a short story by Erin Jamieson
He was always going to die on time.
It’s fitting, for someone who used to insist on leaving an hour before an appointment that took twenty minutes to drive to. Who laid out his clothes the night before, then a second checkered shirt and khaki pants in case the weather was cooler or warmer or the other shirt got some of his morning oats on it.
I knew this the moment I was told he was supposed to die in six months.
When you hear something like that, though, something happens.
You can lie to yourself, and say you’ll take it calmly. Logically. Accept what you’re told.
But no one does that. You shut down. Maybe you shout. Maybe you just keep shaking your head.
I did all three.
Except.
He didn’t do any of those things.
He looked the doctor square in the eye.
He squeezed my hand. Like I was the one being given the death sentence.
“Okay,” he said.
It’s a sunny day, the kind of breathless summer sky that’s so blue it makes it hard to breathe. The kind of sky you can’t look away from.
Heat prickles my cheeks as I slip on the same black cocktail dress I was supposed to wear out to dinner. A surprise dinner I planned before that day, one that never happened. It’s tea-length, strapless and makes me look even paler than I normally do. Or, likely, that parlor is the result of no freckles. No freckles from no sun for the past month. From slowly losing my grip on why I’m still here.
I’m impressed with myself for being able to dress. For remembering to brush my hair and brush my teeth- never mind that they’re coffee stained from weeks of not brushing them properly.
I make myself breakfast, but all there is in the house is a carton of expired milk and his oats. I sprinkle cinnamon and brown sugar over the oats, but the scent makes me queasy.
Callie, our cat, brushes up against my legs. She’s only five. I never expected her to outlive him. She’s the kid we never had. We used to joke about that a lot, though, a year ago, those jokes started sounding more purposeful.
He’d joke when we were out, point out how much money we were saving, being cat parents instead of typical parents.
Everytime I think grain free salmon food is expensive, I see the price of diapers.
And yet you still complain about it, I’d tease.
Well. I swear some days our cat eats better than we do.
We could always switch food for a day. See what you think after that.
And then he’d roll his eyes, push the Target cart forward while I was still hanging onto it. He was like that: both routine and unexpected, mature and a little kid. Both in one. And as much as his little rants about Callie’s food or how we could save money by switching out our water filter annoyed me, I miss it now.
Tears mist my eyes as I stroke Callie. As if by petting her I can stop myself from crying. The oatmeal is growing cold. I manage one spoonful but it forms a lump in my throat.
I want to stay here all day. I want to curl up in bed in the covers that, miraculously, still smell like his Ocean Breeze shampoo. I want to sleep for hours, for days, for weeks. I want to sleep through everything.
I imagine it. Staying here. Letting everything happen. People whisper and go home and tell other people.
Maybe they’d call me a monster. Maybe they’d come up with their own theories: I had someone on the side. It’s funny. None of that bothers me. Because for it to bother me, I’d have to care about my future.
I’d have to care about anything, period.
But just as I’m contemplating being a disgusting, pathetic loser and staying in bed, there’s a knock at the door. Then another.
There’s only one person who refuses to use my doorbell. I shuffle, more than walk, to answer the door.
Of course, my mother looks like everything I’m not. She’s wearing just a tint of blush, enough to accent her cheekbones, paired expertly with petal pink lip gloss. Her long wool coat- the same one she’s had since I was five-fits snugly but isn’t too tight. She smells like vanilla and lavender.
Her hazel eyes are bright, alive, sharp. And they land on me and my whisper thin periwinkle slippers.
“What are you doing?”
“I should ask you that. Why don’t you ever ring the doorbell?”
“I told you. It doesn’t work.”
“Mom,” I sigh. “It works. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”
“I never hear it.”
“I hear it inside. Isn’t that what matters?”
“Why aren’t you dressed? You aren’t wearing that.”
A statement, not a question. “No, Mom. I don’t usually wear slippers out,”
“You’re going to be late. Do you want to be late?”
I’m torn between wanting to throw something at her – the rotting orange on the counter is tempting – and wanting to burst out laughing. My emotions are so messed up I don’t even know what the hell I want anymore.
“Really. You don’t have much time.”
“I didn’t ask you to pick me up.”
She stiffens, and I know I’ve crossed a line. “I’ll be quick,” I mutter, and slip into my room before she can make any recommendations about what I should wear.
