The Counting-Downers (6 page)

I KNOW I just gave that sermon about how we all have twenty-four hours a day and can’t speed it up, but this day is never ending. I can’t wait for it to be over.

Lucky Oscar is down for a nap, while I’m being accosted by unwanted intruders in the former sanctuary of my childhood home. If only I could crawl beneath my blanket, pull the covers over my head, and wake up when tomorrow comes.

Instead, I’m playing the role of reluctant deputy hostess at my father’s wake. Yet another nameless face has just finished telling me how sorry they are for my loss through crumbs full of cardboard food.

Remember when I said
time
was my least favorite four-letter word? Well
sorry
is fast becoming my least favorite five-letter one.

Think about it. Nothing good ever precedes sorry. Has anyone ever followed up good news or a good deed with the word
sorry
? Exactly. You only ever say sorry when you’ve been wrong or been wrong
ed
.

Although that’s not strictly true. An extra category of people say sorry when they’ve done nothing wrong. In my experience, these people either are British, Southern, or people speaking to the bereaved. Most of the people here are Californian, so they fall into the latter description.

I understand death makes people speechless, that when faced with death, even the most eloquent and verbose find themselves struggling with what to say and resort to falling back on worn phrases and tired clichés in the absences of alternatives. I understand people are expressing sentiments of sympathy for the situation, rather than for any actions committed. But honestly.

How many years has civilization been around? How many people have died in that time? Still the best we can come up with to tell the family of the deceased is
‘I’m sorry for your loss’
? Unless you’re the murderer of said person, you didn’t kill them, and nor are they
lost
with the potential of one day being found.

The dead aren’t
lost
; they’re gone. So don’t apologize for deeds not done.

It’s okay to say nothing. It’s okay to say something other than sorry. And it’s okay to show your sympathy in ways other than redundant words. A fridge full of casseroles means more than an earful of apologies.

Priding myself on a lack of hypocrisy, I make a mid-year resolution never to apologize the next time I’m speaking to a loved one of someone who has died.

Looking around at all of the people around me and how much time they each have left, that day may come sooner rather than later.

Mrs. Pierce, my dad’s elderly ex-secretary, who is currently apologizing to my mom, sadly has just 8 months, 9 days, 12 hours, 6 minutes, and 54 seconds left. Excluding the malevolent, it’s never cause for celebration when anyone dies. Nevertheless, when an old person dies, there tends to be a feeling of
‘well, at least they had a good run.’
At almost eighty, Mrs. Pierce has had a good run.

Alex Ramirez, my dad’s childhood neighbor, who I can see through the window smoking outside on our front lawn, has 1 year, 11 months, 3 days, 19 hours, and 2 seconds left. But from the way he wheezed his apology, burning my nostrils with nicotine, that’s no real shock. Still, he might be run over by a car instead of the obvious way it seems he’ll die. If I’ve learned anything over my nineteen years, it’s that life is full of surprises and death has a great sense of humor.

Cindy Meyer, the mystery woman who claimed to know me as a baby as she squeezed my cheeks between her fingers earlier and waxed poetic about how much I’d grown, has 2 years, 1 month, 27 days, 59 minutes, and 38 seconds left. I never did find out how my family supposedly knew her.

At least one person always comes up to you at these types of things and claims to have made your acquaintance before you even started to recognize the faces of your parents. To your embarrassment, they ask if you remember them, which you almost never do, and appear offended when you give a truthful answer.

Or, like the illusive Cindy, they seem bewildered by the unstoppable and universal phenomenon of growing up. Despite witnessing their personal progression of time in the mirror over the years, they cannot comprehend how you are no longer the image in their heads, young and frozen in time.

Although we are all constantly surrounded by death, something about being at a funeral makes your own mortality more pronounced. Those who have lulled themselves into a false sense of security are once again reminded of the truth of time. Funerals make everyone more aware of how little time they have left and make them question what they’re going to do with it.

All day, I’ve noticed people looking above the heads of others, furtively watching their counting clocks with morbid fascination. The people here today have barely made eye contact with each other.

I wonder how many people will leave here today with a sense of renewed purpose and vitality. How many will vow to do whatever it is they’ve been meaning to do, to say whatever it is they’ve been meaning to say, be whoever it is they’ve been meaning to be?

Moreover, how many of those will actually do it, say it, be it? Will they be changed after today, or will they forget their good intentions and own ticking clocks once life, yet again, gets in the way?

I wonder if life is what gets in the way of our hopes and goals, or is it we, as people, who get in our own way. The unforeseen does prevent plans and delay dreams, so maybe it’s a bit of both. It just seems strange for life to be an obstacle to living.

Finally alone, and enjoying a brief respite from the chorus of apologies, I decide to take a break from philosophical thoughts and seize upon the solitude. I avoid eye contact as I sneak my way out of the living room where some of my dad’s friends are reminiscing over their missing member through eyes glassy with cigar smoke, whisky, and nostalgia. Weaving through the long hallway, I reach my destination and slide along the white walls and exposed brick of our large, open-plan family kitchen where most people are gathered.

