White as Death

There’s no place colder than a cemetery in January. It is one of his adages that always sticks in my mind. And today I feel its truth. Every part of me is numb. And for grief like this, that is probably a good thing. We are here in this windy tundra because of the voices. They would not leave him alone. And after nearly a half-century of fighting them, the man within the silver coffin finally flew the white flag.

There is a lot of white today. Snow covers the ground and the roads, and a white pall covers the coffin. White tissues are packed together like snowballs in mourner’s fists. It has been nearly a week since a bottle of white pills and a hastily scribbled note ended it all.

There is nothing pure or virginal here or in the choices he made, as all the white might suggest. But the truth is obscured today; this white blanket of snow the canvas, a wretched hole ripped by a backhoe that gouged the frozen earth nearby. I can’t make it whole again, make the piles of frozen dirt fit back together as they should. And I don’t know where to put these feelings; I am but a marginal mourner at this winter sacrifice .

There is something here for me though. Not sure that I can thaw my brain and toes and heart enough to let it in. Spring is a better time for learning, for lessons and life to rain and pour and flow, saturating my stoic soul; no choice but to let it all in as it rises above its banks.

But the deep freeze of winter is harsh beyond its winds. And today I am numb to all that I must know. Like freezing water expands, my clumsy body and limping mind are no match for these giant questions.

But I know something of pain. As we leave the cemetery, I pause the procession to jump out and right my father’s fallen wreath. He has known eight frigid Januarys in this place, and I shake the snow off the Christmas bow and evergreens fading to yellow before placing them on his stone. Nothing lasts. Or so it seems.

Until later when the flames of the fire light my house and the wood crackles in my memory and heats my room and my frozen limbs. And in the fire’s dance I know my father’s love and my children’s kisses and the quiet peace that escaped the man we buried today.