Seen

I watched the woman take a sip of water while we experienced heavy turbulence on the plane. There was a bad storm and we had to make a diversion landing which was the word they used instead of emergency, instead of May Day May Day. The plane tilted a bit and then just dropped a few feet. Outside the windows it was completely grey and inside we were all silent except for the creaking of the overhead storage bins. And there she was, calmly taking sips, crumpled napkin in one hand, cup in the other. Once my feet were on the ground and all was well and I replayed the scene in my head, I was grateful to her for holding my attention, for having the thought I don’t want this to spill, despite what would have happened on impact falling thousands of feet at 500 miles per hour. For those few seconds that I watched her put the cup to her lips and drink, I was soothed.

I always liked it in acting classes or rehearsals when two actors are working on an intense part of the play and they have some dialogue, barely looking at each other. and then at some point something clicks and one of them raises the level of energy, maybe they slap their hand on the table, and then the other one responds and it starts to rise from there, back and forth, something building, until a voice hits a volume, or maybe it’s a scattering of dishes onto the floor, the kick of a chair, maybe even a kiss, and then one storms off, a door slams while the other slumps, puts their hands on a chair, or on top of their head, and there is stillness but it’s electric, something complete happened, and then someone says, quietly, Scene.

I found this sentence in my notebook: The unexpected poetry of waiting…memory is a tragic, confusing and comic documentary with fiction and life in it. I don’t know where it came from or if it’s a quote, but I am starting with it. I just got back from my mom’s memorial a few days ago and I have been thinking of all those things, how there is always so much going on below deck at gatherings like that. All these people who show up who I haven’t seen in a lifetime, the way my sister and I lean towards each other watching them come in Oh there’s Mrs. So and so, now with a cane and without her husband, walking towards us, the way my throat catches at each new arrival. They all came out, got dressed up, drove and parked their cars. Is that Mr. Whatshisname? They shuffle over with old hands extended, I am sorry for your loss. Who was that? I say to my sister. God knows, she says back to me, we are both on the verge of laughter and tears. Two kids run past the flower arrangements, someone urgently whisper-yelling Christopher! behind them. At my grandmother’s funeral, held in the exact same room, there was a viewing, do they even do that anymore, her dead body laid out in a casket. I didn’t want to see her as a giant wax figure in a box so I stayed in the other room. Right over there is where I stood that day. My sister’s old boyfriend showed up and we all laughed. Even he did. Well, well. All the women who worked at the salon my mom went to walk in, bright with lipstick and perfume. I wrote about them in my eulogy, how they came to the house when my mom couldn’t get out of bed, friends for more than 30 years. With laughter and gossip they fixed her hair and nails and stood in the kitchen drinking wine. After having worked until 7pm they came. Joanie! they would say walking into her room like she wasn’t just a tiny peanut shell under a blanket. Thank you for coming, my mom would whisper holding someone’s hand with both of hers. How good it must have felt to have them touch her head, her hands, a benediction from the salon. Sorry for your loss, I had an entire conversation with one person thinking they were the nurse. That figures, my brother says. We stood in line at the front, “receiving”. All these people showed up, each with their own world of family and past and relationship to my mom and whatever that meant in their life, how everyone in the room was thinking, in one way or another, of death: our greatest fear and connector. My mom would have loved it. Come see us sometime, Kathy and Roger say on their way out. Thank you, I’d love that, I say as they walk away. Never gonna happen, my brother says.