The Roses on Ilene’s Casket

He is an electrician in Wausau, and he says about twelve words a day. But he stood up in front of all those people with his hands in his suit pockets.

“Grandma used to say the people who love you show up,” Mark said. “She said love isn’t what you feel. It’s where you are when somebody needs you. I didn’t understand that until this week.”

He didn’t look at me when he said it. He didn’t have to. Jodi was crying in the front pew, and Lowell had his hand over his eyes.

When the service ended, the funeral home men came forward and wheeled the casket slowly out of the chapel with the roses still lying across it, out to the hearse that would carry Ilene to the receiving vault. I watched the red go past the end of my pew.

Erin squeezed my hand one more time and went to find her husband. People were filing out into the cold, buttoning their coats, talking about the roads and who was driving to the church for lunch.

I went out the side door to my car. I wasn’t going to the lunch.

I didn’t feel right about sitting in Ilene’s church basement eating her ham buns when her own son was paying for them and I was the ex-wife who had made sure of it.

I was brushing snow off my windshield with my sleeve when I heard boots crunching behind me in the parking lot.

It was Lowell. He had his good overcoat on, open, and no hat, and his ears were already going red in the cold.

“Janet,” he said.

“Lowell. I’m sorry about your mom.”

He nodded and looked down at the snow between us. Lowell was never good at starting things. He would stand in a kitchen for ten minutes before he could ask you to pass the salt.

“Stan told me about the roses,” he said finally. “He told me about all of it. What Mom wrote on that sheet. What you did. What you didn’t do.”

I waited. I was not sure what was coming. In thirty years with Lowell, I had heard him angry maybe four times, and every time it was quiet, like this.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Thank you for the roses. The kids saw. Erin just told me on the steps that she’s going to pay you back, and I told her she’d have to fight me for it.”

“Nobody needs to pay me back,” I said.

“I know.” He shoved his hands in his coat pockets. “I wanted to tell you something else, though. I’m paying for the rest of it. All of it. Stan and I worked it out Tuesday at four. I sold the Arctic Cat to a guy from Eagle River for three thousand, and I’m paying the balance off by the month.”

I knew how much Lowell loved that snowmobile. He bought it used the year after we split, and he rode it on the trails every weekend from December to March. It was the one thing he had that was all his.

“Lowell,” I said. “You didn’t have to sell your sled.”

“Yeah, I did,” he said. “First time in my life I’m paying for something Mom was supposed to cover. Turns out she covered it the only way she could. She sent it to me.”

He laughed a little, but there wasn’t much in it. The wind came across the lot and blew a skiff of snow off the roof of the funeral home.