Jesus.
My parents always kept recent photographs of me for reference during interviews, but the decorator thought putting some in my room wasn’t weird at all.
And gray. Gray everywhere.
Gray fur coverlet. Gray walls. Gray carpet. It’s like Pleasantville. I’m almost scared to look in the mirror.
I stand there, no desire to move farther. This was never my room.
Spinning around, I head down the stairs and back into the kitchen, not sure what the hell I’m doing, but I know it’s something. I grab a tea light and a lighter out of the drawer and tuck my parents’ urn under my arm as I head through the house and into the garage. Digging through some drawers I finally find a garden shovel and grab it.
Just do it. I couldn’t stand up at their funeral and show them, myself, or anyone else that my soul wasn’t fucking crippled, but I can get this done for them.
Hurrying outside, I circle the house and head to the tree, the tire swing that Mirai cut down and left laying on the ground now gone.
I drop to my knees, light the candle and set it in the grass, giving me just enough light.
I start digging. Stabbing the grass, I work out a patch and keep slicing through the soil, making the hole wider and deeper. My belly churns, the box sitting there like a fucking bomb about to go off. I can’t believe they’re ashes.
Fucking ashes. They were so much before. Large. So important.
And now…they fit in a shoe box.
A fucking shoe box.
A sob escapes, but I swallow the rest down and toss the shovel away.
God.
Slowly, I open up the box and—very gently—remove the clear plastic bag.
It’s the weight of a truck, even though it’s barely the weight of an infant.
I carefully spread the ashes in the hole, stuff the empty bag back into the box, and push the dirt over top, covering the hole again.
I choke on the tears and brush off my hands, collapsing to the ground and sitting with my back up to the tree.
It’s that easy, isn’t it? It’s so easy to bury them—to throw things away—but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t still felt. That what they did disappears, too, because it doesn’t.
I wish they’d had gotten to know me.
I wish they didn’t have to die for me to be given the opportunity to know myself.
Sometimes the clouds aren’t enough, I guess. We need the whole damn storm.
I stay out there for a long time, looking up at the thick bough above from where my father tied the rope for the swing. The wear in the bark shows years of all the nights they played. It’s still surreal to me that I never once came out here to sit on the swing.
But then, there was no one to push me.
I blow out the candle and take everything back inside, putting it away and closing the house up. I turn off the lights, making sure the back door is locked but not bolting the front, because Mirai is coming back.
Climbing the stairs, I yawn, excruciatingly tired. It’s after seven here, so it’s only after eight in Chapel Peak. What’s he doing right now? He wouldn’t be going to bed yet. Not unless I was, and then he goes where I go.
My heart aches. I don’t think I expected him to call, but I wasn’t sure I expected that he’d just accept us being apart, either. But here we are, a day later, and nothing.
I stop at the top of the stairs, about to head to bed, but I step right instead and walk to my parents’ door, opening it up this time.
The smell of vanilla and bergamot assault me, and I almost hold my breath on reflex. I like the scents, just not together. It will always remind me of her.