As I lie here in this pine box on this special day in October, yes, I can see all of it. I’m in here, not floating above nor standing in dark shadows beyond the piping organ in the corner. It is auto-playing some of my favorite hymns. Pastor John is as somber in the front row as is the family I have so loved and left.
Ruby is crying though I have told her she shouldn’t. She cried easily and often during our years and especially in the recent times of my lingering demise.The tears are darkening the front of the flamingo tea dress I gave her as we honeymooned in Florida 47 years ago. It still fits. Tara and Eleanor are coping well. I bought those two dresses as well. They are both so beautiful despite one being a day of clouds over a snow-frozen lake and the latter a skip and a smile in the sun.
Tara clung to me through my cancer, but Laney cheered me on, believing the best and fearing nothing at all. Ruby provided the comfort of love. A hug when I hurt. A kiss in the night.Asking if I was afraid. Being where she always had been.
I can see the stanchions of floral arrangements, but, strangely, I cannot smell them now. There was a time when I could. At our home in Willow Creek, I walked the mulch paths from flower box to flower box. I could smell the spring earth with its bursting must. And see the solar radiant colors of rose and red and orange and their blends. And as my days of autumn grew shorter, I tasted the frost-breath, gathered the last of the season and buried that which was decayed.
They come in ones and twos and look down. “He looks so real. They did a good job.” Mrs. Chance says she wishes she had found an opportunity to say goodbye, but she had never said hello. Hickory peered in. He had always shaken my hand, but he didn’t know my name.Sam just said, "Goodbye, Bob.Don't know what else to say."
Many tell Ruby how much I meant to them. “If there is anything I can do…” “I’ll call on you to see how you are doing.” "We'll take care of you and the girls."But the phone won’t ring often or loudly enough. They mean well. But life is about living as they all seek their lively nights and busier days.
Here is Joan. She was kind to us, and we to her. Her Kelly was Laney’s best friend and spent most of a summer with us when Joan was sick. They were without a man in the family and were correspondingly poor. Joan appreciated that I never left the church parking lot when it was wet or cold until her car had started. She stared briefly and then said, “Thanks, Bob.” I would have smiled back.
A larger group of faces looks in all at once. It is my basketball team with whom I had once hustled around the court in the church basement. We were good, and so had I been. (Twenty eight points a game two years ago.)Then I got sick. The hair on their heads is just now starting to regrow, and I would laugh at that if I could.
I can only see and hear. I can’t feel the vibrations of the old pipe organ as I did last Sunday. But I can see Mrs. Ratchett waddle to it and plop onto the special wide maple bench that Hickory had furbished for her. And Sam, in the third row, tearing as he had done last year when his Jenny was where I am now.Then the mouths of the parishioners ceased their collective movements, and Pastor John rose. And I heard the organ wailing a sad but glad song about leaving my people of this world and finally seeing Jesus, and the service was to start.
I heard good things from Pastor John as he lamented losing me and my tithes. He said that Bob will be missed but that I am in a better place now and volunteered that I was glad to be separated from all my pain. He erred in that I would endure all to be with Ruby and the girls again. One more caress. Another “I love you, Dad.” A Christmas tree and a fire and the four of us.
Next, Ruby tried to say something from the dais but couldn’t. She just went back to the front row and sat down again. Then Laney. As she rose and came to the platform, the clouds left the window in the foyer, and I saw a smiling blaze of yellow glowing in the maple woods across the pond. She told only of the good in me. I loved and provided and cared and laughed and made her world only better. And she skipped the parts where I made her cry and hurt and embarrassed.
Tara never tried to say anything. I knew she couldn’t. Her love was a quiet love, serious and afraid. Ruby and I always wondered how Tara and Laney could be sisters.
The lid lowered, hiding my old world. I could still hear the organ, though muffled. And I could even see the pond reflecting the brilliant vermillion days of my life, though filtered by the stained glass of the windows of the parish.Then it stopped. Words were spoken, but I could make out only a few of them. “Soul.” “Jesus lives.” “Love and be loved.” “Basketball.” “Thank you for coming.”"Hallelujah!"
Then a hushed bustle, and I am aware they are leaving. I think there are to be sandwiches and salads and a punch bowl in the gym. Then Ruby will go to our empty home in Willow Creek and try to make sense of the silence.
I shout, “Ruby. Ruby. The love.”
But they go on their way.
