The Christmas My Street Trimmed My Tree

The quiet

Three hundred people came to the funeral. Lee’s whole crew from the highway shop stood along the back wall in their orange vests, six men who had never in their lives been that still. People held my hands. People said they were sorry for my loss, and I said thank you, and I heard myself say it forty times as if I were reading it off a card.

Then it was over, and the house was quiet in a way I did not know a house could be.

Casseroles stop on a schedule. About three weeks. The first week my kitchen was full of foil pans, and by the fourth there was nothing in the refrigerator but mustard and a lemon. Beth stayed nine days and drove back to Dubuque. Greg flew in from Denver and stayed four. I told them both I was fine.

His green coat stayed on the hook by the back door. His boots stayed on the mat. I kept setting out two cups in the morning, and then standing there looking at the second one.

I stopped cooking. I ate toast and canned soup. I let the mail pile up on the dining room table in three leaning towers, because every envelope with his name on it was a small cruelty. The drapes stayed shut. The television stayed on low, mostly for the voices.

I went to church every Sunday. Church was the only place I knew what to do with my hands. I sat in our pew, fourth from the front on the left, and sang the hymns with the second half of the harmony missing.

On Thanksgiving I drove to Beth’s in Dubuque, forty minutes on Highway 151. She had set a place for me at the end of the table where Lee always sat, then looked stricken and moved me to the middle. I ate her turkey and said it was wonderful, and I was back on the road before the pie.