I don’t want her here. But a part of me needs her right now. I hate her for that and hate myself for that. I hate myself for taking it out on her. She’s like she’s always been. Too focused on doing things a certain way. Convinced she knows best. But it’s not her fault. It’s not her fault he’s gone.
I hold back a sob as I root through my closet. I had outfits laid out but managed to forget shoes. She was right. She was right about taking his stuff out, setting it aside. When she suggested it, I yelled at her. Said she was trying to erase him. But every time I stumble over a pair of grass-stained tennis shoes, every time I push past a dorky checkered shirt, it’s like I’m witnessing death, over and over again.
No, not a death.
It’s more than that.
It’s like when I first started losing my teeth and the excitement of finding a quarter left behind by the tooth fairy wore off. I was left with a gap, a part of me gone. Only time won’t fill that gap. It’ll just be there. Something I’m supposed to get used to. Learn to live with.
“Elizabeth?”
No one but my mother calls me that. I’m Liz, Lizzy, and, according to the community college I work at, Eliza (I never bothered to correct them, as it’s a miracle I, an expendable adjunct instructor, was mentioned at all). Elizabeth is a name my mom used when I was in trouble, growing up, for taking the last iced cookie or for breaking one of her James Taylor CD’s because I lost the case.
It’s a name that makes me feel like I’m eight years old. Which is upsetting, irritating and oddly comforting at the same time.
“Coming,” I say. I found a pair of off-brand crocs, the same ones I’ve had since my mother bought them for me when I went off to college for the first time. Because, as she said, the showers were gross and you didn’t want to go into them bare-footed.
I bump into my mother as I step out.
“You’re wearing those?”
“I can’t find anything else.”
“Here.” She hands me a pair of black ballerina flats. The ones I bought for less than $20 at some thrift store, and wear diligently the way others wear high heels.
I didn’t see them.
But then I shouldn’t be surprised.
I’m always missing things, and she’s always there, ready to swoop in and cover for my incompetence.
He had all kinds of plans for my 30th birthday.
I told him I wanted to ignore it. Which, of course, only encouraged him more. “Skydiving it is then.”
“I’ll kill you.”
He laughed, throwing one of my ponytails for Ginger, our cat. I had Ginger because of him – I’d always been a dog person. But mostly because our apartment didn’t allow dogs. Turns out I managed to find a cat with dog-like qualities.
“Thought you said skydiving would kill you.”
“Fine,” I corrected. “I’ll die, come back to life, then kill you.”
“Hey. That would be a memorable birthday. For both of us.”
My birthday is a few months away. Whatever he was really planning, I’ll never know. I’ll get exactly what I said I wanted: he won’t make a big deal about it. My 20s will end, just as our life together ended. It will be my past. It will be a different life, a life I am forced to leave behind.
He had just turned 30, a few months ago. We are – were – precisely 6 months apart in age. It’s so strange to think: I dreaded leaving my 20s, dreaded turning 30.
But he will never be older than 30.
I’m ready to bolt the minute we arrive.
He and I both hated funeral homes. I guess that’s a silly thing to say – who likes them? But this one is as stereotypical as they come. Thick velvet curtains and matching carpet. Smell of mothballs and anesthetic. Gold-framed black and white photos of Loveland before the shopping centers and gas stations. A reception table, deep mahogany wood, also trimmed with velvet. There’s a guest book to sign in. Like we had for our wedding, only people are signing off to the end of his life, rather than the beginning of ours.
Then I see the coffin.
I was supposed to select it. I was supposed to order what he’d like most – does anyone really have anything they like in a coffin? I wanted to have him cremated. He never told me what he wanted. We never talked about him dying. Only my dark humor, my jokes about how I’d die in some idiotic way and he’d have to explain to everyone why and how.
He was never supposed to die before me. I was the one who was supposed to die young, too young.
My mother told me I had to have a real funeral. With a pastor, with a coffin. When I met with the funeral director, I nodded, pointed to some options, and handed over my credit card. To anyone else, I’d look like a heartless asshole.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to do any of this if I really thought. Asked questions I was supposed to. Questions that no one really has the answers for, and if they do, they’re just bullshitting.
“I hope you’re pleased,” the funeral director tells me. As if this is a party and I’m looking at balloons instead of a coffin.
“Yes, thank you.”
