The Pearls At My Mothers Visitation

I saw them before I saw my own mother’s face in the casket. That is the part I am not proud of, but it is true, so I will say it plain. I walked into the viewing room at Hartley Funeral Home in Danford, Missouri, with my husband Tom’s hand on my back, and the first thing my eyes caught was a glint of white at my sister-in-law Stephanie’s throat.

Mama’s pearls. The ones Daddy saved two years of Saturday overtime to buy her for their fortieth anniversary. The ones Mama never once took off after he passed, not for church, not for bed, not for the hospital gown they put her in near the end. And there they were, sitting against Stephanie’s collarbone like she had been born wearing them, while my mother lay fifteen feet away in a blue dress with her hands folded.

The room smelled the way those rooms always smell, carnations and carpet cleaner and the faint sweetness of the lilies someone from the church had sent, and under all of it I could hear the low hum of the air conditioner working too hard against an August afternoon. Soft organ music was playing from a speaker somewhere near the ceiling, the kind of hymn that is meant to settle a room and mostly just makes the silence feel heavier. I remember thinking, in the strange sideways way your mind works in a moment like that, that Mama would have hated that particular hymn. She always said it dragged.

I stopped walking. Tom’s hand pressed a little harder into my back, the way he does when he feels me go still.

“Gail,” he said, low, just for me. “You okay?”

I was not okay. But I nodded, because the line of mourners behind us was already twenty deep, and Pastor Collins was watching the door, and my mother would have wanted me standing up straight and shaking hands, not falling apart in the doorway of her own funeral.

Stephanie saw me looking. She did not look away or reach up to cover the pearls with her hand the way a person does when they realize they have made a mistake. She smiled instead, the same bright, easy smile she wears into every room, and crossed the carpet to hug me.

“Gail, honey,” she said, her cheek against mine, her voice pitched soft enough that only I would hear it. “I hope you don’t mind. I found these in Dorothy’s jewelry box while I was helping Danny go through her things, and I just thought, somebody ought to wear them today instead of leaving them in a drawer.” She pulled back enough to look at me, still smiling, and touched the strand at her throat with two fingers. “Honestly, I think they look better on someone who actually goes places in them. No offense.”