Previously: I remember the sound of it, that certain thud … Now you’re broken again … I’m guessing you have another concussion, and you’re going to need stitches … The best I can do is stay with you.
Last Week:
Take it from the top:
fernweh (fern-way) n.
1. An ache for distant places
2. Being homesick for anywhere but home
This is going to sound terrible, so forgive me for saying it, but I envy you. I shouldn’t say that — you must hurt all over — the welt on your head and the cut above your eye; the bloody lips, your ruined hands. The way you are breathing, it sounds like you have fluid in your lungs. I’m sure several ribs are broken. Oh, Jackson, you’re coughing up blood.
That cut above your eye is going to need stitches. I miss giving stitches, the feel of the needle as it pushes through the skin, the way the thread pulls the skin together and closes the gash. I hate that I can’t hold your head in my lap and fix you. I miss my lap. That’s why I say I envy you. Even with your cuts and welts and broken bones, you are alive, and that’s a gift.
Your father would scold me for being a romantic, for trying to see a wound as something more than a wound, for seeing it as being some sort of lesson or reminder. He’d tell me that there was nothing to do with a wound other than stop the bleeding and try to prevent the next one.
He was wrong about that, I think. Wrong about pain. He saw it as something that needed to be fixed, which is what lots of men think, but your father really took it to heart. Especially when it came to his family, to us, he tried to fix all our pain. It was good when there was a clear cause, like the bees, and he could go in and dig it out, and take the pain on himself, suffer so we didn’t have to, like the Christ he doesn’t believe in, but it was problematic when the pain was undefined, like the malaise that can set in when everything is flat and brown. He couldn’t sit with that pain, and he didn’t like to hear about it. So what? So we should move? He couldn’t grasp that pain like that — all pain, really — is just information, for us to do with what we will.
He liked to think that he was a rational, humanist, Buddha-of-the- plains, but seeing pain as information is the more rational approach; it’s magical thinking to believe you can take someone’s pain away, or fix anyone else’s feelings.
You got stung by a bee when you were six. I’m not sure if you remember that, but it was several bees, actually, ground bees that you got into when you were helping your father dig holes for a fence. You hit the hive and got swarmed and he picked you up and ran, but they’d got you by then. You were stung many times, and your father somehow didn’t get stung at all. He never forgave himself for that.
There’s kindness in the fact that painful memories can fade with time, it’s like there’s mercy woven into the fabric of the mind. After you die, all those memories are vivid again — all memories are — because time collapses and everything that’s happened happens now. The past is just as present as the present. That’s the nature of us ghosts; we are the past walking around in the present. Well, not really walking, but there nonetheless.
I took care of you on the porch while your father went to take care of the bees, as much to try to get stung as to get rid of the hive. I made a plaster out of baking soda and I was spreading it over the stings when I noticed you licking your lips like a lizard. At first I thought maybe your mouth hurt, that you had bee stings there or something. No, you said, still crying, the tears taste good is all.
He’s going to be so surprised when he dies, your father, so surprised to find out there’s more to this world than what we can see and touch. He’ll be pissed, no doubt, because he hates to be wrong, but after he gets over being wrong, he’ll start trying to tinker with the afterlife, trying to take it apart and figure out how it works.
We ghosts can cross all the way over at any time. Every day we make the choice to stay here or go. We don’t need mediums or psychics, we know how to find the door to the other side, it’s always in sight, but it’s frightening, as frightening as death. Some get over the fear, some stay on this side forever, but the frightening door is always open.
I had to stay on this side to follow you and Max and your father. I had to know what happened to the three of you. Maybe I can know that on the other side, but I can’t be sure. I need to be sure. I need to see your faces. I need to hear your voices. I need to watch your lives unfold.
I don’t know what part of me needs these things. I don’t need anything else. Not food, not water. I don’t even need to breathe. But I need these things. There is some aspect of me that will feel undone without them, like a rug come unraveled. I will unravel when you are all dead and I can no longer visit you.
Ghosts cling to life. I’m here because you’re still alive. As time goes by, as people die, the world goes away. Storefronts disappear. Homes crumble and leave empty lots. Some of my favorite places to visit are now vacant, filled only with weeds and rubble.
When you and your father are gone I’ll slip through the door because this world will be empty. When you two are gone I won’t feel torn, I’ll walk through the door and find peace. I fell off my bike when I was a girl and broke my wrist. You knew that, right? I broke my wrist and it never healed quite right. Years later, there were some days when the pain was so bad that I couldn’t pick you up, even when you were still little. If you were really upset, I’d slide down to the floor and sit with you there, pull you tight next to me, and sometimes even that hurt. I felt useless. I feel useless now. I am useless now. I want to pick you up, or at least slide down next to you, but I can’t do anything to help you and I can’t do anything to help your father. I can’t run my fingers through his hair while he sits and watch the prairie. I can’t even wear the bracelet he bought me when we took our one and only extravagant trip down the California coast. I’m mostly can’t now.
The best I can do is visit the better times. The way you die is orderly, you are right about that, but what comes after that is not so tidy. If it’s decaying like Detroit, then it’s organized like Houston. No zoning. High rises next to bungalows, office parks next to elementary schools. Businesses placed randomly with poor signage; you kind of have to wander in and out until you find your way around. I’m learning. I know how to find the day you were born, when your brother was born. Not just remember, but be there in the room. I can see your father’s eyes when he looked at you for the first time. They were light then, and independent like stars. They made his face, head, whole body glide as if floating. I didn’t see him look at you when you were born, because I was looking at you, too. Now I can go back and see his eyes light up and grow. You made his world, our world, so much bigger. Now, when I go back, I can relax and focus on him. How he stood next to me, how he held me, his arms, his legs, strong and secure. I remember his body and his clothes. I remember his voice and I love hearing it again. It was divine in that moment. The certain voice of God. He could calm a sparrow in a thunderstorm with the sound of his voice, and his eyes could guide it through the rain and bring it home.
I can’t wait to see his eyes when he sees that there’s an afterlife. He hates to be wrong.
Thank you for reading. “Mother - Part Three” will start like this:
Have I ever told you about your father’s mouth?