Marmalade

A bittersweet gift, an acquired taste

Breakfast, September 28, 2023.

My father died eight years ago today, and I’m still writing and rewriting that story. In a lovely coincidence, my mother arrives tonight for a visit, so I’m getting something out early this week for paid subscribers. CW: Death. Sorry!

Later, the undertaker will come. A new guy, apparently, he gets lost on the way to the apartment, calling twice for directions. I go down into the alley and wave my arms as the van turns in off the street. He’s alone, in a dark and baggy polyester suit. Pale-faced, with a shock of white hair, he looks unnervingly like Mel Smith, who played the Albino in The Princess Bride.

He’s anxious, apologetic; there was traffic on the bridge. I desperately want him to shut the fuck up.

Later, my sisters and I will laugh about this. About the bumbling corpse transporter who can’t hoist the body off the bed on his own. About the fact that my brother-in-law had to help him get my father onto the gurney, about my mother’s numb disbelief. About the fact that we have to shoo the building cleaning crew, arriving with impeccable timing, away from the elevator, to spare them the sight of a corpse on the move. About the Scooby-Doo van into which he trundles the body. We imagine the back doors popping open on I-5 and the gurney sliding out, to go on its own mad adventure. About me fleeing the room, unable to bear witness any longer.

They send the dog out to the porch to keep me company. He lays his head on my lap after I’m done dry heaving between my legs, and tells me I don’t have to watch. Later we’ll all go for Mexican food and drink margaritas at lunch, not knowing what else to do, and gasp in our grief and shock.

But in the days before all that we sit vigil, in a dim and hot room. Three daughters, one mother, four women—a solar system of stable planets orbiting a dimming sun.