He’s a lanky man, with sorrowful eyes and a scrawny face like a greyhound. I wonder if he looked that way before he went into business, or if being a funeral director shaped him. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need,” he says, and then I’m alone.
Guests – attendees – whoever my mother invited are slowly trickling in for visitation. I’m supposed to stand by the coffin, greeting them. Thanking them for coming. I am reminded of a funeral I attended in 6th grade. Her name was Emily, and she’d just moved here. Two months later, her parents found her in the hallway, a freak accident, an allergic reaction to prescription meds. It was an open coffin and I wish it hadn’t been, because Emily looked nothing like Emily. They hadn’t bothered – or been able to – make her skin look a normal tone.
He looks just like he did in life. Napping, maybe. He always took naps and I always teased him for it. He always teased me for never taking naps, for never giving myself a break.
You’d be proud of me now, I think. I haven’t written a single freelance article since you left me. I haven’t cleaned the house. I haven’t made lesson plans or looked for jobs on Higher Ed. I’m giving myself a break, just like you always told me to.
He’s wearing a suit, though. That isn’t right. And his mouth is firm, no hint of a smile or joke. I’m too afraid to touch him. He was always warm, even in the Winter.
The coffin lining is velvet. Worse, it’s red velvet.
He was color blind, red-green color blind.
It starts as a tickle in my throat. I see people lining up for visitation out of the corner of my eye. I swallow, but the urge to laugh is growing. The same thing happened to me, all those years ago, for Emily’s funeral. I went with Aileen – my then-best friend – and the two of us had to leave because we started laughing. Not because anything was funny. Because nothing was.
You’d think, nearly two decades later, that I’d be able to hold it in.
That losing my husband would keep me from looking like a monster.
When Emily died, it was incomprehensible. 6th graders aren’t meant to die. At her visitation, there were posters about not just what she’d done in the past, but what she planned to do in the future. Become a marine biologist. Explore the world.
I choke, choke my laughter down.
Red velvet. What would that look like to him? A muddy brown? Are you allowed to watch your funeral from Heaven? Is he laughing with me? Because I know he’d find this funny too. I know he would understand. I know he must know that I’m laughing with him.
Of all the things I’ve screwed up, this safely is – if not the worst – offense.
My mother steps up beside me. I know better than to look at her. I train my eyes to the deep velvet floor. There’s a single crumb – maybe from a muffin – by our feet. Maybe the funeral director eats his breakfast here. Maybe he brews coffee here. Hell, maybe he eats right next to the deceased.
I’m not helping myself.
I think about the color of the coffin. The funeral director asked if I’m pleased. How I was going to attend with my faux-crocs from college.
It’s absurd.
It’s absurd that he’s gone, and I- who always hated life, who considered taking my own so many times – am here instead. It’s absurd that they’re playing elevator music like we’re in freaking JCPenney.
A small laugh escapes me. I manage to turn it into a cough, just as a woman I don’t know – some distant Aunt on his side that I’ve never met – shakes my hand.
But the elevator music is still playing and I keep thinking about how, even in my stupid imaginations of the ways I’d die, I could not have anticipated such a bad way to say goodbye. My mother whispers in my ear that, for the luncheon afterwards, she ordered Skyline Chili because Servati’s couldn’t do it in time, that she meant to tell me.
He always used to say Skyline isn’t real chili, because real chili isn’t supposed to be sweet.
And I just… Lose it. A laugh escapes me, then another. My mother’s eyes flash, but if that’s supposed to deter me, it has the opposite effect.
I feel everyone staring at me. I try to swallow my laughter. I lean against the wooden podium to steady myself. The room blurs. I see shapes and shadows, not people. Little things stick out to me: the plush, confining feel of the carpet on my feet. The scent of cleaner. The too-low ceilings. The windows, all dressed with equally odious velvet curtains. A little girl – well in the back – with twin pigtails and a pink dress, trimmed with lace. Our eyes meet and it’s like she’s the only one here that understands, the only one who’s willing to admit how awful it is to say goodbye to someone forever in this way.
I ran out.
I lost a shoe on the way.
I figure that makes sense.
I’ve been losing myself, bit by bit.
And now everyone can finally see it.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes, he used to say.
Erin Jamieson’s writing has been published in over eighty literary magazines, and her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, Sky of Ashes Land of Dreams, was published by Type Eighteen Books (Nov 2023). Twitter: erin_simmer
The Carried Away 
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