Successful in my unseen escape, I make it out the back door to the wide wooden porch, breathing a sigh of relief that only a few other people are out here. The unfamiliar couple sitting on our double-seated porch swing receive a polite nod, before I continue down the white steps to our back yard. I say back yard, but it’s more like a meadow. As well as my dad’s high-powered job, both of my parents are fortunate to have come from money.

Or I guess I should say were. I need to get used to speaking the past tense when I talk about my dad. But when I speak about both of my parents, do I speak in the past or present tense? No one ever talks about the linguistic issues that come with death.

Our property sits on four acres of land. The bit I’m walking through now is my mother’s landscape garden. She wanted something ‘presentable’ for guests to see when they looked out of the windows of the house so she hired a landscape architect to create a garden oasis worthy of a luxury magazine.

My mom wanted to channel an English country garden in the heart of California. Despite the logistical issues, anything can happen with enough money, so we have roses, delphiniums, and lilies of the valley, all obediently growing within their designated sections. It’s without a doubt beautiful, but it’s not where I like to spend most of my time.

I keep walking along the cobbled path until I pass through an arch of blossom trees, signaling the end of mom’s garden, and the start of mine, Oscar’s, and Dad’s garden. I guess it’s just Oscar’s and mine now, but this place will always connect me with my dad.

In stark contrast to my mom’s perfect, manicured, and controlled version of nature, my dad gave control of ‘our’ garden over to Mother Nature.

There are no flowers growing in artificial swirls and circles here. Instead, grass tickles your knees and tangles around your ankles as you wade through it to reach a meadow decorated with haphazard weeds and wildflowers.

In place of a controlled color palette is a sensory assault of whites, purples, reds, blues, yellows, and greens. Scattered sporadically like my father’s ashes, there are huckleberry bushes and old oaks, fairy lanterns and golden stars, blazing stars and baby blue eyes, wild poppies and farewell-to-springs. A disarray of flawless harmony. Our perfectly imperfect heaven on earth.

I’m so grateful to have grown up here and that my little brother will be able to do the same. I had an idyllic childhood straight out of the pages of an Enid Blyton novel, full of searching for fairies, family picnics, treasure hunts, cloud watching, fruit picking, and garden camping.

Pausing for a moment by one of my favorite sections, my daisy field, I bend down to pluck one and push it into my braid to replace one of the ones that were lost in the sea earlier. The rain has stopped but the stubborn droplets remain.

My dad planted my daisy garden following our ‘go with the flow’ conversation all those years ago after he saw how much I loved having a flower in my hair. It took a while for them to grow, but ever since, I’ve had a daily supply. Although weeds, they remind me of a time of happiness and innocence.

And most of all, they remind me of my dad. Sometimes I’ll substitute my daily daisies for one of the many other flowers that grow in our garden, but they never have the same significance.

Walking on through the meadow, relief settles over me once I reach my destination. I climb up the wooden rope ladder of my treehouse, grateful no one is behind me to look up my dress. I’m almost at the top when instead of the ledge, my hand grabs onto a pair of dirty, untied black Chuck Taylors.

As any Converse fan will know, you can tell a lot about a person by the state of their Chucks. The color, the cleanliness, the position and style of the laces, and the visibility of the logo tell you everything you need to know about their owner and the life they lead.

As a rule, I don’t trust anyone with pristine Chucks. Dirty, scuffed, holey and with the All Star logo smudged from use is a sign of a life well lived. So at least this guy receives points for that. He loses them, however, for being in
my
treehouse in
my
meadow, uninvited.

Still trying to comprehend the fact that someone has entered my safe haven, my eyes work their way up a pair of slim black suit pants, to an open black suit jacket with a plain white dress shirt and black tie underneath. For a second, I’m too distracted to remember what I’m supposed to be doing before my eyes make it to a familiar smiling face.

I struggle to place this interloper as I stare up at him, enquiring emerald eyes to smiling sapphires. Then it hits me why I recognize the dimpled grin.

He’s made me laugh once before today. It’s my partner in crime, the laughing Norwegian cousin from the funeral.

Most of the time, we live our lives on autopilot rather than as active participants. We hear people, but we don’t listen to them. We look at things, but we don’t see them. We do things, but we don’t participate in them. We’re so busy trying to go from A to B that we forget to stop and look around, to capture the moment.

That’s the way with most moments in life. It’s only looking back that we realize that was the moment things changed, came together, or fell apart. Moments we lived through become second-hand memories with primary significance.

Then, there are living memories. The rare moments that you somehow just
know
are going to change your life as they are happening. You don’t know why or how, but the moment somehow buzzes with an inspiring untapped energy out of the ordinary. It’s not a word or a thought, but a
feeling
.

Like the few seconds before the headlining act takes the stage, a certain magic in the air promises you something monumental is about to take place. Something so big, you better pay attention and capture it for future reference. A seemingly mundane moment, one that should be forgettable, will take on a significance beyond logic or imagination. A moment in a million.

Somehow, I just know.

That this is one of those moments. That I am about to create a memory. That this unknown boy is anything but ordinary. He is
extra
ordinary. And for better or worse, he is going to change my life.

Go with the flow, Tilly girl,
I swear I hear my dad whisper in my ear,
relax, and let the tide take you on a journey to the inevitable.

With that thought, I take his proffered hand and let him pull me up to take a place by his side.