the sun with eyes closed

My dad said, “Your car looks great!”

My dad cares about cars being clean, and in my middle age, I have begun to care, as well.

The previous week I had crowned my Friday work day with a trip to the car wash, where I sat and imagined the spouts and flaps were monsters with various appendages. And I vacuumed the car out, carefully tucking my short dress when I bent over. And I used the wipes on all the surfaces.

“Thanks!” I said. “It’s very clean!”

I gave him a ride from my uncle’s to the restaurant.

We had just buried my aunt.

The morning of the burial, I woke early. In mourning or in anxiety overload, I can sleep a long time. It doesn’t necessarily feel bad to sleep a long time. Your sleep life is part of your spiritual life, and that’s just as important as your waking life, right? No, it’s more so.

Anyway I woke early in a tizzy that I would not be able to go to the burial. My brain was obsessing about how I would have to go get in a car with both my parents (for a child of divorce, this is weird) and both my sisters, and we would all drive together.

I didn’t think I could do it.

Burying my aunt, who was younger than my parents, and being with my dad, who I had recently ditched at a restaurant when my mind fully exploded into panic attack mode.

I texted my family I was going to drive myself.

Half of my family gets panic attacks FROM driving, and half of us prevent panic BY driving. I’m the latter.

Any one of my immediate family might have found this idea disturbing. We have some issues about BEING TOGETHER and GOING TOGETHER.

But through medication and therapy and time, everyone was cool.

“Take your sister in your car,” my mom said.

“OK”

“She’s good at taking care of people”

She is.

Anxiety is about the future, and panic is about the now. I was crazy anxious that morning. I had managed to get through the drive to the funeral, and the luncheon, and the hang afterward, with some chemical assistance, and only one moment that almost tipped me over the edge to fleeing.

It’s so crazy. I know. So much of what our minds make up and deal in is crazy.

The drive to the awful, painful ritual is eased by listening to “Keep it Gay” from the Producers, and various They Might Be Giants songs, including (why not) “Dead.” (It’s about a bag of groceries, IYKYK.)

At the funeral, at the burial, I was swimming in the same grief everyone was. There are a lot of us, and we don’t always know each other’s struggles, but this was a time I knew to hug, and hug, and put my hand on a shoulder, and hug again, and snuggle into someone’s arm.

The smell of my dad is so reassuring. The cotton of his button-up shirt. His stubby fingers. Old Spice. The way he says, “Hey!” and holds his hands out like bon appetit. He was a soft hug.

The priest was late to the burial.

It’s nice when something dumb happens at a grief ritual, because then there is something to talk about besides how awful things are, how your aunt, your mom’s first friend, is gone forever. They won’t talk about their paper dolls, or their kids, or set up lunches at lady cafes. My aunt won’t come to Thanksgiving with her pecan pie, or to Christmas with buckeyes.

When my aunt got diagnosed with blood cancer five years ago, they thought her time was limited. Different drugs would work. She got many stays. I made pecan pies. Correction: chess pies, which are like pecan, but not sickly sweet. A Yankee sort of pecan pie.

The week of her funeral, I had in my house pecan salad topping, a bag of candied pecans, and a little funnel of roasted pecans from the fair.

Our family is a big, strong wall, but it has some holes where sadness flows through. And now it has another.

At my uncle’s, we all carefully petted their sweet old dog, who was not likely to outlive my aunt by long.

When the priest finally arrived, he was like, “Sorry.” He was wearing a fleece and sporty sandals.

During one of the prayers, all five of the members of my original family, Mom, Dad, two sisters, me, were all touching, holding hands or leaning on shoulders, and this was a moment of holiness. We have different views of God, but I think we were all born with ears tuned in to the divine.

I tried to squeeze my dad’s hand when we said the Lord’s prayer, to stop him from completing it like a Protestant, but the joke was on me: the priest barreled right on through to the “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

I felt delivered from evil, then. It didn’t last, but I felt it then.

My aunt’s grandson has Down’s syndrome, and he was waving around a stuffed Frankenstein toy.

It’s so crazy when people die during our death celebration season.

We noticed a grave with an insanely long eastern European last name. We tried pronouncing it.

Did we want to watch the casket lowered? A few mourners had left right away. The rest of us didn’t know.

They lowered the casket, then added the vault lid, wait, one of the grandkids wanted to put one more flower in there.

Then they lowered the vault.

I’ve watched all the youtube videos about how those things work, the winches and seals. Two men who were black did the honors. I wondered if their job got to them. Maybe it wasn’t too bad unless it was a very young person who has died.

My aunt was not young, but she was definitely not old enough to leave us.

I kept thinking about how she appeared in my baby book. I thought my mom had listed what she gave me. I remembered how my aunt sent me birthday cards. I remembered how, when she was diagnosed with the cancer during covid, I spent my precious drugstore time looking for the prettiest card, and sending her card after card.

I kept thinking about the last time we hung out at the family reunion, at this magnificent pirate-themed restaurant, where we all got sippy cups with pirate heads on top.

I felt so proud my dad recognized my clean car.

Which is weird. I’m a very rebellious sort, and my dad’s preferences are certainly something I’ve pushed against. I used to think, who cares? It’s just a car. Cleanliness isn’t next to godliness, it’s just being anal.

At the funeral, the sound system at the church was acting up. While the priest was saying the words of institution, and I was thinking about how I was going to take communion even though it wasn’t kosher, the sound system screamed feedback, and I turned around and saw my sister and my cousin tearing up with laughter.

We sat in a church basement and looked at each other’s dessert choice. “Is that spice cake? Or banana? Is the frosting caramel?”

I liked the Christ at the front of the church. He clearly had it all under control.

I liked the whole church, even though it’s quite new. The skylights above let in so much sun that I could close my eyes and still see its warmth and power.