“When we were kids, she wouldn’t let us leave the breakfast table until we’d eaten everything on our plates,” Anne said. “Even if we said we weren’t hungry.”
“Especially if we said we weren’t hungry.” Kay was half laughing and half crying.
When the sun finally filtered in through the windows, Sadie and Seth were the only two still awake.
Sadie, her voice soft but brittle as she hunkered under Gigi’s blanket on the couch, told Seth, “I had to memorize a poem in high school. Pablo Neruda. It was a death poem. All I can remember is the line ‘Falling out of the skin and into the soul.’ That’s what I feel like.”
“‘Death is the enemy. The first and the last. And the enemy always wins. But we still have to fight him.’ Or something like that. Pretty sure that was Beric Dondarrion from Game of Thrones.”
And despite herself, she smiled, even though it broke her heart.
The first few days after Gigi passed were a fugue best left forgotten.
They all mourned differently.
Kay with wails and tears. Anne with action. Uncle Brian with a soft kind of sorrow that threatened to overcome him anytime he tried to speak. Tava with words and stories. Seth and Sadie with silence.
Sadie had never been depressed. Sad and worried? Yes. But this, this grief felt different. Thicker. Like a shroud she was suffocating under. She wondered if this was what Seth felt all the time. The weight of failure made her empty. Everything lacked purpose. Her words, when she spoke, came out slow, and her whole body ached. Life seemed vacant. She was vacant. Not a normal person. She wasn’t a patient lying in a hospital bed, but she was sick, nonetheless. Just an empty human.
And every hour, more people stopped by with flowers and food and words that were meant to bring comfort but usually didn’t, because comfort is an impossible task in the face of fresh grief. The real consolation was seeing their own grief reflected in the eyes and tears of friends and neighbors and café patrons because it meant they were unified in their sorrow and love for a woman who had touched so many lives.
Cindy McGillicuddy organized casseroles in the fridge.
Bill brought more sunflowers.
Gail came with stories of misspent youth and long-forgotten memories until they were all laughing through their tears.
Lavender and Lace dropped off salted chocolate truffle ice cream that tasted like sorrow.
Mayor Elias and Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez were there. There were people Sadie knew by name, and others she only knew by sight. All of them with hugs and tears and words that left Sadie’s mouth dry.
Mr. and Mrs. Abassi brought a basket of sweets and nuts.
“What will we do without her?” Mr. Abassi asked in a choked voice.
“She left me the recipe for your arthritis. I promise you’ll never be without it,” Sadie said around the tightness in her throat.
Meera Shaan and Akshay came with a biryani layered with fragrant rice, chicken, and vegetables in a riot of color. Before they left, Akshay slipped a piece of paper into Sadie’s hand. After they left, she unfolded the smudged paper, and her tears fell onto a drawing of the little boy asleep in his bed with a red-haired angel watching over him.
There were moments where Sadie was sure she would break. For so many years she’d tamped down her feelings that now it seemed there was no outlet for them. It was too hard to sort through the jagged pain. It threaded through her body, made her limbs weak, her heart heavy as quartz. Dull. Everything was dull and muted and on autopilot. She smiled mechanically at the sympathetic neighbors and friends who came to call.
Cindy mowed their front lawn and brought over fresh coffee.
Pastor Jay stopped by and said a prayer for the family.
The Cavendish, Madizza, Tova, and Delvaux families all arrived together to pay their respects. They wore black and set up a small altar with white candles for peace, a palm stone of banded agate for courage, and sprigs of rosemary to signify a new beginning. They said a prayer and offered condolences, and their tears fell black as night.
Jake came. She knew it was him before she opened the door because the grandfather clock warned her with a long, deep note that sounded, somehow, like it belonged to him. She hadn’t cried in hours, but seeing him there on the threshold, she remembered the way Gigi would pat his side when he hugged her, and laugh at his compliments, and the grief felt like a fresh wound. But when he opened his arms, she stepped into to his embrace, and it felt a little easier to breathe. They sat on the front-porch swing, and he pulled a small red box out of his jacket pocket before shrugging out of it and draping it over Sadie’s shivering shoulders.