The Trip My Son Would Not Cancel

Marion died on a Tuesday in the middle of the night, the fourth of the month, in her own bed, which is what she wanted, with me beside her, which is what I wanted, and with Colleen having been there just six hours before to settle her and kiss her forehead and say what neither of us knew was goodbye. It was quiet. She had made me promise, months earlier, in one of her clear spells, that I would not let them take her to the hospital at the end, that she wanted to go from her own room with her own window and the maple her grandfather planted right outside it. I kept that promise. It is the last thing I did for her and I did it right.

Then I called our son, and he sighed, and he flew to Europe on Thursday, and he missed his mother’s funeral.

I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to make this the story of one bad phone call. It was not one phone call. Colleen called him back after I did, and she was not gentle the way I had been. She told me later what she said. She told him the service would be Saturday, she had already spoken to Pastor Lund, and that his mother had asked for both her children to carry her, that Marion had said it herself, back in the summer, that she wanted her two kids to be among the ones to carry her out of the church. Colleen told him that. She told him his mother had asked for him by name to help carry her casket.

And Grant said he understood, and he was sorry, and the trip was non-refundable, and Sloane had been looking forward to it for months, and Mom of all people would understand about not wanting to lose the money, and they would do a nice memorial in the spring.

Sloane had been looking forward to it. His mother had asked to be carried by her son and he weighed it against Sloane’s disappointment about a river cruise and the cruise won. That is not a bad phone call. That is a man showing you the shape of his whole soul, clearly, in good lighting, and asking you to please not make a big deal out of it.

They flew out of O’Hare on Thursday morning. I know because Sloane posted a photograph. Colleen saw it. The two of them at some airport bar with tall glasses of something, and Sloane’s caption said the anniversary adventure begins, with a little airplane. His mother was three days dead and lying at Ackerman and Sons and my son was smiling over a drink with a little airplane under it, and I made Colleen turn the phone off, and I went out to the barn and I did not come back in for a long while.

We buried Marion on Saturday.