Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our
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Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

craborchardreview.siu.edu
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22.03.2013 Views

176 ◆ Crab Orchard Review Debra Gwartney The funeral home and its adjacent cemetery were out on the edge of Boise on a road where rabbits lived and alfalfa grew. I drove there in my blue VW bug at twilight; it was raining hard, water splashing off the bare branches of the cottonwood trees towering over the graves. The next day a hearse would transport my grandfather’s body to the Southern Idaho cemetery a hundred miles away where the babies were buried. We’d meet it there. But this late afternoon of the viewing day his body was still in this building. I pulled into the parking lot, turned off the car, and sat in front of the Cloverdale Funeral Home. The large front door swung open and a woman made a quick sweep of the porch with a long-handled broom. After she went in, I dashed to the entrance myself. She looked up, frightened, when I came through the door she’d just shut. When the fright fell from her face, she just looked exhausted, wondering what a wet teenage girl would want at this time of the evening. I asked her if I could see my grandfather. “Of course,” she said then, a little too fast, standing up to lead me to the dim room at the front of the building where a casket was set up on a shiny metal perch and surrounded by folding chairs. “Take your time. Take all the time you need.” I wished she hadn’t given me so much permission. I’d hoped, instead, that she’d say there was time for a quick glance and no more; or better yet, would remind me that my other family members had left hours ago and that I was too late. But she swept a curtain closed behind me, and left me alone. The scent from two sprays of flowers at the head of Grandpa’s wood casket wafted across the room. I picked up a chair and moved it closer. I didn’t sit, but held the chair’s metal back. I had to look in soon, to examine the space for what my mother had wanted me to see, even while I realized I’d never tell her I’d seen it. I wouldn’t tell her so she could keep on being furious with me if she needed to. I had my own reasons, too: I had changed my mind abruptly about seeing my grandfather’s body, and I wanted to make this last moment with him about me and not about her—not about the ache and hurt in my mother that was suffocating and scaring me more than I’d ever been scared where she was concerned. I’d thought I wanted to remember him alive, with whiskey and sharp cheese on his breath. The small grunt he’d make when he lifted the heavy apron over his head. The way he’d hold my hand when we walked down the street to Wally’s Cafe, where he’d buy me a cake donut and a frothy glass of milk. Yet something more powerful than

Debra Gwartney I could name had compelled me out to the funeral home on this rainy night, and pushed me now to step to the edge of his last bed, to look down on his waxen face and sealed eyes. To gaze into a hole that would not again be filled. Crab Orchard Review ◆ 177

Debra Gwartney<br />

I could name had compelled me out to the funeral home on this rainy<br />

night, and pushed me now to step to the edge of his last bed, to look<br />

down on his waxen face and sealed eyes.<br />

To gaze into a hole that would not again be filled.<br />

<strong>Crab</strong> <strong>Orchard</strong> <strong>Review</strong> ◆ 177

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