oceans

Three times in as many months I find myself at the edges of oceans. Gulls riding currents, squawking and crying. I have lost two mothers this year.  Both more or less in the natural course of events. They had lived long, death arriving as a merciful end to short suffering. 

I walk the boardwalk with my daughter, shivering in the wind.  The end-of-day sky sets orangey pink while the moon rises behind us. The November sea hurls itself, frothy and reckless, onto empty beaches. Beyond the high water mark the sand is perfectly rippled. The dune grasses whip spirograph circles. I have lost two mothers, she has lost two grandmothers, and the last living connection to the father she never knew. Too many deaths in her young life.

Ruth called us “her girls.” Wherever she was she made room for us, welcomed us, loved us, always. She and Charlie would pick us up at the airport and she would cry. Days later, dropping us off she would cry again. She taught me to be patient and to answer her questions with care, the same questions coming many times over, answers forgotten or misunderstood. She loved us like we were her own. Ruth taught me to cook my first Thanksgiving turkey. We would sit on her screened porch and chat about not much of anything. Sometimes when I returned from a run I'd find my clean laundry folded on the edge of the bed. She cooked salmon and cut up salad and we sat around the table together. Later we would clear the dishes and bring out the Sequence board, Hannah teaming up with Charlie and Ruth pairing up with me. 

Ruth’s nails were always painted, her hair ‘done', her outfit and jewelry coordinated. Her hands would shake when she lifted her pills to her mouth, lipstick on her water glass. Her home was sparse and warm and spotless. She always smelled good. On the phone she would ask me how my team was doing. I’d tell her about our struggles and triumphs on the soccer field. She always answered the same way. Beautiful, she'd say.

Today her body is laid to rest next to her husband and his parents for all of eternity. As the coffin comes to rest at the bottom of her newly dug grave, a big wind pushes past my right shoulder, swirling the November leaves, breathing on my neck like an unexpected visitor. Hannah feels it too and we share a raised brow. In the morning we place stones on her marker. A fox has left prints in the fresh dirt.