Are You Sitting Down? (44 page)

“A surprise?”

“Yeah, after you met him tonight I couldn’t wait to sit down with you after everyone was gone and hear what you thought about him.
That would have meant a lot to me.”

“I’m sorry I ruined it for you.”

“Oh, Travis, you didn’t ruin anything.
It was my fault for thinking the outcome of all of this could never possibly be
u
n
pleasant
.”

You think you know your kids.
You raise them and try not to make the same mistakes your parents made. You think you’ve taught them right from wrong, and you pray as they grow older that they were listening.
But none of that can change who they become.
None of it changes the path they choose when you aren’t standing the
re
next to them.
Travis a
l
ways said this was never a choice for him; he was born that way.
I blamed myself for the longest, wondering what I had done wrong.

Those types of wounds never heal completely, but time helps to fix the things we can’t change.
If I could have Travis any other way, of course, I’d want him to be different than he is now.
But
who’s
to say he’d be any happi
er?
Who’s to say I would be?
There are things I’d like to go back and change about all my kids, but I know I can’t. So, as
a
mother, I have to accept it.
Getting Travis to believe in
my
acceptance is the hard part.

After both speaking our apologies and working things out as only a mom and her son can, I reached across the seat to hug him.
He turned off the car, and we got out to go back i
n
side the house.

“I’ll apologize to Calvin if you’d like,” Travis said pausing on the steps.

“Don’t worry about it for now.
Let it all blow over.
B
e
sides, I think your choice of words on what you do in the bedroom was quite an eye opener for him,” I said with a laugh.

Travis blushed.

“Did Clare spend the night?”
h
e asked, quickly chan
g
ing the subject.

“Yes, she and Jake went up to bed a few hours ago,” I said opening the front door.

“Mom?”

“Yes, Travis.”

“If it means anything to you, I think you and Calvin make a
nice
couple.”

“Thanks, Travis. That actually means a lot to me.”

Just as we stepped back into the house, the grandfather clock chimed
midnight
.
Christmas had arrived.
Travis and I hugged again and wished each other Merry Christmas.
Then, he went up the stairs to take a hot bath before bed.
I hung my coat on the wall and then wandered through the house looking for things to pass the time.
I almost asked Travis if he felt like staying downstairs to sit and chat with me for a while, but I knew he was tired.
Besides, I liked the idea of having the first hours of
the birth to
Christmas morn all to myself while two of my beloved children
and one grandchild
were
sleep
ing soundly
u
p
stairs in their beds.

After finding nothing else to clean or pick up, I decided to sit down again in the recliner and talk to Frank.
He had a
l
ways been a good listener. And although I considered myself a quiet woman, always willing to lend an ear to those who need
ed
it, I always had gentle words
to share with my husband at the end of each day in life and in death.

Travis

I arrived at the cemetery just as the caretaker was unlocking the gate.
He was a wobbly old man that limped out of my way as I pulled my car in.
Last night at the gas station, I had spotted fresh flowers for s
ale
sticking out of tubs on a stand near the front.
They were sprays of white lilies
, holly branches, and
red roses.
Happy to find
any
filling station
even
open,
I stopped in this morning and bought two of the bo
u
quets, one for my f
a
ther’s grave and one for Justin’s.
Peggy was already gone.
A small bubbly blond
girl greeted
me
from behind the counter with a friendly smile, despite being at work on Chris
t
mas Day.

“Did you forget somebody special today?”
s
he asked out of politeness.

“Nah, I didn’t forget.”

I never liked fake silk flowers.
I looked across the highway at the small flower shop where
I thought
I’d bought flowers
from the mysterious old lady
before.
The windows were boarded up and the tiny house still looked deserted.
There were black patches on the shingles where the snow had enci
r
cled holes in the roof.
The quaint little shop looked like it had been condemned for quite some time
, as if no one had lived there in years.
I could remember being inside the warm cottage, inha
l
ing its sweet candle aromas, and talking to the kind black woman.
It was all quite vivid to me, but the illumination of my memory told me it m
ight
have just been a brilliant dream.

I stopped first at my father’s stone.
With no disrespect to my father, I hoped the spot next to him stayed vacant for a long time.
I felt like I needed to say something but kept all my words inside.
I knelt and laid
one of the
bouquet
s
in front of the headstone.

When I turned to walk back to the car, I stepped car
e
fully back through
the footprints
I’d made in the snow.
From the car, I looked back out at my tracks which led to
Dad’s
grave and stopped like some person had been standing there and then just disappeared.
The cellophane wrapped around the flowers
r
e
flected the dancing light against the snow
.

I drove deeper into the yard to Justin’s marker.
I pulled up behind it.
The flecks in the marble glistened like diamonds. I was stunned to find a set of snow prints already there, as if someone had just been here before me to visit him.
It is poss
i
ble they were left from someone visiting yesterday.
I wondered who it could have been.
Seeing the snow disturbed around his headstone bothered me for some strange reason.
I wanted to be the first one
traipsing
through the clean frosty blanket of white to visit him.
I walked around to the front of his headstone, lea
v
ing my own set of prints.

