite Yates to supper as she thought she would. Writing the obituary, then spending time in the cemetery drained her.

  The question of her mother’s bravery needed to be addressed soon, but on another day. Yates would answer that question best. Cliff would hear that answer better from the young man her mother influenced for ten years.

  Another day, it would have to be.

  Duties

  Beebe spent another basically sleepless night in the caretaker’s house. Only the two hours before dawn came with dream-filled sleep. She dreamed about slithering telephone cords and angry phone calls. The revolving dream reached the place where her mind stepped in and forced her eyes open. She rolled onto her back, dragging the sheet with her, and stared at the ceiling. There in the dark, the dream jarred loose a memory. The memory dated back to a teenage Beebe and included a quick-to-anger, barely coping Cliff.

  She climbed out of bed, wandered the house, weighed her options, only to lay back down. She thought about the morning before in her father’s room, then snuck down the hall, opened the door with care, and reset Cliff’s alarm clock. She measured her time, brewed coffee, pinched several bites of applesauce cake, and then returned upstairs with two mugs and two minutes to spare.

  When the time came, her father groggily answered the alarm, threw off the sheet, saw her standing at the window, gave a cockeyed look at the bedside timepiece, and shook his head. An errant clump of ha
ir bobbed.

  “Geez, Beebe,” he complained.

  “I brought coffee,” Beebe offered happily. She transferred one cup from the window ledge to the nightstand.

  “What is it with you?” He rubbed his beard-stubbled face.

  “Actually, what it was, was a bad dream. Those are rare for me.”

  “Is this where I say, tell me all about it?”

  She smiled. There was, in point of fact, a pleasant quality to his tone. “I’ve been up for a while, Daddy. I’ve churned out several topics for discussion.”

  He heaved in a sigh, then raised the coffee cup to his lips. She carried her own coffee to the cedar chest at the foot of the bed and sat.

  “But first,” Beebe said, “I need to walk something back. I haven’t come to terms with my grief. I know last evening I said I had, but scratch that out of your memory.”

  “Yeah, I pegged that as a bunch of hooey.”

  When her grin faded, she said, “I spent a long night deliberating, but I thought I might whittle the two hotspots I chose down to one.”

  “No, no. If you want to let me have it with both barrels, just do it.”