Now You Wear Your Skin Like Iron

In your dad's suburban on the way to the funeral home, you brush dust from the leather seat before sitting, look down at the lavender gray of your dress and notice two small stains rising between the embroidery and hem. You finger the layer of sheer fabric and swallow anger that you are not clean here, that you couldn't find a black dress the night before you left, knowing at the same time that your grandmother wouldn't care a lick, that she would think you looked beautiful no matter.

And in the pew of the funeral home, you sit shivering, knowing she would hate how cold it is, would hate the proselytizing of the Southern Baptist preacher, all of his talk of her walking with the shepherd and her relationship with Jesus. She had a closer relationship with Rosario--the owner of the neighborhood pizza joint--whose name the preacher doesn't pronounce correctly.

You tune him out and focus on the edge of the casket, which is edged in silver scrolling, and from this angle and with the shadows, it makes the shape of a seahorse. And this is right, just right. Like the dust-covered soaps in the guest bathroom, which have never been used and have been losing their seahorse colors since you were a girl. The casket is the same gray as your dress. Your brother clasps his wife's hand, and you see tears streaming down his face, him wiping his eyes beneath his glasses. Your father puts his arm around you during the slideshow when you are so overcome you can't sit still. A picture you've never seen before of your grandparents dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy in their forties comes up. You laugh in spite of your crying. In the flower arrangement to the right, stargazer lilies droop progressively from top to bottom. The top lily is wide open, the next one down a little less bright, and those below seemingly weighed down by another gravity, petals returning to their centers.

You are not sure you'll be able to walk up to the casket when it's over, but then you do. You comment on the flowers, And your mother hands you a rose, a red rose, which  doesn't remind you of Grandma at all. When you circle back around with your brother, you see another arrangement of sterling roses. You lay the red rose down and pull the sterling out. It is the same color as the casket and as your dress. Tomorrow morning, you will leave it on the dresser when you go, unsure what to do with it, but for now you are glad to be holding it. You take a picture in the mirror of the bathroom, not sure why. To preserve your tear-stained face, you guess. You don't send it to anyone, though you want to send it out into the ether for some reason. To show you were here, that this is happening.

In the limo, you carefully place the rose into the leather pocket in the back of the seat, so it rests next to a wedged box of tissues against the black. Pulling in to the cemetery, many of the graves are decorated for Christmas. Poinsettias, wreaths, garlands decorate the gray stone and granite. Through the car window, a gray tree that's lost its leaves glitters. Delicate jewel-toned ornaments the size of fists hang from the branches, swaying in the wind. Red, blue, green, gold, purple. Something inside you swells at the sight. It is the most lovely Christmas tree you have ever seen. Something about the starkness, the naked beauty of these brazen, hanging globes.

Seated in the front row of metal folding chairs, you study the casket corner. Definitely not a seahorse. The preacher comments that he's only just read the program from the viewing and was quite taken with the poem your mother chose, that he'd like to read it aloud. And it is familiar to you, this poem about watching a ship disappear on the horizon, and you think maybe it was read at your grandfather's funeral too. He was a pilot after all. When the preacher returns to Jesus and stops talking about the dead, you study the ropes stretched below the casket. They reach across old wood and hinges, and the color is like straw. The fibers are worn, prickly, and you know how they would feel to hold, to be ripped from your hand. You remember the ropes that held your grandfather's boat, but those were silky or bright blue and artificial, and you'd watch the moss-covered mermaid bumpers approaching before Grandpa would step up onto the dock barefoot and you'd hand him the rope to tie the boat off. You want to see how they'll move, where they'll go, as the casket is lowered through the frame and into the ground. 

It surprises you when it doesn't happen, when you see your cousins, the pall bearers, hugging and crying after they've laid their corsages on top of the casket, and the wind blows them to the surface edge. Everyone rises to leave, clusters in consoling groups. You finally smile when you see your great uncle there in his dress cowboy hat (black felt), jeans with studded belt, boots, and a tight, long-sleeve black shirt with a night scene of a wolf howling at a full moon. 

Over the next few days, it will be this memory that comes to you again and again, that consoles. The white and gray of the lone wolf, edging out over the brink of your sadness.