So Far
How can it be May? Has it been almost a year? A year of carrying a shocked, weighted, broken heart. Of wandering a wilderness. Unmoored. Disoriented in disbelief. A family shifting shape. The earth beneath us, shifting. A year of grief rearranging me. The world. Time.
Last May, as the weeks turned towards June, I watched the Matilija poppy, my dad’s favorite, stretch in my garden and reach for the sun. Each morning I looked out our bedroom windows to see if it had bloomed.
Last year, I gave my dad a blue and white striped sleep mask for his birthday. May 18th. I’d hoped it would help him rest more soundly and deeply, as sleep was fitful and eluded him all last spring. My mom sent me a photo of him standing near the entrance to their bedroom on his birthday, gamely posing after his nap with the mask pushed up onto his forehead like a soft crown.
On June 1, my parents’ fifty-first anniversary, I went to the symphony with my son and husband. On our way, we stopped at the jewelry store to pick up my mom’s ring, sized and strengthened, ready for more years of wear on my hand. Before the lights went down in the concert hall, I sent a photo to my parents across the country, heading home from dinner, walking arm-in-arm as usual.
The first bloom of our Matilija poppy arrived on a Saturday in June. The day before Father’s Day, the day my son spoke to his Pops for the last time. Three days before I boarded a plane to Boston and flew through the night, crying quietly into my mask, praying and asking my dad to wait for me.
It is May again and the Matilija poppy is huge again. Long, leafy limbs grow taller and wider than anything else in my garden, crowding and shading neighboring plants. Come June, crinkled papery white petals with fuzzy yolk-yellow centers will crack open and bloom from pursed green buds. Planted on a whim in the back corner, it marks time.
Soon it will be my dad’s birthday, my parents’ anniversary, Father’s Day. Our firsts without him.
I watch the poppy stretch sunward again. I wake each morning and push my dad’s blue and white mask up onto my forehead. My morning heart registers what it remembered as I fell asleep hours earlier, picks it back up, carries it through my day. This must be true. This must be.
I look at the Corita print across from my bed that once hung beside my dad’s. “So far the crocuses have always come up.” I collect my tender heart, my weary and wise mind, myself, and my selves, my grief love, the years and months and days that have brought me to this one. I stand to face the glare of the closing of this year. My dad and I walk on. Together.