“JB,” I whispered under my breath.

The wind answered and I turned around to see if anyone was watching.
I was all alone in the garden of granite and ma
r
ble, slabs of stone jutting out of the white hills like the teeth of sleeping giants.
Brushing the cap of snow from the top of the stone, I laid the bunch of flowers across the top.
The petals of one of the roses got lost in the wind, pouring across the frosty snow like droplets of blood.
My nose started to run and I couldn’t tell if it was from tears or from the chillful air.

I knelt for a moment close to the ground, steadying m
y
self with a hand on the rim of Justin’s headstone.
There were no words I could speak out loud that he had not heard before, so I let
my mind wa
nder to every picnic we’d taken in the park, every movie night at home with microwave popcorn, every late night kiss in bed we shared
, every early cup of coffee on the balcony
.
Those were the most mea
n
ingful things I kept close to me now.
And so, I reached into my pocket and took out the small box that Helen had given
to
me last night.
I opened it, revealing the ye
l
low ribbon like a ray of sunshine.
I took the medal from its pillow of cotton and draped the ribbon around the edge of the stone, crowning my hero.

I stood up, slipping the empty box back into my coat pocket, and stepped back to admire the ornament hanging there.
It clanged against his stone like a wind chime.
I smiled and thought I heard angels singing.
Someone was singing. A ch
o
rale of holiday music was coming from behind me.
I turned to see Mom’s car pulling up behind me.
Clare and Jake were in the back seat.
She had the window down and I could hear her radio playing.

“Mind if we join you
?
” Mom called out.

I shook my head no and smiled, waving at them like they were
on a float
in a parade passing by
.
Clare held Jake up to the window and waved his tiny hand back at me
as she pulled the hood of his coat up over his head
.
They both got out of the car, pul
l
ing their boots through the snow to come stand next to me.

“I’ve never seen Justin’s stone before.
It’s nice,” Clare said.

“Thanks, Sis.
”

Another car pulled up behind Mom’s.
Martin, Ellen, and Sebastian all stepped out of the car.
Ellen was carrying a bo
u
quet of red and white roses.

“Merry Christmas, Bub,” Sebastian said walking up to me and hugging my neck.

“What are all of you guys doing here?”
I asked.

“Mom invited us,” Ellen said, kneeling to place her flowers next to Justin’s stone.

She reached for the medal and turned it around in her hand to read its engraving.

“Have you been to Dad’s grave yet?” Martin asked.

“I stopped there first, but we can go back there if you guys haven’t been,” I answered.

“You done here?”
Mom asked, winking at me.

“Yeah.
I think I am done here.”

We all got back into our cars and drove back to Dad’s marker.
Ellen rode with me and quickly told me how she and Mark had made up last night.
I told her how happy I was for her, and I really was.
Each of us had had enough tragedy in our lives.
It was nice to hear that at least one of us had one less o
b
stacle to overcome.
She’d no longer have to find that odd middle age balance in life of trying to start over after you’ve spent a better part of your life with someone, but woke up su
d
denly to find them gone.
I was tired of denying myself the opportunity to start over.
I was going to have to do it whether I wanted to or not.
It might as well be now.

Mom shed a few tears at Dad’s grave.
Martin and Sebastian comforted her with their arms wrapped around her.
Clare rested her head on my shoulder while holding Jake.
He was the innocent one too little to understand, to
o
young to know of the loving man he’d never met long enough to r
e
member.
Clare was a beautiful mother though and I knew she’d tell him all about his Grandpa some day.

“Is there anyone else we need to see while we are here, kids?”
Mom asked, looking over her shoulder right at Ellen.

“Not today,” Ellen said, shaking her head.

“Are you coming back to the house?”
Mom asked me
with an eager grin
.

“No, I put my bags in the car this morning.
I think I’ll leave from here and head back to
Memphis
if that’s okay.”

“You go ahead
if you need to
.
Call me when you get
back
to let me know you made it
in
okay,” she said.

“It’s less than two hour
s
away.
You should come back and stay a while,” Martin said with a gentle punch on my shoulder.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s got things to attend to back at his place,” Mom said in my defense.

“Merry Christmas, Mom” I said wrapping my arms around her neck.

“Merry Christmas to you too, son.”

I said my good-byes to each of my siblings and Jake.
I waved to my other nieces and nephews who had remained in the car keeping warm, enjoying handheld video games Santa had brought.
Martin, Ellen, and Sebastian left first.
Then, Mom, Clare, and Jake drove away.
I stood there for a second admiring the bright morning sun spa
r
kling across the powdery snow.
When their two cars were out of the gate and down the road out of si
ght
, I turned and walked back to my own car.